Topics:
Constituent/Candidate Priorities: :10
Wildfires: 2:55
Rural Healthcare: 5:42
Housing Solutions: 7:33
Latino Community Representation: 9:24
Community Safety: 11:56
Bipartisanship: 15:18
Personal Experience: 16:50
Livable Costs: 18:17
Education Priorities: 20:58
Additional Concerns/Statement: :
Hattie Rensberry: This is a special interview with candidates for KDNK News. I'm Hattison Rensberry, and in the studio today, we have:
Adam Frisch: Adam Frisch.
Rensberry: Thanks for coming in today, Adam.
Frisch: Great to be here.
Rensberry: I appreciate it. So let's just jump right in and start with the first question. What is it that you believe are the highest priorities for candidates for your constituents?
Frisch: Well, I just want to level-set, if I can, our district because a lot of people, I think, either don't know or underappreciate. We have a district that is pretty unique out of the 435 districts in our country. One, we have 27 counties, and the vast majority of districts have a handful.
We have counties that are 85 percent Democrat. We have counties that are 85 percent Republican. We have some of the wealthiest counties in the country, and we have some of the least well-off counties in the country, especially as we spend time down in the southern part of Colorado, right above the New Mexico state line.
So we have about 95 percent of the New Mexico border. One hundred percent of the Utah border and about one-third of the Wyoming-Colorado border. It's 50 percent of the square miles of Colorado. Our district is bigger than the entire state of Pennsylvania. And I think it's just important to kind of level-set what our district is.
To your question, you know, I hear a lot of the same conversations again, whether it's Anglo or Latino, whether it's Republican or Democrat. Whether it's some of the wealthier communities or some of the ones that are struggling economically, there's a big conversation about water and how important water is to the Western Slope in Southern Colorado.
And that can be from an environmental standpoint, from a recreation standpoint, from an ag/ranching/farming, domestic energy production. Water is just the lifeblood of where we are out here and all the mountains that we see around here feed 40 million people's water needs for seven states and about 30 tribal lands.
There's a growing conversation about health care. I would talk about the rural aspects of health care for a lot of the people in our district. We probably have more in common with rural Tennessee than we do with downtown Denver, Boulder, and Fort Collins about access. Everyone has access to healthcare issues because of how expensive healthcare is.
And then within healthcare, unfortunately, there's a huge growing conversation about mental health. We have a huge mental health crisis in our country, young and old, but it's also hitting the rural parts of our country even harder than I think a lot of people realize.
One of the shocking conversations and statistics that's out there is that ranchers and farmers are starting to surpass our very important veteran community in suicide rates.
We can add just kind of the cost of living like everything costs so darn much. And it's really hard for people to make decisions between the aforementioned healthcare, and then there's a childcare conversation and then there's a housing conversation.
And if you don't have stable housing, it's hard to have a stable life. Let alone the daily needs of gas and eggs and beef and everything else like that. So these are the issues that we're really focused on that I think we've kind of confirmed and learned and heard about.
Rensberry: Yeah. Let's take it to a slightly different conversation that you haven't mentioned yet.
Colorado has seen some of the most intense wildfires and seasons that have lasted longer than in previous years. What are some of your priorities that might assist communities in dealing with these kinds of natural disasters?
Frisch: This wildfire stuff comes up all the time. Again, Democratic counties, Republican counties – whatever it is – people are concerned about wildfire, without a doubt. And it goes into the climate crisis conversation. And it also goes into that it's really hard to have a great watershed without a healthy forest.
We need to make sure that our forests are managed in a way that will respect nature to play its part because that's usually a really good thing. But we have to make sure that the deadwood is cleared out.
We have some of the most remote counties, literally in the country. We get down to Mineral County and where Creede is, I think there are only 900 people in the county. You look at Lake City: a lot of these places have one way, literally, out of their community, and wildfire is on that conversation.
In public policy, you can do some things that have small mistakes or some small wins, but obviously one of the really horrible things, catastrophic, that can happen to people is a wildfire that comes through the community.
I think the bipartisanship that we can find in Congress because these are conversations I'm hearing with people in Utah and Wyoming and Montana, everybody out West. We spent time having conversations of substance with the Forest Service as well about how important the wildfires are.
Rensberry: You spoke a little bit about rural health care and the limits that come with it. What are some policies or partnerships that you're hoping would benefit rural health the current situation?
Frisch: So what I've said is like, you know, I think everyone in the country has health care issues because there's a financial access about how expensive it is.
