Michelle D. Lee

Michelle D. Lee is a candidate for Colorado House District 32, the Adams County seat that takes in Commerce City, Reunion, and Derby. She was born and raised in Houston and moved to Colorado in 1992, and she describes the decision to run as one she did not seek out, saying she had never pictured herself in politics until the cost of living and the distance between her own children and home ownership convinced her that the state needed different representation.

Her working life has been spent in public service and in small business. Over more than three decades she has served seniors, foster children, people living with AIDS, adults with developmental disabilities, incarcerated people, and people in mental health crisis, and she operated three group homes in the Denver and Aurora area. She has also owned and run a business for more than twenty years, work that put her through Small Business Administration lending, commercial permitting, licensing, and regulatory compliance, and she has helped develop safety policy at the state and federal levels.

The last three years have been spent in court representing herself, which is where her focus on constitutional rights comes from. Lee says her agency was shut down unconstitutionally and identifies Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser as the catalyst, and she has continued to press for a hearing. She campaigns on lower taxes and fees, pointing to charges added at the motor vehicle office without a vote and to a property tax bill of roughly $10,000 a year in her own neighborhood, and on accountability from metro districts and homeowners associations, whose power to foreclose she considers unconstitutional.

Lee describes herself as a common sense, no-nonsense leader whose priorities are public safety, support for business and jobs, investment in young people, and constitutional protections. Her campaign runs at yourrightsmatters.org and has been endorsed by former Commerce City Mayor Sean Ford.