Meet Gabriel McArthur, the 28-year-old Colorado native who’s running for the Colorado House of Representatives District 22 on the Democratic ticket. McArthur is challenging the Republican incumbent, Colin Johnson, and while the district typically swings Republican, it has a large group of Independent voters that McArthur is looking to persuade.

Although McArthur was always deeply interested in politics, he gained his first hands-on experience volunteering for the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, “Bernie Sanders was the inspiration for me to get involved in politics and volunteer for him. I think Alexandria Occasia Cortez being elected, and a lot of different progressives running for office, showed me that you can be someone that doesn’t meet the ‘normal’ political qualifications and still be successful,” states McArthur.

McArthur’s campaign platform and candidacy goals highlight his progressive convictions and bonafide, even setting him apart from many other local Democratic candidates, “One of the biggest things I’d want to focus on is single-payer healthcare,” states McArthur, “If for whatever reason we can’t get Washington to actually work on a single-payer healthcare program, we can do that on the state level. There are provisions in Obamacare that would allow us to do that.” “Especially with Democrat’s having the majority, we need a voice in there saying, ‘we can make this happen!’ We won’t really have a lot of opposition in the statehouse, so let’s do it.”

His opponent, Johnson, has been spending his time as a representative to criticize and attempt to cut public transportation and public schools while pushing for public funding to go to privately owned charter schools. McArthur vehemently opposes this and will fight to make sure public funds go toward the public good, “I’m not in favor of charter schools if people want to go to charter schools, that’s perfectly fine but if they aren’t going to play by the same rules as public schools then they shouldn’t be getting any public money and for me that’s non-negotiable” McArthur expresses.

The local Democratic primary elections will be held on June 30, 2020, followed by the general elections on Nov. 3, 2020. To learn more about McArthur’s campaign visit his social media sites listed below.