Editor’s note: This story is part of a series to capture views among Coloradans.

Those who live in southeast Colorado do not always share monolithic views with their northeast Colorado cousins. But views about the urban-rural divide — or what some call the war on rural Colorado — are alive and well from the north to the south.

It’s about hard work, family — especially families who have lived in the area for decades — and faith.

What you hear from area residents is that they mostly just want to be left alone, to take care of their businesses, farms and ranches. The “one-size-fits-all” approach coming out of state government these days just doesn’t work for them, whether Democrat or Republican. There’s also not a lot of love for the federal government, either.

Southeast Colorado includes the area from Cheyenne and Kiowa counties, along the Kansas state line, south to the New Mexico state line and east in Las Animas County to a few miles west of Trinidad (people in the region will tell you that they don’t view Trinidad as a southeastern community).

Representation is mostly Republican. The last Democratic governor who won the region was one of their own: Roy Romer, who sold farm implements in Holly. Both Democratic Govs. John Hickenlooper and Jared Polis lost by big margins in all seven counties. In at least two of the seven, the Democrat lost by more than 50 points.

Jean Sykes, a Bent County commissioner, sees it this way: Southeast Colorado, or the Lower Arkansas Valley, as it’s known, “is the ugly duckling, or not even considered part of the state when decisions are being made. It’s very frustrating. We still have to pay taxes like everyone else, but we don’t get any of the benefits.” She sees the money going to the Front Range, because that’s where the population is. But that puts rural communities further behind, especially for health care and roads.

Larry Crowder said he’s gone through four pickups in his eight years in the state Senate, covering the 25,000 square miles in his district.

Changes in the Lower Ark have been subtle over the years, he said, which he attributes to the internet.

“It has awoken rural Colorado to the outside world. I’m not sure I like that,” he said.

The role of faith, mentioned repeatedly by those interviewed, also defines the Lower Ark. Kim, for example, has a population of 64. Its area residents support two churches.

“Folks in these rural communities don’t want heavy-handed government bearing down on them. They want freedom to live their lives, make choices and support themselves economically,” said Rep. Richard Holtorf, who represents the area despite living 275 miles to the north in Akron.

Brent Wertz owns a Centennial Farm — a state designation in which generations of the same family have owned the farm or ranch for at least 100 years — in Bent County.

What’s most important to him? Freedom we enjoy as Americans, which he said is perhaps more important than the economy. It’s the freedom to worship, to have free enterprise. The longer and smarter your work, the more money you make.

He worries that the state is headed in a socialist direction, which “would be our downfall and it would happen in a hurry.” He also believes lawmakers in Denver don’t have a clue about life in the Lower Ark. “We are not the majority and the masses along the Front Range. They go where the votes are.”

He said when he goes to Denver, people don’t know where he’s from. It’s not just McClave, where his ranch is; it’s the entire southeast region.

And when he hears about political polls, his first reaction is that “No one asked us.”

COVID-19 politics

If there’s anything that irritates people in the southeastern region, it’s the “one-size-fits-all” approach to handling the pandemic.

As small as most of the businesses are in the Lower Arkansas Valley, shutting down took a big bite, said Bent County’s Sykes, both to the businesses’ bottom line and to county tax revenues. “A year from now, will they be able to afford property taxes, or will they shut down?” she said.

Agriculture in the Lower Ark has taken the biggest hit of all during the pandemic, according to fellow Bent County Commissioner Kim McDonnell. The impact of the pandemic on the food chains — such as with meat processing — meant a backup at processing facilities, or worse, that ranchers didn’t have somewhere to send their cattle to market. It’s meant that ranchers are selling their cattle at a loss, she said.

“One size does not fit all in the state of Colorado,” Holtorf said. He said the governor and Democrats in the General Assembly don’t understand southeast Colorado, largely because they never talk to people in southeast Colorado.

“It is a huge disservice to citizens of southeastern Colorado when you don’t want to understand them and consider their needs and differences. That takes communication and a desire to reach out,” which isn’t happening, he said.

Take Kiowa County, for example. It has yet to report a single case of COVID-19, and is the only county in the state without a single case. The mandates — like wearing masks, or shutting down restaurants or nonessential businesses — don’t apply here, Holtorf explained.

“In an urban environment, when you have a grocery store or gas station struggling, there’s 20 or 30 others within five miles. When you do that to rural Colorado, you have to drive 50 miles to get a gallon of milk or a dozen eggs,” he said. Many communities have only one restaurant, gas station or grocery store. “Look at what you’ve done to that community when you fail to understand the impact. It is a gross injustice.”

COVID-19 has largely avoided southeast Colorado. An early-stage outbreak at the Crowley County Correctional Facility resulted in 66 inmates testing positive as well as four staff, but the prison has not reported further outbreaks. The Bent County Correctional Facility, another private prison, had one staff member test positive. The prison went on lockdown last April and has been case-free since then.

