I was the oldest of six children, including two sets of twins, raised by a single mother. We lived in three different housing projects. When you are the oldest in a house like that, you learn early that the plan is you. You get the younger ones fed, you get them to school and you do not get to wait for somebody else to fix it.

That is the whole reason I am running for governor.

I went to Central State University, a historically Black college in Ohio, then to Washington, D.C., where I worked as a staffer in the U.S. Senate for George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican. I learned there that the people who get things done are usually not the loudest people in the room. I came home and worked as a junior prosecutor in the Atlanta City Solicitor’s Office, where I saw who the system is patient with and who it is not. Then I built a technology company, and I hold a United States patent on that work.

I am on the ballot this November on the Approval Voting Party line, running as an independent Democrat. I did not get there the easy way. I ran in the Democratic assembly this spring, finished second and fell short of the threshold. So I kept going, because the alternative was letting a small number of people decide that Coloradans only get two choices.

Now let me tell you what I would actually do for the Western Slope and the High Country, because I think you have heard a lot of promises from candidates who campaign here and govern for Denver.

Housing. Colorado’s recent housing laws were written for Front Range metro jurisdictions. Most mountain towns were left out of the tools entirely. I would create a 2.75% state loan program so local housing authorities can build workforce units without waiting on federal tax credits that never pencil at mountain construction costs, fund deed restriction buydowns statewide on the model Vail already proved works, and give local governments the authority to ask their own voters for a vacancy tax. The legislature killed that bill in February. I would sign it.

Water. As of Oct. 1, the federal government is operating the Colorado River under rules Colorado did not help write, because the seven states could not agree. That is a loss for us. Our protection is prior appropriation and our leverage is the compact, and both get weaker the longer we sit out. I will not accept a deal where Colorado agriculture is the only water that actually gets cut, and I will not approve AI data centers that draw millions of gallons for cooling while we ask ranchers to fallow fields.

Wolves. Voters ordered reintroduction in 2020, and I respect that result. But the ranchers carrying the cost did not get what they were promised. Pay depredation claims fully and quickly, including indirect losses. Reliably fund range riders and nonlethal deterrents before the fact, not after. Publish the data. And keep management of Colorado wolves in Colorado.

Wildfire and insurance. Families are being dropped by carriers or priced out entirely in wildland-urban interface communities, and mitigation money never arrives at the pace the risk is moving. That is a state responsibility and I will treat it as one.

Transportation and jobs. I am the only candidate in this race running on high-speed rail, and my plan includes Grand Junction to Denver. I would also build Grand Junction into a major airport. In Craig, the last two units at Craig Station are scheduled to retire in 2028, and Unit 1 is only still running because of repeated federal emergency orders. That is not a transition plan; it is a stay of execution. Moffat County is owed real work, not another study. Rail construction and airport expansion are the kind of jobs that pay a mortgage.

I will not pretend I can do all of it in one term. But I can tell you the difference between a governor who visits the Western Slope and one who builds here.

I am asking for your vote on Nov. 3. Not because I am owed it, but because the kid who grew up in those projects learned to count on people who show up, and I intend to be one of them.

Erik Underwood is an Approval Voting Party candidate running for Colorado governor in the Nov. 3 midterm election.