DENVER — Valdamar Archuleta built the platform for his long-shot run against U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette to represent Denver in Congress in part on what voters told him they cared about.

The first plank of what the Republican hopeful calls his “commitment to Denver” is focused on his strategies for reducing the cost of living — specifically by focusing on cutting government spending and working to ensure the U.S. dollar goes further for consumers.

“That was what the majority of people were talking to me about, by far, was cost of living,” Archuleta said in an interview. “Here in Denver, (that’s) primarily the cost of housing.”

Archuleta, 45, faces an uphill climb in selling small-government conservative ideals to voters in Colorado’s deep blue 1st Congressional District. In 2022, DeGette won her 14th term in office by throttling her Republican challenger by nearly 63 percentage points; her two prior wins were by about 50 points.

DeGette, 67, said in a recent interview that she does play to retire someday, “but when I’m being effective on behalf of my constituents, I think I owe it to them to go there and do that job for them.”

The Democrat has now represented the city in Congress since 1997. She is centering her reelection campaign on familiar goals, including upgrading federal health care laws and beefing up environmental protections.

Also on the ballot in the Nov. 5 election are Daniel Lutz of the Approval Voting Party and Critter Milton of the Unity Party.

DeGette said she already had a template for updating the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act, which was signed into law in 2016 and is dedicated to fostering innovative treatments for diseases. She also wants to tackle ways to improve the Affordable Care Act, still often referred to as Obamacare, and bring down costs for enrollees in public health plans.

“You can’t pass a big bill and say, ‘OK, that’s the bill,’ ” she said, emphasizing the value of experience as a lawmaker. “You really have to (ask), ‘How’s it working? What are the unintended consequences? How can we make it better?’ ”

Archuleta is a massage therapist who is running for office for the first time after years of being active in Republican politics, including serving as the president of the Log Cabin Republicans of Colorado, a group for LGBT conservatives.

He acknowledges that housing policy is largely set at the state and municipal levels. But he wants to pursue ways the federal government can reduce the cost of building. If elected, he would also look into ways to better incentivize the construction of more starter homes like condos, he said.

Other focus areas include working to secure the U.S. southern border and reforming the U.S. government in a way that decreases federal authority and bestows more power on states.

Archuleta said he would endorse a constitutional amendment that mandates a balanced federal budget.

DeGette’s other focus areas include continuing to combat climate change in an effort to help the country reach “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2050, meaning greenhouse gas emissions are offset by efforts to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

As co-chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, DeGette also committed to protecting abortion rights across the country after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“That is a basic freedom that American women had for over 50 years,” she said. “And we need to reinstate that — we can’t start trying to compromise people’s rights away.”

Archuleta said that while he believes “it’s the decision of the individual and the woman going through the situation,” he would leave abortion laws to the states. He wrote in response to a question on The Denver Post’s candidate questionnaire that federal legislation regarding abortion would be unconstitutional under the 2022 decision, but the Supreme Court held that “the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

Among the starkest contrasts between DeGette and Archuleta are their positions on immigration.

Archuleta is a member of the Shoshone tribe on his mother’s side and is Latino on his father’s side. He says cities should not have to figure out how to provide resources for tens of thousands of migrants, as Denver has done over the last two years. That starts with clamping down on crossings at the southern border.

“We do have to get the situation at the border under control,” he said. “And we need to enforce the border laws that we have (and) immigration laws that we have.”

DeGette blames Republican leaders like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for politicizing immigration. She argues border officials need more resources to allow for pre-processing of migrants seeking asylum before they cross the border, allowing them access to U.S. work permits while they wait for their cases to be adjudicated.

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