State Rep. Karen McCormick believes she’s just getting started at the Colorado legislature, which is why she’s running for reelection in House District 11.
House District 11 covers most of Longmont and McCormick, a Democrat, will be running to represent it for a second two-year term against Republican Tara Menza this November.
McCormick has lived in Longmont for 28 years and has spent most of that time as a small animal veterinarian. She ran her own animal hospital in Boulder County, growing it from a two doctor practice to a five doctor practice with 24 employees.
Her interest in politics began during the leadup to the 2016 presidential election, as she saw the growing inability of political parties to sit down and compromise.
“So this change in that type of perspective that seemed to be taking over our country, that we were becoming more divisive and that it was all about labeling people and the other versus me, that really started to get to me,” she said.
McCormick decided to get involved in a political campaign and looked to see who was running against U.S. Rep. Ken Buck in the Fourth Congressional District in 2018. Seeing that no one else was, she decided to run.
She did not win in the heavily Republican-weighted district, but she felt accomplished in getting a noticeable number of people to vote for her. It got McCormick further interested in politics — though maybe not at a federal level where she felt things happened too slowly.
When House District 11’s seat opened up due to the term limits of her predecessor, Jonathan Singer, it seemed the perfect opportunity.
“Here in our state, in the general assembly, a very large majority of our bills are bipartisan,” McCormick said. “People talk to each other; there’s more of what I expect of good governance happening.”
After being elected in November 2020, McCormick’s first session in the house was mid-pandemic with almost all staff working remotely. She had to figure out the process mostly on her own and has spent her second session “hitting the ground running,” but she feels she has a lot more to do.
Along with COVID challenging her orientation at the beginning of her work as a legislator, it also meant she’s not been able to connect with her constituents as much as she would have liked.
“Being disconnected from the people has been a challenge for me,” McCormick said. “I haven’t been able to do the meet and greets and be out in the community like I did when I was running for Congress.”
She said she plans to host a number of in-person events this summer to fix that.
Some of the laws she highlighted her work on included legislating basic labor protections for agricultural workers, adding veterinary technicians as a regulated profession as part of the renewal of the Veterinary Practice Act, investing into the Colorado Water Plan and giving local governments access to grant money for innovative housing ideas to help address affordability.
Additionally, she highlighted the investments the legislature has been able to make into mental health funding and education this year.
McCormick is the chair of the agriculture, livestock and water committee, and she has a lot she still wants to do in that area. This summer, she’ll be working with a stakeholder group on what it would look like to add a mid-level practitioner position to the veterinary profession as the demand for veterinarians explodes. She also said she has work to do on water planning, climate mitigation and air quality improvements along with looking to continue improvements in education, mental health and affordable housing.
McCormick beat Republican Mark Milliman in the 2020 election with 67% of the vote. House District 11 will look slightly different this election, being more concentrated over Longmont city limits. According to the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission, the district still leans fairly Democrat.