But those of us in the rural parts of the country we actually have a physical accessibility. I don't know what the percentage is 25 or 50 percent of the people who live in our district are an hour or more away from a primary physician.
Birthing centers have come under a huge amount of pressure. We almost lost a birthing center down in Cortez and the Four Corners almost overnight. And I'm just learning this. There's been over the past couple of months. There are some technical reasons that basically the Medicare Medicaid government support that gets involved in how birthing centers stay open come under a lot of pressure.
And I say this as a son of an OBGYN for 50 years. And so I understand how important birthing centers are and as a dad as well. And so these are some of the conversations that people down in Denver don't have to worry about or in Boulder and Fort Collins. It's just about the rural aspects of healthcare.
And again, there's this huge growing mental health. Mental health is one of the least profitable, if you will, sectors. You know, orthopedics, everybody wants to be in orthopedics because there's money to be made there. And it's really hard and very sad to drive around all parts of our district and see that there's just a dearth of options when it comes to mental health.
And so we need to figure out how to work on that.
And so from a policy standpoint, it's going to Congress and working with Republican and Democratic senators and House of Representatives in Colorado and around our kind of Western region to try to figure out what we can do, because obviously partisanship has nothing to do with physical or mental health.
Rensberry: We're going to roll it back to another issue that you mentioned earlier. Which is housing. What are some solutions that you intend to encourage for handling housing?
And I know that this is a bigger conversation because you're looking at a role that is more than just Colorado. So if you want to take it to the Mountain West level of that assessment as well, because this region is struggling with a housing shortage.
Frisch: I think so. A couple of things. Listen, I am laser-focused on Western Colorado and Southern Colorado. I'm here to champion Colorado. I'm here to champion the Mountain West. I'm here to champion the United States and the globe. But my directive, going to Congress, is looking after Western and Southern Colorado. So there's that.
Two, you know, I did spend eight years on my city council here. And 90 percent of that time was spent on affordable housing. And I would say when I was working on the affordable housing conversation, mostly from 2009 through 2019, during those times – pre-COVID – the affordable housing conversation, especially in Colorado, this was an Aspen and Telluride problem. A little bit of a problem in Boulder and in Crested Butte. And the conversation was, “Well, we don't have to spend a lot of state and federal money on this because those are just wealthy, socialist communities if you will, that they can solve it for themselves.”
And then you start driving around Western and Southern Colorado in February of ‘22 and you see that when I'm in Walsenberg, an hour south of Pueblo, when I'm in Grand Junction, when I'm in Creede, when I'm in Cortez, every single community: Democrat, Republican, wealthy or not, is struggling with housing.
And as I mentioned before, if one does not have stable housing, it's really hard to have a stable life. So that's just kind of the mindset.
Two, I'm a big believer in local control. And so I'm not saying I want people from Denver or people from D.C., especially, figuring out what type of land use zoning that needs to be. That is a city council and county commissioner conversation we had.
But when I drive around, I see a lot of land out here. I would love to try to figure out how to get some of those resources that we all send money to D. C. and through taxes. I'd love to have as much money that come back as possible.
Mental health – I'd love to see the county health departments have money. I don't want to tell the county health departments how to allocate that money, and I certainly don't want to tell the Garfield County Commissioners or the Carbondale Town Trustees how they should figure out their land use zones.
I'm just trying to figure out how we can get some resources or what can be done at the national level possibly with some tax conversations to encourage more supply. Because the demand in Western and Southern Colorado is not going to change. We've been on a one-way demand. Everybody has discovered how beautiful and lovely Western and Southern Colorado is. They all want to come here across a variety of towns, not just the kind of the resort communities.
And so if the demand is not going to change, we need to figure out how to encourage more supply, but I want to be very, very focused that I don't not want to overstep my federal role to tell county commissioners and city council people how they should be doing their job.
Rensberry: This region, especially Western Colorado, is seeing a growing Latino community. How do you intend to represent them faithfully?
Frisch: It's great. So I think there's a couple of things. Broaden the conversation about 25 percent of our district is Latino. And again, there's even a lot of diversity in that when we're down in the San Luis Valley, right above the northern New Mexico border there we’re coming across communities and families that have been in the in Southern Colorado for 10 generations. And they actually haven't spoken Spanish for like seven generations. And they will tell you, like, listen, we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us, right?
So there's that conversation closer to the Roaring Fork Valley, the I-70 corridor, we have a newer population, you know, one or two generations, maybe three and there's a mixture of English only and Spanish speaking.
