The Colorado House launched two crime bills to the Senate on Monday with overwhelming support, both bills sponsored by Pueblo Republican Rep. Clarice Navarro.

The victories come on the heels of the broad support Navarro won earlier in the legislative session for a bill she sponsored to wave state income tax on Olympic winnings. All three bills have won unanimous support or have come very close in committee hearings and in chamber floor debates.

Navarro told the Colorado Statesman that some issues just predictably cross party lines and that, in another year of split-party control at the Capitol, she was looking to land legislation on the governor’s desk.

“I specifically set out to do good work for Colorado as my first priority, and my second priority [is] to look for bills that would have the potential for passage and signing by the governor,” she wrote. “Traditionally, you see consensus on issues like crime, veterans, American heroes. I believe the bills I’ve carried this year are all in that realm.

“I’m an obvious conservative vote in the House, but I’m also willing to reach across when there are things we can do to make a better Colorado,” she said.

Navarro’s House Bill 1150 aims to add domestic abuse and repeat stalking to the list of serious criminal offenses for which perpetrators are not allowed to post bail and exit incarceration between conviction and sentencing. The bill won unanimous support in committee last month and on the House floor Monday.

“There are thousands of people impacted by stalking,” Navarro said. “It’s unfathomable to me that someone who has been given due process and convicted would be allowed bail to recommit the same crimes, or even worse, have the opportunity for the most heinous of these…revenge and murder – as in the case of Janice Nam.”

Nam, a 28-year-old Colorado Springs resident, was stalked and murdered by a man last year who had already once been convicted of stalking her. The man posted bail, ditched a sentencing hearing, cut off an ankle monitor and then found her, asleep in her home, and shot her.

Navarro was also sponsor, with Colorado Springs Republican Terri Carver, of House Bill 1172, which would establish a minimum sentence of eight years for anyone convicted of youth sex trafficking. The bill received an up vote from all but three of the 63 members of the House who voted on it Monday.

Navarro said she thought the sex trafficking bill was a “no brainer.”

“My jaw dropped each time someone got up and spoke out against this bill,” she said after the floor vote. “I don’t trust all judges to do the right thing, and it’s a legislator’s job to make laws.

“This law happens to seal the fate of those willing to victimize children… I wanted there to be a minimum so there won’t be anyone convicted of sex trafficking who gets a judge that goes ‘light’ on a sentence.”

Indeed, Navarro, a hardline conservative lawmaker, must have enjoyed witnessing Rep. Joe Salazar, a high-profile liberal Democrat from Thornton, making the case for the bill at the front of the chamber on Monday. Salazar was working to persuade his Democratic colleagues.

“I’m not offended by this bill, not at all,” Salazar said. “I will be voting in favor of this bill… and I thank the sponsors for bringing it.”

“I just couldn’t say no to these bills,” Navarro said.

– john@coloradostatesman.com