House District 56: Richardson vs Navetta

AURORA | Elbert County government doesn’t often make headlines, but it did earlier this year when dramatically raising the pay of two top county staffers and skirting government transparency rules in the process.

Chris Richardson was one of Elbert’s three elected county commissioners who hiked the county attorney’s manager’s pay by 52% and the county manager’s salary 57% — a move he described as “timely” and “well deserved.”

Critics slammed it as outlandish, especially in a cash-strapped county whose workers long have complained they’re underpaid. Five county residents are suing Richardson and fellow commissioners for approving the contracts in secret, outside of Colorado’s open meetings law.

 Richardson seems politically unscathed by the controversy, having easily snagged the Republican nomination for House District 56, a seat held for three terms by fellow Republican and former Arapahoe County Commissioner Rod Bockenfeld, who is not seeking re-election because of health reasons.

Even Democrat challenger Alessandra Navetta acknowledges Richardson is likely to prevail in a district whose electorate is about 12% Democrat, 40% unaffiliated and 45% Republican. 

“I know he’s considered the favorite. But somebody needed to run against him,” she said.

House District includes the entirety of Elbert, Lincoln, Kit Carson, and Cheyenne counties, plus the eastern rural parts of Arapahoe, Adams, and El Paso counties. A 140-mile stretch along the Interstate 70 corridor from Denver International Airport to the Kansas border runs through it. Its 11,000 square miles are mostly rural, with a horizon strewn with fields growing corn, hay, grain sorghum, oats, millet, sunflowers and wheat, and with an average of only eight residents per square mile.

Richardson, 58, lives outside of Elizabeth in unincorporated Elbert County. He moved there in 2010 before retiring a year later from a 23-year career in the Army as a colonel and brigade commander.

He and his wife, a real estate broker in Elizabeth, educated their now 19-year-old daughter in the Elizabeth School District, whose board he was elected to in his first stint in politics. He went on to serve the past eight years on Elbert County’s three-member elected county commission. 

Richardson defends his move — and that of his two fellow commissioners — earlier this year drastically raising the salaries of County Manager Shawn Fletcher and County Attorney Bart Greer by more than $80,000 to $220,000 out of public view. He asserts that their decision was covered under a provision of Colorado’s open meetings law regarding the “day-to-day oversight of property or supervision of employees by county commissioners.” Still, to avoid the appearance of secrecy, the commission now aims to vote on the contracts in a public meeting Oct. 9.

Richardson said he is a strong believer in government transparency, citing his work ensuring that county commission meetings are live-streamed and videotaped.

“Certainly we have not always gotten everything right, but we’re not interested in surprising anybody,” he said. “I’ve always believed we should be doing all we can to ensure citizens know what we’re doing.”

He is proud to have helped lead his community through the COVID pandemic, which ended relatively fewer lives in Elbert than in other Colorado counties even though its population is about ten years older than the statewide average.

“We were able to get information to our citizens, accommodate public health and public safety aspects and still preserve some semblance of normal life in our county. I think that’s a pretty good accomplishment,” he said in an interview earlier this month. 

He is also proud of the regional and statewide work he has done as a county commissioner. He has represented the Eastern Plains on Colorado Counties Inc., the statewide coalition of county officials, and served as the chair of the East Central Council of Local Governments; co-chaired the regional transportation body for Northeast Colorado and served on a statewide transportation advisory council; and sat on task forces seeking to abate opioid use and that reviewed recent legislation for a property tax reduction.

He told the Sentinel he planned to retire from politics after being term-limited off Elbert County Commission this year but decided to run to replace Bockenfeld “as a way to give back to the community.” 

If elected, Richardson aims to protect agricultural land and water in that part of the state and to ensure that roads on the Eastern Plains are safe and well maintained.  Those, he says, are the top issues in the district. 

As he sees it, far too many bills are introduced each legislative session. “We’ve hit the point that we’re making laws just to fix other laws,” he said, noting he would work to ensure that legislation “helps rather than hurts people, and doesn’t create unintended consequences.”

