Senator Bennet Visits Durango, Discusses Governor’s Race

What drove me to run for governor was the battle that we’re in both nationally and in Colorado. In Colorado, we’re facing an affordability crisis that is causing people all over the state to believe that their kids are never going to be able to afford to live here. Our kids don’t think they’re going to be able to afford to live in Colorado and nationally, we’ve had similar economic headwinds that I think are part of the reason why Donald Trump was elected president again a second time. A big part of what we have to do is we’ve got to get the cost of housing down to about 30% of people’s income instead of what it is today. In many places, over 50% or 60%, I don’t think any one size fits all answer is going to come from Denver, Colorado to do that. The way Durango’s going to approach that is going to be different than even how Silverton approaches it or how, how Ridgeway approaches it, and to say nothing of Denver and, and Lyman or places like that. But we have a moral obligation to our kids. I mean, I don’t care if you’re the most conservative person in Colorado or the most progressive person in Colorado. If our kids can’t afford to live here, we have failed them. Look, well, let me say first of all that I, I was part of the Gang of eight that wrote the last comprehensive immigration bill in the Senate, and it passed with a bipartisan majority, 68 votes in the Senate. It was killed by the Freedom Caucus and the House of Representatives. We would never have had Donald Trump if we had passed that bill. And what did that bill have? It had a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million people. It had the Dream Act, all the visa issues that are such a huge challenge for our companies and for our farms and ranches and for our firm workers all over Colorado. We addressed that and we had a huge amount of border security is part of that bill. Now, Donald Trump, it’s all about one thing, which is trying to get people out of the country. It’s not about our economy, it’s not about our public safety. It’s not about the, the long-term interests of the United States. And I think it’s very important for us to have governors across the country. They’re going to stand up for those broader positions, that it’s not just about enforcement. And remind people that that immigration and immigrants are a fundamental part of our society, of our culture. Folks that have lived in this community for decades, that have worked in the community and for decades that have been relied upon for their trades and for their skill and for the expertise that they have brought. And now to see these families broken up by ice leaving, you know, half the families here and taking the, sending the other ones back to Mexico, it’s impossible to see how that makes any sense for the future of our communities here or the future of, of Colorado. And I am, you know, I, I think in this moment it will be useful to have somebody who’s got the national experience that I have pushing back from this, from the governor’s office, which is what I will do. I remember very well that one of the very first public lands, bills I ever passed in Congress was the Hermosa Creek Watershed Act. And that was the result of people in this part of Colorado working together to, it was all kinds of folks working together to build a very unusual c coalition to protect, protect the landscape that they cared about. In the years since then, together, we have protected 700,000 acres of public lands all across Colorado, from Hermosa Creek to Browns Canyon, to Camp Hail, to Camp Achi, and a whole bunch of places in between. I’m proud of that work and none of that work has been done as a top down approach. And when I do the work on housing and healthcare and childcare and education, we’re going to do it the same way we, we built those coalitions around public lands and Southwest Colorado. And, and I think the work that I learned here, as well as I learned it anywhere else, is the, is the approach that I’m going to take as governor of Colorado.