Cary Kennedy loves this place. Over there is a field where she played high school sports, and there’s the cross-country course her daughter runs. She grew up nearby, attending Manual High School. Off in the distance, catching the sun, that’s the gold dome of the state Capitol, where she spent four years as state treasurer, and before that worked as policy director for the House Democrats.

The vista is breathtaking from the slope on the east side of Ferril Lake – the duck pond, although it’s filled with clamoring geese – in Denver’s City Park, but Kennedy points beyond the horizon to the north, to the south, and over the snow-capped peaks to the west, to every corner of the state, describing how she’s spent the past seven months.

Since April, Kennedy has been crisscrossing Colorado, running for governor, and it sounds like there’s nothing she’d rather be doing.

“It’s wonderful,” she says. “It’s the best part of campaigning is getting the opportunity to spend time with people all over the state, in their hometowns. I love hearing about the great work that’s going on in communities across the state. People will go to great lengths to protect this beautiful state.”

Colorado Politics joined Kennedy and her husband, Saurabh Mangalik, and their recently adopted dog Toby on a crisp Sunday morning to walk around the lake and talk about her campaign and what drives her.

But first, Kennedy situates the lives of her family, in every direction. With a nod to the south and a wave past the natural history museum, she explains that they recently moved from their home in southeast Denver to an apartment, where they’re staying while they’re having some work done on a house in Park Hill.

“We’re downsizing,” she says. “We lived with Saurabh’s mom for about 14 years. She helped raise our kids, and we cared for her as she aged. She passed away a few years ago. She had a mother-in-law apartment. After she died, our son went to college, and our daughter is about to go to college. We’re in the middle of college applications right now,” she adds with a laugh that’s meant to sound slightly overwhelmed.

They got Toby, who’s probably about 2 years old, in March, right before launching Kennedy’s campaign and selling their house. Barely containing his laughter, Mangalik tells the story.

“We’re in the mountains for the weekend, and our daughter calls us, and she says, ‘We have a situation.’ Somebody had to get rid of their dog, and, being the kind soul that she was, she came home with Toby – from the Dumb Friends League,” he says with a grin. “It was supposed to be temporary, and of course, once we got Toby home, we couldn’t get rid of him.”

“We fell in love,” Kennedy says. “It was a perfect match. Somehow Toby found us, and we found him. We thank our daughter for this.”

Kennedy says she’s been surprised by how many candidates have gotten in the gubernatorial race on both sides – she’s one of five Democrats, and there are seven or eight Republicans running, depending on which day of the week it is – but she isn’t that surprised.

“It’s a wonderful state, and a wonderful opportunity to lead, but elections are about choices, and people will have the opportunity to choose from a number of good candidates to succeed Gov. (John) Hickenlooper,” she says.

Then she shakes her head, a flash of anger crossing her face.

“People are upset,” she says. “They don’t want to see the destructive policies they see coming out of the White House. They don’t want to see the Republican Party rolling back our environmental protections, rolling back our civil and human rights protection. They want leadership to stand up to Washington. I won’t let President Trump take us backwards.”

Rounding the lake for the second time, Kennedy glances past the boat house, her eyes settling for a moment on the gold glint in the distance. She and her husband went to Manual High School, but that’s not how they met. “We met in the Capitol,” Kennedy says. “We were both interns working for Roy Romer, his first term as governor. We’re an old Capitol romance.”

This was in the days before email, before desktop printers, and Romer had a contraption known as an auto-pen to sign his name to the letters Kennedy and Mangalik produced – about 300 a week, she says. “We’d try to personalize each one of them, address the issues the person raised. Once we got sign-off on the response, we would go sit in this little room with the auto-pen, and we would push the button, and the little robotic hand would come down and sign. Those were the good ol’ days.”

“One of the most rewarding things on this campaign is, when I was state treasurer, I created a program called Building Excellent Schools Today, or BEST,” Kennedy continues. “And it addressed a long-standing need in rural Colorado, where there are small farming communities, and they do not have the ability to repair or renovate aging school buildings. I’ve toured dozens and dozens of these buildings where kids are still going to school today. They have lead pipes, they have asbestos, they have mold. They flood. There’s exposed wiring. I just toured a school down in Saguache where sewage backs up in the classroom, and they use a purple Rockies beer cup – you can’t make this up – to plug the drain to stop the sewage form coming up. They just got awarded a $27 million BEST grant to replace that school.”

Since she got the BEST legislation passed and put together the financing, Kennedy says, 381 schools have been partially, substantially or completely rebuilt using funds from the program.

“The construction hadn’t really started when I left office,” she says. “Now, running for governor, there are all these completed projects, so when I go in to Cotopaxi, and Hooper and De Beque, to Kim, I get to tour their new schools. It’s fantastic. But we also see schools like the one in Saguache that are still in need.”

“For the kids growing up there, it’s so important that they have access to the same advanced education, modern learning facilities, the same opportunities that kids get anywhere in the state,” Kennedy says. “And in far too many communities in Colorado, those opportunities still aren’t available to kids.”

Then she recounts a story she tells often on the campaign trail, explaining why she’s running for governor.

Kennedy says brothers and sisters joined her family through the foster-care program when she was growing up, not far from where she stands. “It was a wonderful experience because my brothers and sisters, when they moved in with us, faced what seemed like insurmountable challenges,” she says. “Some of them had been victims of abuse and neglect. All of them had faced really significant challenge. One of the great gifts of my life was watching them, over many years, heal and go on to lead happy and productive lives. And I saw that it took love and opportunity. And I gained an appreciation that, for many kids, the only opportunities they get are through our public schools.”

It was the experience of one of her sisters that best sums it up, Kennedy says.

“Karen moved in with our family when she was 14 years old. I was 5, so she’s the oldest. She started attending our neighborhood public school, and it wasn’t long before the music teacher called my mom and said, ‘Karen has this beautiful voice, she has a gift for music.’ She went on to study both instrument and vocal at our local public school, and she went on to win a full scholarship and had a career as a performer, as a pianist and vocalist. I share our story, because when she moved in with our family, she had never played an instrument, because her old school in her old neighborhood couldn’t afford a music program.

“So, as I travel Colorado, I always think, how many kids in our state are just like Karen? And that’s on us. That’s the responsibility of the leadership of this state, and that’s one of the reasons I am running for governor.”