The two largest towns in the region, Lamar and La Junta, have struggled with COVID-19. Prowers’ case counts have trended lower, while cases in Otero County have trended upward.

Wertz attributes the lack of COVID-19 cases to how people interact, or don’t, in the Lower Ark.

“Farmers are pretty good at social distancing,” he said. But Wertz also believes the pandemic has been blown out of proportion and is “used to manipulate people for the control of the masses. It’s instilling fear. I don’t believe in living that way. I believe in being wise about what you do and caring for those around me. We don’t have to be mandated on every breath we take.”

The lack of COVID-19 cases in the Lower Ark has also been attractive to some. Gary Siler has lived in Arizona but has traveled the county, working as a Renaissance Festival minstrel, for decades. He recently moved to Las Animas from Arizona to avoid the virus “and for birdwatching.

“If you want to isolate yourself and get away from people in a pandemic, this is a good place.”

A Democrat, he said he would have preferred Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the presidential contest, but will vote for former Vice President Joe Biden, which he said “will get us closer to the mainstream versus where we are now.”

As to the Gardner-Hickenlooper race, he said he’s disappointed with the negative ads, which are being run by outside groups.

“Tell me why we should vote for you and quit worrying about the other guy,” he said.

Health care politics

COVID-19 has brought greater attention to one of the biggest problems in southeast Colorado: health care. Either it’s too expensive or not available, residents say.

The population in the region is aging, Sykes said. When someone needs health care, such as for a heart attack, a stroke or cancer, they wind up in Pueblo or Colorado Springs. The hospitals and clinics just aren’t equipped for surgeries or taking care of intensive medical issues.

It’s 150 miles to Colorado Springs, Sykes pointed out. That becomes a greater hardship on the patients and their families.

State Rep. Bri Buentello, the only Democratic representative in the area, said part of the reason she decided to run for office in 2018 was because of the “atrocious” state of health care in the Lower Ark. Some families pay $1,400 a month for a standard family plan with a $4,000 deductible — “and that’s a good plan.”

She said the Lower Ark doesn’t have enough doctors. She’s tried to find a way to set up a rural doctor health care initiative to bring in more physicians, but the second a rural doctor hits the three- to five-year mark, they’re out of here and the community “is back to square one.”

“It’s very frustrating and directly impacts the quality of life,” she said.

But she’s also frustrated by the unwillingness of residents, especially in Otero, which is fighting an upward trend in the virus, to wearing masks. “These are the best salt-of-the-earth people but I do not understand why the mask issue is so polarizing. It’s a piece of fabric on your face that keeps you and those around you safe. Even the president now says wear a mask.”

Pat Karney, over in neighboring Bent County, has been running a cattle operation for 20 years and a feed mill in La Junta before that. He says the lack of health care is the number-one problem in the Lower Ark. That includes a lack of long-term care for senior citizens, with just one assisted living facility in Lamar. The only one in La Junta closed, he said.

Health care costs have somewhat stabilized in the last few years, Karney said, which he attributed to the Trump administration. But he fears Biden being elected, which he said could drive the nation to a disastrous “socialist-style” health care system.

Water politics

If there’s one issue that separates the Lower Ark from the rest of the state, it’s water.

Southeast Colorado is home to Crowley County, for decades now the poster child, and not in a good way, for “buy and dry,” the practice of selling water rights to thirsty urban communities until there’s almost nothing left. The county went from more than 50,000 irrigated acres in the 1970s to around 5,000, and that’s in a good year when there’s little or no drought.

Solutions have been hard to find.

Karney, in Bent County, sees conservation easements as one way of preserving water rights in the Lower Ark. “We can’t stand any more economically,” he said. “We can’t fallow the land,” which saves water. He put an easement on his grazing land intended to protect the water.

Conservation easements have been a boon and a bust in the Lower Ark. A conservation easement is when a landowner makes a donation of land to a land trust or county. The landowner gets a tax credit, from the IRS and the state, and the land is preserved in perpetuity. But about 80% of the 860 denied easements are in the Lower Ark, a long-term problem that has led to lawsuits as well as efforts by state lawmakers to fix the problems.

Democrats have been slow to get on board with a fix, but that changed in 2019, when the Democratic-controlled General Assembly approved a measure that could have started the state on the path to reparations and a fix to the program.

A 2020 measure that would have set up a reparations program died in the General Assembly, largely due to its cost and in part to the pandemic.

Karney hopes that once the pandemic and its resulting recession are over, that the state Legislature gets back to the business of fixing the problem.

McDonnell of Bent County points to another political water issue in the Lower Ark, and that’s water quality.