The conservative Republican wants to curtail efforts to regulate gun ownership in Colorado, saying most of that legislation “should go away.” He opposes abortion and says, “I am disappointed at the direction Colorado has taken” by allowing the procedure. He is concerned that schools and government have usurped parental rights when it comes to mental health assessments and decisions about their childrens’ gender identities. He’s also concerned about an influx of undocumented immigrants in Colorado — the result, he says, “of a completely uncontrolled border.” He is alarmed by what some far-right politicians have deemed this election season as a crisis with Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan prison gang also known as TdA, in Aurora despite assertions by police that the group is not a significant threat. 

“When you hear of activity of truly organized gangs and criminal enterprises nearby, it’s very concerning,” he said.

Although he shares the views of some right-wing politicians who have fueled fears about the gang — U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky and Donald Trump among them — he said his leadership style is far more low-key. 

“I’m pretty slow and steady in how I do business. Grandstanding doesn’t do a lot for me,” he said. 

Richardson had raised about $12,000 in contributions by early October. He has campaigned mainly at fairs, festivals, rodeos and events leading up to the Republican primary in Congressional District 4, which drew heavy turnout because 11 candidates ran, including Boebert, the winner.

There have been no debates in the House race that Navetta, Richardson’s Democratic opponent, cites voter affiliation statistics in acknowledging she has a slim chance of winning. 

The 78-year-old worked for 15 years as a nurse and for 22 years as a medical malpractice attorney. She lives on five acres in Elizabeth where she keeps two horses, serves as a trustee of the Pines and Plains Libraries and vice-chair of the Elbert County Democratic County. She stepped up to run in the race “no other Democrat wanted” because, she said, “we really need two parties, two points of view” in any election. 

“We can’t have people just waltzing into office without being challenged,” she added, citing Richardson’s involvement in the secret pay raise controversy as reason enough to run.

Navetta has logged 5,000 miles driving around the district, sometimes dragging some of her grandchildren with her, in a grassroots campaign for which she has raised about $4,000.

She speaks to voters about the need for affordable, quality health care in the district, where the few rural hospitals are barely surviving.

“We need to find solutions to funding and staffing these facilities so that the residents of these communities do not have to travel for hours for medical care,” she said. 

She also is pushing for more affordable post-secondary education in the district because she says residents have too far to travel to attend college-level classes. She would, if elected, push to use high schools and other community buildings to host college-level programs. She also would try to glean federal funding for more reliable, affordable internet connectivity, which could help locals access more health care providers and online education

“Obtaining these funds and improving internet access will result in an improvement in many aspects of the lives of the citizens of HD56,” she said. 

Born in Italy, raised in Canada, and having spent most of her career in and near Detroit, Navetta knows she speaks faster and with more intensity than many residents of her large district. She hopes her energy and enthusiasm, and her status as “the only one in this race who’s not a professional politician” will prod voters, especially unaffiliated ones, to check her name on their ballots. 

“I’m at a point in my life where I want to serve people,” she said.”I’m not counting on winning, but it’s not an impossibility.” 

Meet Chris Richardson

Richardson, 58, was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts. He studied mechanical engineering on a ROTC scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania. He went on to serve as an anti-tank missile platoon leader in Operation Desert Storm, then as an air assault rifle platoon leader and a commander of a maintenance supply unit.

His military career stationed him at various bases throughout the U.S., the Pentagon, Germany and South Korea, and included stints in the Middle East and Baltics. He retired from the Army after serving at Fort Carson as commander of a support brigade, running maintenance and logistics for the Army’s 4th Infantry Division.

He began his political career on the board of the Elizabeth School District and has served for nearly eight years on Elbert County’s three-member commission. 

He is married with one daughter who is a sophomore at Metro State University in Denver. 

Allesandra Navetta, 78, was born in Italy after World War II. Her father, seeking to make a better living than he could in their economically ravaged country, immigrated to Canada, where her mother and she followed a few years later, not speaking a word of English. 

Navetta was raised and educated in Windsor, Canada, then married an American and moved to the Detroit area where she worked for 15 years as a nurse, including 10 years in a neonatal intensive care unit. She then went to law school and worked for 22 years as a lawyer specializing in medical malpractice. She also raised three sons.

She lives in Elizabeth where she raises horses and dogs, volunteers on the local library board and serves as vice-chair of the Elbert County Democratic County.

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