State Rep. Clarice Navarro, a Republican from Pueblo, celebrated National Hispanic Heritage Month with roughly 30 of her re-election campaign supporters at a happy-hour gathering at Lime in downtown Denver earlier this month, kicking off a conversation about ethnic policy and Republican outreach in swing-state Colorado, where the Latino population is now more than 21 percent.

“I’ll tell you, I remember my bootstrap moment,” Navarro told the smiling and nodding crowd of conservatives. “It was when I made the cheerleading squad in high school, and I was so happy, and I told my mom, my working, single mom, and she said, ‘Great but you’re going to have to buy your own uniform.’

“So I got a job at the pickle plant in Pueblo. I worked at the pickle plant. I learned about work ethic and independence and freedom.

“We have to tell our stories. They will resonate. We need to engage with our Hispanic residents,” she said. “We have to tell them, ‘In your heart, you’re Republicans. We share your values.’

“I am here to tell you that Hispanics vote Democrat because that is what they are told to do by outside forces, but when you look at their common values they are conservative. I see the face of the Republican Party changing, and I’m thrilled to be a part of that.”

Guests at the event included the chairman of Colorado Hispanic Americans, Hugo Chavez-Ray, the “Colombian Hurricane,” former Pueblo Councilwoman Vera Ortegon, founder of American Facility Services Group Jerry Natividad and, standing in for Arapahoe County commissioner candidate Paulo Sibaja, his campaign manager Ben Hobbs.

Navarro represents sprawling swing House District 47, which stretches across the southern planes east and west of Pueblo. She said she thinks the district soon could be as much as 40 percent Latino. It was 35 percent Latino in the last census, but the Latino population had grown by 14 percent during the preceding decade, while the white population declined by 10 percent.

In presidential election years, like 2016, Democratic voters turn out in higher numbers. But Navarro has reason to stay confident: She won her seat in 2012, the year Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney in the state.

Does some of the recent headline-making rhetoric coming out of the Republican presidential primary – talk of mass deportation policies, building enormous walls, and of immigrants being rapists and murders – make it difficult to sell Republican ideas and to expand the Republican brand in the district?

“I don’t hear about the presidential race on the ground,” she said. “The primary campaign will settle out. Voters will make their choices… Some of the rhetoric can be difficult, but not if you’re living within the law.”

Navarro is the only Latino Republican member of the state House. Beth Martinez Humenik, a Republican from Thornton, is the only Latino Republican member of the state Senate.

That’s in comparison to the nine Latino Democratic members of the Legislature, who in 2012 joined together to form the Colorado Democratic Latino Caucus.

Caucus co-chair Joe Salazar, from Thornton, who announced last week he’s running for a third term, also represents a swing district heavy with Latino residents. Indeed, the percentages of Latino and white voters in House District 31 almost exactly mirrors Navarro’s district. Salazar says he hears about the hot-button rhetoric from the Republican presidential primary “all the time.”

“Of course I do,” he said. “My constituents talk about how dangerous they think it is, that the Republicans are moving the country backward with that kind of language, instead of forward. It’s ugly.”

Salazar said the Latino Caucus members originally considered making the group bipartisan but that it was clear there was a basic ideological difference about how government approaches ethnic issues.

“The ideological difference I think is really about education. We think not everyone in this country is treated equally or has been treated equally. There’s a multitude of statics that show minority populations work at a disadvantage… So we have introduced a lot of bills to address that in one way or another – the ASSET bill granting in-state tuition for undocumented youth, the Colorado anti-discrimination relief bill, the police reform bills. We’re the only state to have repealed a ‘show me your papers’ racial profiling law,” Salazar said. “These bills, by the way, help address unfairness for minority communities but they also protect the entire community.”

“I’ll add that Representative Navarro voted against all of those bills,” he said.

Navarro said her philosophy is that the best approach to lifting minority communities is the same approach to take to lift majority communities. That the aim was to increase opportunity for all, mostly by keeping government “out of the way.”

Jefferson County Commissioner Libby Szabo, an Arvada Republican and a former state representative, said celebrating her Basque and Mexican heritage is about being culturally aware and proud to contribute to the patchwork fabric that has shaped the character of the country.

“It’s awesome that we all come from someplace else,” she said. “I love all of the things my grandma taught me. That’s dear to me. The values of working hard here to get ahead, to own your own home, your own business. I love that we’re all immigrants in this country. That’s why I think you don’t look at ethnicity when you’re writing legislation. You look at the broader picture. You look at the content of our character.”

Szabo said she thought there was too much emphasis placed on the connection between immigration policy and Latino and other ethnic minority voters.

“They’re painting us with too broad a brush. We care about the economy, too. We care about creating great jobs, great schools, great opportunities for our kids. That’s our outreach. That’s how we’ll win voters.”

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Latino voters in Colorado, as they do across the country, vote Democratic by more than 60 percent. But Latinos made up only 14 percent of the voting population in the last presidential election. In May this year, the state’s Republican Party set up a table as it has in the past at the Cinco de Mayo festival in Denver, looking to win over voters.

– john.tomasic@gmail.com

CORRECTION: This story originally reported incorrectly that the Republican Party set up a table at Denver’s Cinco de Mayo festival for the first time this year. The GOP has had a table at the event for years.