Republican candidate for House District 11 wants to focus on safety, affordability

Tara Menza describes herself as a mom trying to do right by her kids and the community.

That’s why she’s running as a Republican for House District 11, which covers most of Longmont. Menza will be running against incumbent Rep. Karen McCormick, a Democrat.

Menza has lived in Longmont for almost three years with her husband, Matthew Menza, and children. Her husband unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for Senate District 17 last year, but she said his campaign helped her get to know the community and fall in love with Longmont even more.

“It’s important that we learn how to unite and live together as a community,” Tara Menza said. “We all share the same common values: we all want to be able to afford the house we live in, we all want to feel safe, and we all want a choice in how we get there. And none of that is happening.”

Menza, who sits on the Leadership St. Vrain council and serves as president of Longmont Republican Women, said she’s deeply involved in the local community. What she’s heard from that community is that many people don’t feel happy with their current leadership.

“They don’t feel represented,” she said. “They don’t feel that this government represents the way they want to be governed.”

With rising costs of rent, gas, groceries and more, Menza said affordability is one of her biggest priorities. She thinks that can be accomplished in part by stopping excessive taxing and fees that act as taxes.

Supporting small businesses is another priority for her. She and her husband, a pilot, run their own small business selling aviation software, so she’s felt first hand the toll of the pandemic that she believes the government has failed to help small business owners navigate.

Public safety is another priority for her, including supporting police struggling with staffing shortages and working to halt the transport of drugs like Fentanyl into Colorado.

“These (Democratic) policies that have been enacted through this poor leadership have just had these horrendous effects that I don’t think they’ve really thought through, and everybody is suffering from it,” Menza said.

Parental choice over education and medical decisions is something she thinks is also important to her community.

“Parents are not domestic terrorists,” Menza said. “They are just trying to raise the next generation of the future of where this country is going. To label parents who want to be involved in their children’s education as terrorists is not going well for our country.”

She said her goal during this campaign is to talk to as many people as possible. As a leader, she said she wants to speak for everybody, not just one party.

Menza emphasized that “what you see is what you get.” As a mother of six, she wants to build a safe community for her kids that people can afford to live in.

“It’s time to end poor Democrat leadership that has done nothing but create hardships on families in communities everywhere and listen to what people really want,” she said. “We need to unite through common ground, not force through agendas.”

Menza’s opponent, McCormick, is currently serving her first term in the house. McCormick won against her Republican opponent in 2020, Mark Milliman, 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.