Dear Editor:
This question maybe would have been relevant in the 1950s, or perhaps even in the 1960s. But with powerfully able women leaders as Ambassadors to the UN, as Justices of the United States Supreme Court, as governors and U.S. Senators, as business heads—it is a question of yesteryear.
The very question suggests that our Congressional District is a behind-the-times and bigoted place. The question should insult us, every one. In every household in this Western Slope CD, there are men who have grandmothers, mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, cousins, nieces—who, surprise, are women. There are women in those households who have fathers, brothers and husbands who respect those wives, daughters and nieces. Every one of them holds the right to vote for a real representative in Congress.
The crucial reality of this race rests in electing a new “true” representative with both the passion and know-how to get the job done in the halls of Congress. This is not a job for those who are not yet steeped in the rigors of legislating for results, who can best develop their skills in the more navigable local and state governments.
In the next two years, this district depends on a change-out of our Congressional seat to get its fair share of the 21st Century economy, and the infrastructure to support those wage worthy jobs; it depends on smart science to answer the consequences of climate change in a time of increasing drought and threat to our water resources, in order to ensure the critical agricultural production that is at the heart of so much on the Western Slope; it depends on strengthening equal access to healthcare in our rural areas and price transparency for medical services. And on more issues than can be laid out in a short letter, none of which are being spearheaded by our current officeholder.
In turn, this needed action depends on the skill and fortitude to get it done. Some say “past performance is the best predictor of future performance.” In Diane Mitsch Bush, we have a three-term member of the Colorado House, so respected that she was chosen to head committees, so respected that she won awards such as Legislator of the Year in 2017, and best of all—so capable that she could work across the aisle to get bills turned into law in an urban-dominated legislature. We must all join in asking the true question for our Third CD common interests: who best knows how to get our work done in Congress? The answer is transparent and real. Getting the vote out to ensure Diane Mitsch Bush’s election is a serious task owned by each citizen in this district. Burying the antithetical, mysogynist notion that a woman cannot be our representative is an equally serious task which goes to the very identity of our home.
Jan Symchych
Yampa, Colo.