A lot of people are focused on a lot of the same stuff. I'm asked like, “What do the Latinos think?” I'm like, well, the same as the Democrats, the same as the Anglos, the same as Republicans. They're worried about housing. They're worried about economic, economic opportunity. They're worried about safe and good schools. They're worried about clean water. So these are, to me, there's a lot more shared focus about what's going on.
I fully appreciate some of our new Venezuelan residents, people that have come up recently from Denver. They're starting to come up in different parts of the district. I welcome them. I know some communities have different levels of how they want to do that. I don't want to interfere on that, but I think that trying to figure out how to make sure that they're integrated in a more formal basis is something that's really, really important.
It gets back into there used to be a conversation that was somewhat linked between border security and immigration, and what's gotten lost because of the border chaos is we still need to figure out how to onboard DREAMers and DACAs to make sure that they become more formalized into our economy because we're already living with them, we're going to school with them, which is all great.
And I think if we can make, there's an economic case to be made, just like there was an economic case now to be made about housing. Corporations didn't want to get into the housing conversation. But now they realize if they don't come if they're not part of the discussions, they're not going to have any workers.
And I could argue childcare is the next conversation. Once the business community is starting to sit around the table to talk about childcare, I think we'll actually see a quicker, I don't want to say solution, but more progress in child care once the business community understands there's an economic reason why we need to have more supply of child care.
Rensberry: What's one thing that you believe can be done to make communities safer?
Frisch: I think there's a couple levels you know, a lot of our communities around CD3 feel pretty darn safe. We live in small communities. We like the small communities even in Grand Junction and Pueblo, there's some arguments about whether they're a big, small city or small, big community.
Obviously there's some crime and violence that you see in the bigger cities that we don't see a lot, but I think it's fair to say that feeling safe is one of the utmost importance. Whether you're at the police officer’s level, the county sheriff’s, or at the federal level. And obviously I think we need to make sure that you know, tied into the safety comes in with this whole fentanyl conversation.
And obviously this whole fentanyl opioid crisis – it's not solely a rule conversation, but a good chunk of the problems and what we're running into is happening in the rural areas. And we need to make sure that obviously, some of these root causes are about making sure that people have a better life so they don't feel the desperation and loneliness and the depression, which is causing suicide and increases in drug use, but also the supply of the fentanyl and opiate is really, really bad.
And we see it in our valley here, we see it down in the San Luis Valley as well. And having spent time with one of the under sheriffs in Montezuma County, which is the Four Corners and Cortez, we've learned shockingly that a good amount of the fentanyl and opiate that ends up in Chicago and a lot of the upper Midwest is coming through Southern Colorado, the I-25 corridor.
So I think that some of that safer border security can lean in to hopefully try to figure out how to balance some of the supply/demand.
But again, we need to figure out a way to have healthier mental health communities to really drop the demand for what we need to see because the supply is going to be really, really hard to work on. We're working on the supply. We have to work on the supply aspect, but at some point, we have to figure out how the demand can get to be at a better place where they're not going to need it as much.
Rensberry: How is it that you plan to promote bipartisanship in the legislature?
Frisch: So that's the easiest question I will probably get in the campaign. For 25 years, I said if there was a get-stuff-done party, I'd be in the get-stuff-done party. And I said that kind of as a voter and as a consumer spending time on my local city council, which is very unpartisan, but I just try to figure out how to get stuff done and bring people together and try to have low drama.
And listen, I fully appreciate the number one thing I hear from people: they’re exhausted with a national political conversation. Everyone's pulling their hair out. A lot of the Democrats don't feel the Democratic Party is representing them. A lot of the Republicans don't feel the Republican Party is representing them.
And, luckily the number one caucus I want to work on when I go to Congress in January of ‘25 is there’s this Problem Solvers Caucus. It's made up of 30 Democrats and 30 Republicans and they get together and they try to hammer away in a bipartisan manner to tackle some of these conversations about healthcare, mental and physical, and some of the housing and immigration and some of the other issues that have come up.
But, in a district that is 22 percent registered Democrat, 32 percent registered Republican, and about 45 percent registered unaffiliated, which I was for 20 years. The district demands it. I happen to just naturally fill that spot for my whole life. So the last thing I'm worried about is going to Congress and not trying to work on Team CD3, not focus on Team Democrat or Team Republican.
Rensberry: What's a personal experience or part of your lifestyle that can help you to better serve the communities that you represent?
