Go to: Candidate Q&A home page · Denver Post Voter Guide
Lori Garcia Sander (i) Republican
Residence: Eaton
Profession: Education
Education: BA, MA University of Northern Colorado
Experience: 28 years in public school teaching and administration in rural and suburban schools in both Weld and Larimer counties, one term as Representative for HD65.
What are your top three priorities, if elected?
1. The Economy – Cutting fees, taxes, and regulations across all industries and ensuring that the taxes and fees citizens do pay are spent responsibly.
2. Public Safety – Advocating for law enforcement to have all the resources they need and guaranteeing that individuals retain their personal and constitutional rights to self-defense.
3. Education – Ensuring that our K-12 schools continue to be fully-funded per the state constitution and that families have options for schooling their children. Promoting Career and Technical Education pipeline programs from middle school through trade schools.
What specific actions would you support to improve affordability for Coloradans, whether aimed at housing costs, tax burdens or other impacts?
The cost of housing is not just the rapidly rising cost of homes (which is a market force), but also extraordinarily high property tax rates and costly regulations that affect housing costs (such as requiring upgraded electric appliances and mandatory installation of EV outlets regardless of whether the purchaser owns an electric vehicle). To make housing more attainable for all Coloradans, we need to cut construction regulations, review, revise, and reduce fees, give tax incentives to builders for entry-level homes, and introduce tort reform to reduce costly and frivolous lawsuits against builders.
Whether your party is in the majority or minority next year, where do you see actionable common ground with the opposing party?
I’m hoping the Republican caucus will find actionable common ground with Democrat colleagues on kitchen table issues next session. The economy and Colorado’s unaffordability is the number one concern of Coloradans across the state, regardless of party. We are often able to find common ground on issues affecting agriculture and water.
A new governor will take office next year. What opportunities are there for legislation or other changes that did not gain traction under Gov. Jared Polis?
There will be ample opportunity for the left to go full-throttle with their agendas if we have a Governor Weiser, whereas Governor Polis was able to moderate many of the Progressive anti-business bills and attempts to undercut school choice options. If we were to have a Governor Marx or Governor Lopez, there will still be a majority Democrat legislature, but there may be some opportunities for budget-cutting and defense of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR).
