TIME: Backers of the 'Big Lie' Are Trying to Run Local Elections. Democrats Are Finally
Running for local office isn’t easy. But whenever the going gets tough for Amanda Gonzalez, a Democratic candidate for Jefferson County (Colo.) Clerk and Recorder, she remembers the plot to overturn the 2020 election.
“When I’m downtrodden, when something isn’t going the way I thought it would, that is a huge part of my everyday thought,” says Gonzalez, 37. “There is a set of people who will actively try to undermine or destroy our democracy.”
As the executive director of Colorado Common Cause, Gonzalez has spent much of her career focused on state voting-rights policy. Much of that work involved crafting reforms that local election clerks would implement, including major nonpartisan election-protection efforts in 2018 and 2020. When the Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder—the official in charge of elections in the county—decided not to run again, Gonzalez decided to run for the post herself. “If it’s not me, it’s bad actors,” she says.