Frisch: Being a father and a husband and a small business owner.
You know, one of the joys of our conversation over the past 58,000 miles as my son, Felix, and I have done a 30,000-mile father-son road trip. He just graduated from high school. He's deferring college for a year to work on the campaign as he did when he was a junior in high school. My wife, Katie has been very involved from the day of encouraging along with Felix and myself to get in this conversation. Our 17-year-old daughter is also very involved in making sure that sometimes it's important to stand up. And we think it's an important time to stand up.
So I think just bringing the least political conversations and the least political experiences of my life. My time on city council Katie's time on the school board, that to me is elected community service. There's a lot of ways we all help out.
There's a lot of hard things about running for Congress, especially when you're on the road, basically 25 days a month for two years. The easy thing is what I've shared with my family, my wife, and my kids about what I believe about some of these policies is exactly what I'm telling people now, exactly what I'm sharing in Moffatt and Rio Blanco counties, which are probably 85 percent Republican. I share the same issues and the same views as I do in Carbondale, Durango, and Telluride.
Rensberry: It's no secret that it's expensive to live in these districts that you represent. If someone were to suggest them on a local standpoint, what solutions would you get behind for addressing the cost issue in working areas like ours?
Frisch: The cost of living is what I hear no matter what type of county I'm in. Again, Democrat, Republican, mixture, wealthy, struggling.
We spent time with a teacher down in San Luis Valley. San Luis is the oldest town actually in the state of Colorado. There's a great teacher on there. She's been there for 10 years. She hasn't even hit $25,000, right? And so at some point, the conversation is now not just about how much everything costs, but what people can earn from wages. And sadly, If you do a ratio of wages to the cost of food, rent, mortgages, or higher education in health care, you run into these horrible charts of skyrocketing stuff.
The average inflation rate over the past 30 years might be three or four percent, two, three, four percent, but again, there's a couple of key things: housing, healthcare, and higher education that are that have not gone up three or four percent a year. They've gone up eight or nine or 10 percent a year and over 30 years it's a sticker shock of unattainability.
So this is a conversation I think a lot of us are very aware of and so one is to have the strongest economy possible. Because no matter how inexpensive one can build a home in a not-super-expensive community, it's hard to build a house for less than two or three hundred thousand dollars anywhere in the state of Colorado, right? Because of labor and the cost of materials.
Then you're starting to get into people, if you're going to spend $300,000 or $400,000 dollars on a house, you need to be making $80,000 to $100,000 a year. We actually have a district average wage, which is much, much lower than that. And then you take out Aspen, Telluride, and Crested Butte, and all of a sudden you get into probably the more reality of where 95 percent of the population is.
We need to figure out a way to make sure people can earn the wages that they need. I'm very big of pro-worker. There's not a whole lot of unions in our district, mostly down in Pueblo, but I'm a big believer of pro-worker labor, unorganized, organized. It's all important to figure out how to make sure that people can actually afford to live in the communities that they live in. And it's not just these higher rent areas if you will. People are just trying to figure out how we have those conversations.
Rensberry: Teacher retention is a common issue in rural areas, and there's been a lot of conversations in this district and other parts of Colorado about what parents should expect from educators and what educators would prefer to have on their end of the spectrum of how to teach. What are you seeing regarding some of those issues related to education and what are some of your priorities?
Frisch: So, I’ll say a couple of things on background. So one is I have an 18-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter so as a parent, education is super important. My wife, Katie was on the school board for a long time as well, where she spent most of her time working on affordable housing for teachers. And when COVID started, I actually went and got my three-year substitute teaching license.
I'm a big believer that kids need to be in the classroom as much as possible. And so for that year leading up until when we decided to take a run at Congress, I was doing pre-K through (grade) four, two to three days a week – which was great.
And so education, public education is really important to me. I'm proud to be a para member. The schools are usually, I think in all 27 counties, the school district is a top one, two, three, or four employers. So there's that conversation.
We need to make sure that the kids in Cortez, and in Dinosaur, and in Walsenburg have the same. educational opportunities as the kids in Cherry Creek, or in Telluride, or in Durango, right? So there's that conversation.
Now, most of that funding is going to come from the state level. And I think we all know that there's a lot of great things about Colorado, a lot of great statistics about Colorado, but I still think we're 47th or 48th nationally. And that's a heartbreaking conversation.