This year, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner announced the first federal funding to build the Arkansas Valley Conduit, first approved by President John Kennedy in 1962. The conduit will solve one of the biggest problems in the Lower Ark: lack of clean drinking water.

Bill Long, president of the Southeastern Water Conservancy District, said the area is under enforcement orders from the state to clean up its water. Residents of the Lower Ark get their water from wells, but the water has high levels of salt, selenium and even radioactive materials, according to Long. Selenium is the most difficult to eradicate, he said.

While the mineral is safe at low levels — it’s naturally occurring in food and taken as a dietary supplement — in water supplies it’s a different story. According to the National Institutes of Health, excessive selenium intake is linked to hair and nail loss or brittleness, skin lesions, nausea, diarrhea, skin rashes, mottled teeth, fatigue, irritability and nervous system abnormalities.

“To see that it’s moving toward startup in the near future is very exciting,” McDonnell said. But she doesn’t see it as a political advantage for Gardner, because the project has had bipartisan support all along the way.

Party politics

It’s not like Democrats have never been a part of Lower Ark politics. In addition to Romer, Wes McKinley of Walsh, in Baca County, served four terms in the House, from 2005 to 2013.

To be a Democrat in southeast Colorado is less about political party and more about being your own person, McKinley said.

“I’m more like the people down here than they are themselves,” McKinley said. Born and raised in Baca County, his parents and grandparents were Democrats, but that was back in the day when a Democrat was “a conservative working man and an independent individual.”

When McKinley decided to run for the state House, he was unaffiliated, but “the Democrats needed a candidate and I needed a party.”

He was almost immediately at odds with the party. They gave him rules around canvassing that he didn’t like, such as knocking on doors. “I wasn’t going to do it,” he said. “I’d have to drive 100 miles to get to a house where no one knows me.” Instead, he held barbecues and sing-alongs — McKinley is pretty talented with a guitar — in the local parks.

Once elected, “I hadn’t been at the ‘Leg’ a week and the leadership asked how I got elected.” His response? “People sent me here, not to do something for them, but to keep you from doing things to them.”

He watches what’s going on at the state Capitol, where everything is controlled by Democrats, with dismay. “It’s too much like California,” something you also hear these days from Republicans.

Buentello said that what makes a southeast Colorado Democrat is a focus on family values. “You value family, the ability to get ahead, the ability to put food on the table, public education, and you think health care is a human right.” People just disagree about how to go about doing it, she said.

Contentious history

There are examples — tied to government skirmishes that began before Colorado was a state and continue to the present — that provide something of a glimpse into residents’ views of government at the state and federal level.

Baca County, in the 1970s and 1980s, was a headquarters for the Posse Comitatus movement, which pushed to limit the powers of the federal government to enforce domestic policies, especially as it pertains to agriculture.

In 1983, during the days of farm foreclosure auctions and activism by farmers to block those auctions, the farm belonging to Jerry Wright of Springfield went up on a foreclosure auction.

Wright, identified with the American Agricultural Movement and the Christian Posse Association, was two years behind in his payments. Farmers, about 250 in all, came from seven states to try to block the auction, but once the auction concluded, a riot broke out on the steps of the Baca County Courthouse that led to arrests, tear gas and injuries.

Piñon Canyon in Las Animas County, is a more recent burr in the saddle.

The Army set up a maneuvering site in the county’s northern half, some 236,000 acres, in 1983. About 15 years ago, however, they wanted to expand it by a million acres. The Army believed that because the area was so pro-military, it would be no problem. They thought wrong.

Local ranchers, including the late Kimmi Lewis of Kim, who later served in the state House, fought back. Eventually, the Army withdrew its plans, and in 2013, the waiver for the acquisition was withdrawn.

But people don’t forget. You still see signs opposing the expansion of Piñon Canyon when you drive through the Lower Ark.

While the administration in Washington isn’t likely to revive it, according to Holtorf, people in the district still keep an eye out, he said. Piñon Canyon was a land grab, he said, and you can’t take that ranchland away — that’s their livelihood. Multigenerational families want to pass on their farms and ranches to the next generation.

“Why would anyone want to concede anything to the federal government?” Holtorf said, and that has added to the mistrust.

Crowder said that once the waiver was withdrawn, Piñon Canyon became less of a worry. But that’s not to say that the Army won’t come back and try it again, he said. “People are still standing guard. It’s in good hands.”

There are two state representatives whose districts cover the eastern plains; in 2010, there were three. The redrawing of House and Senate districts after the 2010 census make Senate District 35 a Republican stronghold, but it also cost the eastern plains one of its few legislative voices.

Legislator Jerry Sonnenberg, who has represented the eastern plains since 2008, says those who represent the eastern plains try to speak with one voice. The values are the same, he said: hard work, family and faith, as well as a hope that Mother Nature treats them well so they can continue to live off the land.