DENVER —Maybe you could call this an “up-mountain” rather than an “uphill” battle, but Trisha Calvarese, a former Government Employees member and former AFL-CIO energy and climate speechwriter for federation Presidents Richard Trumka and Liz Shuler, isn’t shy about running for Congress in Colorado’s most-Republican congressional district, now represented by ultra-rightist Lauren Boebert.
Calvarese’s positives, according to Ballotpedia, news reports, and her former union at the National Science Foundation, AFGE Local 3403: She comes from a union family and knows the value of union benefits. Union-negotiated health insurance paid for cancer treatments for both of her late parents. She’s got united labor backing, she endorses the Protect the Right To Organize Act and she’s strongly for abortion rights.
And Colorado native Calvarese can raise money: $3,778,985, including for a special election loss in the sprawling Republican-leaning district earlier this year. But she’s already spent $3,466,397 of it.
She’s got one other “asset,” her opponent. Boebert is one of the House’s most extreme and most controversial right-wing Republicans. Who else could get thrown out of a live-action stage version of Beetlejuice for raising a ruckus?
Just for starters
And that’s just for starters. Gun shop owner Boebert attended Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s New York felony trial for financial fraud and even tried to explain away Trump’s falling asleep during it. She also fights with other Republicans. Trump, needless to say, endorsed her. Both Colorado Democratic senators, among others, back Calvarese.
Boebert is so controversial that in a neighboring district Trump carried by a three-to-two ratio four years ago, she barely squeaked through two years later, winning by 547 votes out of 327,000 cast.
“Trisha Calvarese is a champion of workers’ rights,” Local 3403 President Jesus Soriano told AFGE for its profile of her on the union’s website. “Her contribution to the wellbeing” of its workers “was profound, although not known by many because, as a public servant, Trisha worked tirelessly for the benefit of NSF and its employees with modesty and without seeking credit or fame.
“Calvarese was part of the local’s Election Committee and gave invaluable advice and support to the incoming local president during a tough time following the return to the office post-pandemic as NSF’s draconian approach tore the agency apart and pitted managers against employees, managers against managers, and employees against each other. Among that disarray, the union became the tie that bound everyone together.
“In addition to her strategic advice, Calvarese’s leadership role in the Election Committee led us through a democratic process where new elected leaders could focus on defending workers’ rights and bringing our community back together.”
AFGE, 13 other unions, two AFL-CIO constituency groups, and North America’s Building Trades have endorsed Calvarese. She’s even gained backing from an organization of police officers.
Like other Democrats, Calvarese strongly supports reproductive rights and restoring the constitutional right to abortion which five Republican-named U.S. Supreme Court justices ended two years ago.
“The ability for families to prosper begins with a woman’s right to choose,” she wrote on a Ballotpedia questionnaire before the special election loss earlier this year. “The government has no place in that decision. Strong families depend on local and affordable access to reproductive care, maternal care, pre-and post-natal, including compassionate miscarriage care, and mental health support.”
Medicare coverage for her parents would have cost the family six figures as both battled cancer. The funding let Calvarese leave D.C. and “move home and provide end-of-life care to both of her parents without going into debt to pay.” Calvarese dedicates her congressional run to their memories.
So she will oppose Republican cuts to Social Security and Medicare and GOP plans to eliminate the Affordable Care Act. In rural areas, she’ll expand access to care by investing in, and saving our rural hospitals, Calvarese told Ballotpedia. She favors letting Medicare bargain lower prescription drug prices and “supports long overdue investments to make childcare and eldercare accessible to everyone.” That support echoes the stand of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Calvarese also echoes Harris in promising “to work to stop price gouging by monopolies and corporations, by holding them accountable for practices that make the cost of living unsustainable for everyday Americans.” That may resonate more in Colorado than pundits expect, due to the pending super merger of the nation’s largest and second-largest grocery chains, Albertson’s and Kroger. The merger would drive up prices and drive down competition for consumers’ dollars and workers’ jobs, the Federal Trade Commission says in court.
And Calvarese wants to “ban hedge funds and other investment speculators from buying houses just to drive up costs. Homes should be for working people and families first, and investors and speculators last.”
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