First-time voter and Aurora resident Nawal Elsayad was sitting with her dad in front of the TV around 10 p.m. on election night, watching the results as they came in.
Elsayad was fixated on the screen for updates on the presidential election, but there was one local race that was particularly important to her: Colorado House District 41. The legislative seat represents parts of southwestern Aurora and unincorporated Arapahoe County.
Her dad refreshed Democratic candidate Iman Jodeh’s Facebook page and read a post aloud to his daughter: “We did it! I ran to make the #AmericanDream a reality for Everyone. I am a proud #Muslim, #PalestinianAmerican, & #firstgeneration American. And I am proud to be able to represent my communities & the people of #hd41 in the #Colorado state legislature! Now, let’s get to work.”
The 18-year-old yelled in excitement, making sure her mom heard the news. The first Muslim and Arab woman had been elected to the Colorado General Assembly.
Colorado gained national recognition in the 2018 election for its record-breaking number of women elected to the General Assembly, with women holding more seats than men in the legislature. This year, Colorado House Democrats added three more women to their roster, but much of the focus has been on Democratic groups working to get more people of color elected to statewide offices to not only better reflect Colorado’s population but also give more of a voice to underrepresented communities.
Jodeh, who will replace term-limited Democratic Rep. Jovan Melton of Aurora, won more than 66% of the vote in her race against Republican opponent Robert Andrews. She’s part of a House Democratic caucus that is touted for its diversity. Also joining the caucus next year is Democratic candidate Naquetta Ricks, the first African immigrant elected to the statehouse, to represent District 40 in Aurora.
After President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Elsayad didn’t expect that just four years later, a Muslim Arab-American woman would be representing her even at the state level.
“It was something so relevant to me,” she said of Jodeh’s win. “I was so excited to see somebody who looks like me in office. … I was also very excited to see we’re making big changes, and I knew she was a big change to any district.”
Standing in the kitchen of her childhood home in Aurora on Thursday, Jodeh was helping her mom prepare a traditional Palestinian lunch for her family. She values the multiple facets of her identity.
Jodeh is a community activist and started her own nonprofit called Meet the Middle East. She’s taught classes about Palestine and has worked as a spokesperson for the Colorado Muslim Society, which her late father co-founded after immigrating to the United States.
“When you have my identity markers — I am a practicing Muslim Palestinian-American woman of color — you don’t know anything other than activism,” Jodeh said.
Andy Cross, The Denver Post
Newly elected Colorado Rep. Iman Jodeh, D-Aurora, right, and her husband Maytham Alshadood, center, take food to the table for lunch at her mother’s home, Siham Jodeh, left, on Nov. 12, 2020.That, combined with people’s misunderstanding of Muslims displayed through threatening phone calls her family used to receive and the feeling of being the “other” after 9/11, conditioned her to become an advocate, she said.
History Colorado estimates that there are more than 70,000 Muslims living in Colorado.
Jodeh said she hadn’t necessarily planned for a career in politics.
She remembers brushing her teeth the morning after the election in 2016, and as she looked in the mirror, thinking she would have to leave the U.S. with her mother who wears the hijab to protect her.
“(Trump) was already talking about Muslim identification cards and internment,” Jodeh said.
But after a “Stand with our Muslim neighbors” rally in Denver, Jodeh instead decided to take a different route.
“It was incredibly powerful to be able to speak truth to power about what it means to be Muslim in America,” she said.
She ran to fill the Senate District 26 vacancy seat in 2019 and lost. She expected it, she said, but it helped her get name recognition as she ran for the House seat this year.
Her mother, Siham, is proud. She said her husband had wanted to get involved in politics, but she used to say she didn’t want that kind of tension in the house. So, it was no surprise that Iman Jodeh followed in his footsteps.
“It’s just an amazing, amazing feeling,” Siham Jodeh said of hearing the results. “It’s indescribable. Thank God for everything.”
Outgoing Colorado House Speaker KC Becker, a Boulder Democrat, has seen the value of a more diverse legislature, including how the House dealt with the sexual harassment allegations against former Rep. Steve Lebsock amid the growing MeToo movement.
But she said it was also clear in the types of legislation passed such as equal pay and how the processes for legislation have played out.
“Largely, I think it’s in the general approach that women bring, which tends to be really collaborative and inclusive,” she said.
Emerge Colorado works to get more Democratic women, particularly those from nontraditional backgrounds elected to state and local offices. Nine of the 25 women from the program who won offices this year are people of color, seven in the statehouse.
“Those experiences are going to make the policy that much better for communities that are often left out of the room,” said executive director Michal Rosenoer.
What the statehouse has seen in the past couple of years with more women in office is legislation for working class families around issues such as child care, health care costs and clean air, she said. That will be even more important during COVID and the economic crisis, she added.
Nationally, Republican women have made gains in elected offices including in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District with Lauren Boebert’s win, but the GOP didn’t do as well in its statehouse races this year.
State Rep. Janice Rich, a Grand Junction Republican, was elected by her caucus to serve as the House GOP caucus chair this week. Rich said she loves seeing women get elected and joked that she was breaking up the “boys’ club” getting a leadership role.
She credited the new GOP leadership for coming from various parts of the state, but she doesn’t see a need to focus on getting specific groups of people elected. Instead, she said the party should center its efforts on recruiting the most qualified candidates.
One thing Becker said she tried to stress as House speaker for her caucus is the real-life implications bills have. And that is even more clear, she said, when representatives share their own experiences. She noted how a speech by Rep. James Coleman, a Denver Democrat, about growing up as a Black man in America helped colleagues understand where he was coming from when he advocated for the police reform bill this year, Senate Bill 217.
“It just informs their own perspective and the priorities they set, but it also informs the rest of the body,” she said.
Provided by Naquetta Ricks
Naquetta RicksThat’s what Ricks plans to do for her district. She first ran for the Board of Regents in 2014 and for City Council before winning her statehouse seat.
Nearly a fifth of Aurora residents were born in another country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, so Ricks hopes to use her immigrant experience as she crafts bills. The Liberian-American immigrated to Colorado in 1980 as a refugee at the age of 13 to escape a civil war.
“I don’t think I set out to be the first (African immigrant), but I definitely set out to be a voice at the table,” she said. But, “I’m hoping that by breaking the glass ceiling, more people will see that is possible,” she added.
Ricks also brings experience as a small business owner — she co-founded the African Chamber of Commerce of Colorado — and she wants to help those struggling during the pandemic among other issues.
Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, D-Denver, was elected assistant majority leader in the House last week. She noted that more representation in statewide offices and leadership roles brings to light issues affected by those communities, which can be backed by personal experience.
Beyond that, representation matters for young people, she said. Gonzales-Gutierrez is a Latina mother, and they’re often not seen as the typical candidates for the role.
“For me part of that is being that role model and hoping that young people are seeing not only the number of us that are doing this work, the variety (and) a lot of diversity within all of us,” she said.
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