Jake Marsing, a social studies teacher at Frederick High School and community advocate, announced his 2025 campaign for Longmont City Council this morning. Marsing is a fourth-generation Longmont resident and lifelong progressive advocate. He has experience as a legislative aide, community activist, and Vice Chair of Longmont’s Housing and Human Services Advisory Board.
“This community made me who I am,” Marsing said. “I want to make sure that this community is a place where everybody, working families especially, no matter their background, no matter their race, ethnicity, income, have a chance to thrive.”
Marsing said that he sees the city at a crossroads on a number of key issues, including cost of housing, struggle to find accessible childcare, affordable childhood education, the need for more sustainable growth, and transportation options.
“I think now is a real moment where I can use the work that I’ve done throughout my professional and personal life as an advocate for people, whether it be my career as an educator, my time working in the legislature where I was doing a ton of constituent service work, or just the volunteer work I’ve done in my life.”
Marsing’s website includes an extensive list of endorsements from 26 different individuals, including Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, U.S. House Representative Joe Negusek, Mayor Pro-Tem Susie Hidalgo-Fahring, and Colorado State Rep Karen McCormick.
Marsing said he will work to make housing affordable, support a living wage, and protect immigrants. His website states that as a council member, Marsing will “never support cooperation with ICE or the Trump administration’s cruel mass deportation agenda.”
Marsing said that he supports the current position of the City of Longmont in terms of immigration and communications with ICE. “We train our law enforcement officers in the city of Longmont to not cooperate with ICE unless they have a lawful warrant,” Marsing said. “That’s a policy that I worked on in the legislature. My position very clearly is that we’re going to protect our immigrant community, we’re going to make sure that they know their rights. We’re going to make sure that, unless ICE has a lawful warrant, we’re not going to cooperate with unlawful deportation or unlawful arrest.”
The ACLU and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center state that detainers, which are frequently used by ICE, are unlawful and a violation of fourth amendment rights because they do not provide probable cause for an arrest. ICE’s website states that “when a state or local law enforcement agency doesn’t honor a detainer, officers pursue the alien in the community. These at-large arrests are more dangerous for the public, aliens and officers.”
Marsing said he supports a housing-first model, but it must come with accessible “wrap-around services,” such as mental health care, addiction treatment, and case management.
“Part of that is making sure that Longmont is getting what it needs from coordinated entry and from the broader systems county wide,” Marsing said. “That takes strong advocacy and good regional partnerships, which is something I pride myself on being able to do.”
Marsing said the three most pressing issues in Longmont are affordability in housing, early childhood education and access to childcare, and sustainable growth.
