In the Colorado House District 4 Democratic primary race, voters will see two familiar faces: incumbent state Rep. Tim Hernández and his opponent Cecelia Espenoza.
The two previously faced off during a vacancy-filling process last year after former state Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez was elected to the Denver City Council. Hernández was selected in August and assumed office in September.
District 4 covers northwest and west Denver, going from the top of the Regis neighborhood to the middle of Westwood (check your district here).
Whoever wins the Democratic primary will face Jack Daus, who is running unopposed in the Republican primary. Daus previously ran and lost the seat against Gonzales-Gutierrez in 2022.
Typically, the area leans heavily toward Democrats. The party has held the seat since at least 2010, so the outcome of the November race may be the same.
🗳️ House District 4 Candidate Tim Hernández (Incumbent)
Before filling the District 4 seat in September 2023, Tim Hernández was an 11th and 12th grade ethnic and Chicano studies teacher in Aurora. He was also previously a board member of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the city's teachers' union.
Tim Hernández says he’s been busy listening to the community’s needs and enacting them into policy during his tenure at the legislature.
Now, his goal is to continue that work with a full term.
“I took on some really hard fights … and I feel like I was able to listen to the needs of my community and really support that,” Hernández said. “Policy is an outcome of how connected you are to your community's issues.”
Since assuming office, Hernández has sponsored and supported bills ranging from establishing of support systems for youth in the juvenile system, creating a Chicano-themed license plate and increasing school funding finance formula.
Hernández said housing and education are equally important issues to his constituents and to his campaign.
Hernández said his housing work in the legislature will focus on renters’ protections, rent control, landlord accountability and protections for single-family homeowners.
All of those goals help keep constituents in their homes, Hernández said.
“Everybody likes to talk about homelessness because it is the physical manifestation of failed housing policy,” Hernández said. “The top two reasons why folks are ending up homeless, according to the Colorado Coalition of the Homeless, is one because they were evicted…and two because they couldn't afford their rent.”
On the education beat, Hernández says he will priortize teacher protections such as pay increases and union rights, ads well as school infrastructure and ecosystems.
Hernández pointed to a bill Gov. Jared Polis vetoed that would have required schools to meet certain standards in order rto use federal dollars to pay for infrastructure improvements to heating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Without those improvements, Denver schools will continue starting later than other districts because of their aging air conditioners making the classrooms too hot, Hernández said.
Hernández would also like to expand a recent report on Denver Public Schools regarding barriers Latino students face in the classroom.
Another one of Hernández’s main campaign pillars is gun violence prevention and school safety, both topics he said he’s experienced first-hand being a student and then a teacher in the generation of active shooter drills.
“When I talk about the issue, it's not a theory about what it's like to live through school shootings, to live through what it means to be afraid to die at school because I was. Then I became a teacher and that fear evolved … if somebody comes here, I would die for my kids,” Hernández said.
Hernández said one of the bills he’s most proud of is SB24-182, which allowed new immigrants to apply for a driver’s license immediately. Prior to the bill’s passage, new immigrants had to live in the state for two years in order to apply.
Hernández said advocates have tried for decades to make licenses and identification accessible for newcomers. With the recent influx of new immigrants, many settling in his district, he said constituents needed the change more than ever.
“We now are supporting our folks who are newcomers from their first date and making sure that we can connect with them,” Hernández said.
Hernández said his goals will always center around the needs of his constituents and community, North and Westsiders. While some may disagree with how entrenched he is within those neighborhoods, he says that’s the point. State representatives in Greely or Pueblo represent their areas, and he’ll continue to do the same if elected.
“I'm elected to represent the north and west side of Denver, which means that my responsibility, my obligations in the center of my decision making will remain the north and west side of Denver,” Hernández said. “Leaders do not tell people what to believe. Leaders lead at the will of our community and that means that we have to love our community loudly first.”
🗳️ House District 4 Candidate Cecelia Espenoza
Cecelia Espenoza is a retired appellate immigration judge and former counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice. She was chair of the National Hispana Leadership Institute and sat on the board member of the Hispanic Association for Corporate Responsibility.
Since last year's vacancy committee vote, Espenoza has been out in the community hearing from residents. Now, she says she's ready for them to vote on whether she should be their state representative.
“What I’ve been doing is talking to people at the doors and my plan isn't to come in with me being the savior of all these issues, but to listen to people,” Espenoza said.
The first issue she’s hearing about is housing and in all forms from homeowners and property taxes to renters’ rights.
She wants to tackle how homeowners pay their taxes, an issue that was brought to her by a constituent. Currently, residents have two ways to pay their taxes once they get a bill in January: a lump sum in April, or a portion in February and the remaining in June.
The problem is, if you’re on a fixed income and have already paid off your mortgage, both payment types are huge hits, Espenoza said. That's especially true if the payments increase exponentially like they did last year.
“People aren't even so concerned about the actual number of the property tax. It's that the boost in property tax without notice is difficult to absorb,” she said.
Espenoza would also like to work with the city assessor to determine how residents can enter into a payment plan on an income basis. This way people can pay the taxes over time, giving folks on fixed incomes more time to save.
Unexpected increases in payment is an issue Espenoza also wants to look at for renters. If renters ae being hit with random increases when they re-sign leases, Espenoza said stability becomes an issue. She’d like to look for mechanisms that would regulate rent hike percentages.
“The biggest difficulty that I'm hearing at the doors is being hit with unexpected expenses,” Espenoza said. “My goal would be for homeowners and renters to minimize their unexpected expense increase. I've heard of people in rental units that have had up to 100 percent increases thrown at them from landlords. That's unacceptable. We don't allow that in usury. We don't allow that in other places of law. So, we need to make sure that we're providing protections on that side.”
Transportation is another big issue Espenoza has heard from constituents. Mainly, safety concerns for pedestrians.
She said most of Colorado’s deadliest roads are located in District 4 from Sheridan to Federal Boulevards. This concern requires leaders on the local and state levels to work together because some roads are owned by either entity.
“It becomes a two-fold problem,” Espenoza said. “Some of it is finding some solutions for that dangerous aspect of the transportation and working with the neighborhoods in the city to ensure that the state is doing its part for things as simple as who has responsibility for the trash that's on the streets. Both jurisdictions are fighting for that. Who has jurisdiction over the right of way … What people want is transparency and certainty.”
Besides transportation and housing, Espenoza also wants to address constituent concerns with health care, criminal justice reform and education.
She wants to expand health care for mental health, reproductive rights and gender-affirming care. She also wants to explore how the criminal justice and education systems can be improved.
Espenoza said she’s ready to bring District 4’s ideas to the state house and work collaboratively with other representatives to get things done.
“You want someone who's going to represent everybody,” Espenoza said. “My commitment is to unity, leadership, tenacity and experience. I think that I have an understanding of all of HD4 and its constituents and needs.”
🗳️ House District 4 candidate Jack Daus
Jack Daus is running unopposed in the Republican primary.
He also ran for the House District 4 seat in the 2022 election. He was unopposed in the Republican primary then as well, and went on to lose to Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez in the general.
Daus' top three issues in 2022, according to a Denver Post candidate questionnaire, were law enforcement, affordable housing and school choice.