With Senate Minority Leader Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, leaving the chamber in 2016 due to term limits, two state representatives are set to square off for the Democratic nomination to take her place representing Senate District 29.

State Reps. Su Ryden and Rhonda Fields, both Aurora Democrats, have announced their candidacies for the seat. Fields held her kick off event on June 13 and Ryden is holding hers on Sunday.

Ryden said she is running for the seat because there are issues she has been working on in the House that are unlikely to be completed in her last year in the House and that she would like to continue to work on.

Her House district includes Buckley Air Force Base and one of areas that she works closely in is in military and veterans issues.

In 2014, she sponsored a bill along with Carroll, Sen. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, and Rep. Dan Nordberg, R-Colorado Springs, to commission a study into value of the military in Colorado.

The study, released in May, found that military and defense spending has a $25 billion impact on Colorado, not including spending by NASA and the aerospace industry.

“We want to make sure that Buckley becomes the home for more operations,” she said.She also wants to continue her work for veterans, including with the United Veterans Committee of Colorado.

“Our veterans issues never really go away,” she said. “I would like to have some more time to be working on those things.”

As the owner of owns & Associates Integrated Marketing, she said she’s also concerned about small-business issues.

“I’m a small business owner – there aren’t very many of us at the Capitol,” she said. “I’d like to get back to working on the procurement process and make sure we have a level playing field for small businesses.”

Fields says she’s running for three reasons: to confront the challenges facing the state, to make sure families have access to opportunities and to ensure justice and fairness for everyone.

“What people are telling me is they are craving for leadership,” she said at her campaign kick-off. “I’m not afraid to confront issues when it deals with the extreme narrow views of others. I’ve confronted them, I’ve had toe-to-toe conversations with them and, I can tell you what, I won.”

Coloradans are interested in jobs, affordable housing, access to health care, good schools and opportunities.

“I want to address some of those needs and concerns,” she said. “I’m running because there’s more work to be done.”

Ryden was elected to the House of Representatives in 2008 and is serving her fourth term. She serves as the chair of the State, Veterans & Military Affairs Committee and on the Legislative Audit Committee; State Health Oversight Committee and the Health, Insurance & Environment Committee. She has served as Deputy Caucus Chair, Deputy Whip and currently Majority Whip.

“I feel that having been chair of state affairs and having been in leadership in the caucus has really given me the ability to hit the ground running in the Senate,” she said.

Fields got involved in politics after her son Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancée, Vivian Wolfe, were murdered in 2005 soon before he was set to testify in another Aurora shooting. She was appointed to the Colorado Commission on Criminal Juvenile Justice and helped pass two bills that protect witnesses in criminal trials.

Fields was elected to the House in 2010 after having been appointed to the seat earlier that year to fill a vacancy and is serving her third term. She chairs the Local Government committee and is a ranking member on the Education Committee. She works as a proponent of education, affordable housing, the homeless, affordable health care and women’s reproductive health rights.

– rachel@coloradostatesman.com