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Donna Walter: State House candidate for District 52

Donna Walter is the Republican candidate for the Colorado House of Representatives, District 52, in the Nov. 3 election. 

Walter has worked in the natural wellness field for 35 years and has 29 years of experience working at the Capitol, according to her website. 

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“Colorado has been the wonderful place I call home,” Walter’s website reads. “As a legislator, I will ensure that Colorado remains the wonderful place that brought my family here in the first place.” 

The issues Walter’s campaign highlights on her website include health care, education, economy, environment and transportation. 

For health care, Walter writes that she “can offer experience, insights and serious solutions instead of endless political fighting.” 

“Education must work for families in urban areas, rural areas and our suburbs. It must work for girls and boys alike. It must work for the gifted and talented, those with special needs and all children in between.” -State House candidate Donna Walter’s website

On her website, Walter states that Colorado lawmakers claim to have reduced health care costs by 20% but there is no proof that bills went down for state residents. Instead, Walter says, lawmakers raised hospital costs.

In regards to education, choice for parents and students is important to Walter, because “education is not one size fits all.”

Walter’s website says that Colorado needs to provide vocational and job skills training along with “affordable quality higher education.”

“Education must work for families in urban areas, rural areas and our suburbs,” Walter’s website says. “It must work for girls and boys alike. It must work for the gifted and talented, those with special needs and all children in between.”

On her economy page, Walter says that she has experience running a business and that state lawmakers should not decide which businesses and jobs matter and which don’t.

Walter advocates for common sense environmental policies, according to her website. Walter claims that Gov. Jared Polis’ growth policies worsen air quality and create more traffic congestion, which in turn worsens air quality. 

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For transportation, Walter wants to put transportation infrastructure first and fix roads instead of creating mass transit options like high-speed rail. 

In July, Walter sued Larimer and Boulder counties, Fort Collins and the state of Colorado over their mask mandates, according to The Coloradoan.

On Walter’s website, she says mask orders are harmful and ineffective. Her website says that masks restrict oxygen and can increase respiratory infections.

The Digital MEdiC program at Stanford University says that neither surgical nor cloth masks reduce oxygen, but “some masks mean you have to put more effort into breathing if you wear them for a long time.”

Walter’s website says that, according to science, “healthy uninfected people don’t need masks because they’re not infected; healthy asymptomatic people don’t need masks because masks are ineffective at filtering the particles associated with a negligible risk.” 

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that everyone two years old and older wear a mask when around people who do not live in the same household, in public and in situations where social distancing cannot be maintained. 

“Masks are recommended as a simple barrier to help prevent respiratory droplets from traveling into the air and onto other people when the person wearing the mask coughs, sneezes, talks or raises their voice,” the CDC website says. “This is called source control.” 

Walter declined to be interviewed by The Collegian for this story. 

Colorado ballots mailed out Oct. 9 and can be dropped off at ballot locations around the state through 7 p.m. on election day. Ballots that are mailed in must be sent in time to be received by 7 p.m. on election day. 

Serena Bettis can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @serenaroseb.

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About the Contributor
Serena Bettis, Editor in Chief
Serena Bettis is your 2022-23 editor in chief and is in her final year studying journalism and political science. In her three years at The Collegian, Bettis has also been a news reporter, copy editor, news editor and content managing editor, and she occasionally takes photos, too. When Bettis was 5, her family moved from Iowa to a tiny town northwest of Fort Collins called Livermore, Colorado, before eventually moving to Fort Collins proper. When she was 8 years old, her dad enrolled at Colorado State University as a nontraditional student veteran, where he found his life's passion in photojournalism. Although Bettis' own passion for journalism did not stem directly from her dad, his time at CSU and with The Collegian gave her the motivation to bite down on her fear of talking to strangers and find The Collegian newsroom on the second day of classes in 2019. She's never looked back since. Considering that aforementioned fear, Bettis is constantly surprised to be where she is today. However, thanks to the supportive learning environment at The Collegian and inspiring peers, Bettis has not stopped chasing her teenage dream of being a professional journalist. Between working with her section editors, coordinating news stories between Rocky Mountain Student Media departments and coaching new reporters, Bettis gets to live that dream every day. When she's not in the newsroom or almost falling asleep in class, you can find Bettis working in the Durrell Marketplace and Café or outside gazing at the beauty that is our campus (and running inside when bees are nearby). This year, Bettis' goals for The Collegian include continuing its trajectory as a unique alt-weekly newspaper, documenting the institutional memory of the paper to benefit students in years to come and fostering a sense of community and growth both inside the newsroom and through The Collegian's published work. Bettis would like to encourage anyone with story ideas, suggestions, questions, concerns or comments to reach out to her at editor@collegian.com.

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