Naquetta Ricks’s Election Success Generates Interest

In U.S. elec­tion pol­i­tics, 2020 may prove to be like 2018 when Democ­rats swept every­thing. The clean­ing of the House at local and nation­al lev­els left Repub­li­cans hold­ing the bag and gasp­ing for breath.

It was not just Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump who brought bag­gage that weighed heav­i­ly on the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment across Amer­i­ca, the polit­i­cal trends shift­ed left­ward and took much along with it — from the legal­iza­tion of mar­i­jua­na, talk about cli­mate change, right through to impeachment.

As Amer­i­ca shifts gears once again in prepa­ra­tion for the Novem­ber 2020 pres­i­den­tial race, there is plen­ty of jostling about who will keep con­trol of pow­er at local state lev­els, and con­trol of the U.S. House, Sen­ate, and the Presidency.

In the State of Col­orado, Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans decid­ed on June 30 who they want­ed to field for the upcom­ing bal­lot. There were plen­ty of sur­pris­es that sprung up.

The news you may have heard is that Scott Tip­ton, the five-term Repub­li­can con­gress­man who rep­re­sents Colorado’s 3^rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict was van­quished by a polit­i­cal novice, 33-year-old Lau­ren Boebert.

The oth­er news that John Hick­en­loop­er, the for­mer two-term gov­er­nor of Col­orado scored a vic­to­ry against for­mer Col­orado House Speak­er Andrew Romanoff, to square off against first-term Sen­a­tor Cory Gard­ner, was not much news. Gard­ner is con­sid­ered the most vul­ner­a­ble Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor going in for re-elec­tion, espe­cial­ly in a state that is increas­ing­ly trend­ing blue.

While Romanoff put in a tough fight, many ana­lysts said Hickenlooper’s suc­cess was expected. 

What you may not have heard is that Liber­ian-born Naque­t­ta Ricks picked up an open seat for the state’s House Dis­trict 40. Ricks, a mort­gage bro­ker, beat John Ron­quil­lo, a polit­i­cal new­bie and an assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado in Den­ver. The Col­orado Sec­re­tary of State’s office rat­ed the turnout for the June 30 pri­ma­ry the high­est in a non-pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry election. 

After the report of Ricks’s suc­cess became known the news began to go around on social media.

On July 3 the online pub­li­ca­tion, Front­page Africa stat­ed “Naque­t­ta Ricks Could Be the First Liber­ian-Amer­i­can Elect­ed to a US State Assembly”

Col­orado Pol­i­tics, known for its polit­i­cal research, gave us a look into the mind­set of the local Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment, which it hint­ed was large­ly back­ing Ronquillo’s can­di­da­cy. But why they pre­ferred Ron­quil­lo, we do not know. All we know is that Ron­quil­lo raised more mon­ey, and gar­nered more endorse­ments. Col­orado Pol­i­tics also tell us Ron­quil­lo dropped out of the Sen­ate Dis­trict 28 race when Janet Buck­et, whose for­mer House seat he tried to cap­ture after­ward, entered the race. The idea is that Ron­quil­lo may have been forced out of the Sen­ate race into a House race in which he failed to per­ceive the headwinds. 

Neg­a­tive Attack Against Ricks May Have Backfired 

As I tracked the hus­tling and bustling for who would take the seat left open by Buck­n­er, it became clear that the two Democ­rats, in what appeared as a sib­ling rival­ry, sim­ply desired a friend­ly encounter to rep­re­sent the district. 

This is why both Ron­quil­lo and Ricks ran a rather pos­i­tive cam­paign. They both focused on edu­ca­tion and afford­able hous­ing for the dis­trict. But aside from their many endorse­ments, tout­ed on their respec­tive web­sites, and the num­ber of peo­ple reached, noth­ing real­ly stuck out about the rea­sons each can­di­date want­ed the office they were seeking.

With the minus­cule funds they raised, there was not much room to go big with bom­bas­tic TV ads. It turned out that direct mail and road­side adver­tis­ing was the obvi­ous route for the can­di­date who want­ed to reach most of the con­stituen­cy. In addi­tion to the num­ber of direct mail appeals, Ron­quil­lo, of His­pan­ic her­itage, appears to have land­ed more endorse­ments based on what could be seen on his website.

Mean­while, Ricks, of Liber­ian her­itage and the founder of the recent­ly mint­ed African Cham­ber of Com­merce, appeared to have a much wider reach with­in the diverse com­mu­ni­ties of South Auro­ra which she would now rep­re­sent at State House.

What intrigued me the most was the last-minute neg­a­tive mail that arrived just about a week before June 30, full of accu­sa­tions about Ricks’ failed attempts to seek polit­i­cal office in the past. The direct-mail attack described her as a “peren­ni­al politi­cian” who would make “a jum­bled mess” of the sit­u­a­tion. It ques­tioned her res­i­den­cy in the dis­trict when she lived else­where. The mail­ing was paid for by the group Bet­ter Lead­ers, Bet­ter Col­orado, with Jef­frey Car­son as its reg­is­tered agent. 

It’s true. Ricks ran for office on sev­er­al oth­er occa­sions, notably for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado Board of Regents in 2014, as well as for the Auro­ra, Col­orado City Coun­cil in 2017. Both cam­paigns were unsuc­cess­ful. But the effort by the entrenched enti­ties behind the smear cam­paign was lousy, at best. 

We should note that many of the politi­cians in office today, in Col­orado for that mat­ter, are ordi­nary peo­ple who made attempts to seek office but some­times failed dur­ing their first, sec­ond, and third try. And the rest of the things the group tried to use against Ricks made no sense at all. 

Whether the tac­tic was effec­tive is yet to be seen.

While it’s not clear Ronquillo’s cam­paign is respon­si­ble for this, it was an attempt to chal­lenge her can­di­da­cy on very flim­sy argu­ments. But this made the entire quest for the seat the more inter­est­ing. Plus, there was the Black Lives Mat­ter equa­tion loom­ing in the back­ground, which I believe fac­tored into Ricks’ win in the very close race. 

She will face off with Repub­li­can Richard Bas­sett in November.