And there's some ballot initiatives possibly coming up in November that could actually crush that. And so again, I think this is a little bit like the housing conversation and a little bit like the health conversation. How can I go to Washington, D.C., and try to find those resources that are paid into D.C. via taxes, and how to get as much of that money back here reinvested in the community?
I certainly don't want people in Denver and D.C. setting the school board priorities in all of our districts. That is for the school boards and the parents to figure out. But again, if there's the ability to try to have some of that funding come back and empower them to be able to put resources into place in school districts that I think are really, really important. And that's what I think the role of we do not want federal textbooks, we do not want federal-specific mandates about stuff. I really think that needs to be held in there and make sure that the teachers can work with the parents.
But listen, the problem – learning from the teachers that are there full time when I was up there part-time and on my volunteer work – it's a little bit like the police officers and the firefighters. A lot of people are showing up for a job in a career and they're realizing they're doing more and more social work than they originally planned on doing. Like, the police officers were supposed to catch bad boys and girls, and the firefighters were supposed to put out fires and the teachers were supposed to educate their kids.
The problem is when I'm talking to police officers and I'm talking to the firefighters and I'm talking to the teachers, everyone understands that they are basically turning themselves into social workers every month more and more. And that goes back to just try to figure out how do we have a healthier mental, health community in all these districts, regardless of income and nationality and everything else like that.
And I think the teachers feel the brunt of it more than anything because they are the foundation. More and more studies are coming out that those first thousand days from conception is like 85 percent of how someone's life is going to play out.
And so that early childhood education and those conversations, and again, I want to have the region and the county figure out how to do that. But again, if the federal role in my mind is having those local taxpaying dollars go to D.C. get reinvested.
Because if I'm not fighting for Colorado's Western Slope and Southern Colorado, there's people representing Denver and Detroit and Des Moines and rural Tennessee that are going to be doing that. So I'm going to be very, very focused on trying to get those resources back into our district.
Rensberry: What's something you wish more people knew about you? Personally.
Frisch: I'm a little naive, but not completely naive about the task at hand and the perceptions of what people view the people that are going into politics or elected community service or to do that type of work.
And the problem is - I actually believe – the vast majority of people in Congress are actually grinding away, trying to do the right things for their district or their state. The problem is, that they're busy in subcommittee meetings and committee meetings and meeting constituents. They're not trying to figure out how to get on television, cable news networks, and tweeting all day long.
And so those 20 people on both sides of the aisle probably make up about 95 percent of the perception of what normal people are viewing what political and politicians are really doing, right?
I'm just a normal person. There's Adam Frisch, the dad and the husband and then there's also kind of this person running for Congress. They're the same person, but they're not exactly in my mind because as people will find out who spent time with me, there are some things that I struggle with doing this and is, and people like, “Oh, you should grab the mic and get up there and start making your sales pitch.” And that's just not who I am.
And I don't think that's what a lot of people in Western and Southern Colorado want. I think they want an authentic person cause that authenticity is missing on both sides of the aisle. And I’m just trying to do a good job and I know people are going to call that hokey or they're just not going to believe me. But we're going to continue to drive around and represent as many people as possible in Western and Southern Colorado.
Rensberry: Is there anything else you want to discuss that we haven't touched on yet?
Frisch: I will say this. First of all, again, we live in the most beautiful district in the entire Lower 48 and I'll even challenge Hawaii and Alaska, which are pretty darn good as well. The people are fantastic. The views are fantastic and to be able to drive around, you know, very few people get to do a 30,000-mile father-son road trip. And so that part of it's been great.
I will say this, and this goes back to what I've learned. Is that I feel like I've done a 58,000-mile focus group. And I can tell you that 80 percent of us truly, sincerely, authentically agree on 80 percent of the same stuff: about what we want for our kids and our families and our friends, what we want for a community, the type of schools that we want to have and the type of freedoms that we want to have enshrined.
The problem is this ‘anger-tainment’ industry through social media and cable news networks. They really try to figure out, for money, where we have differences. And then they cut and salt the wound and draw the blood. And they really try to fire us up and stuff.
And so all I can say during these challenging times is just a lot more of America is like our friends and our neighbors than what we all see on TV. We're just going to continue to tap that that's there and focus on the things that matter and try to stay away from the yelling and the screaming and that ‘anger-tainment’ aspect that has not just a caricature, but actually set into a reality of a small, but very prominent part of what we see about Washington, D.C. And again, it might sound hokey, but I truly believe that there's a lot more in common than what you would read.
Rensberry: Well, thank you so much again, Adam, for coming in today.
Frisch: Thanks.
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