Austin Hein, a Republican candidate for House District 51, has filed a formal complaint with the Secretary of State alleging the current Minority Leader, Rep. Hugh McKean, R-Loveland, doesn’t live in the district.

Hein, formerly the communications director for the House GOP when it was led by then-Minority Leader Patrick Neville, R-Castle Rock, is running against McKean in the Republican primary.

In a statement to Colorado Politics, McKean said he has maintained his residence in House District 51 since first moving to Loveland in 1997.

McKean listed a mailbox at a UPS store as both his physical and mailing address on his candidate affidavit, which Hein claims is illegal, based on information Hein said he got from the Secretary of State’s office. When asked, he did not cite any specific law to support his claim.

The Secretary of State’s office, through a spokesperson, told Colorado Politics that a candidate’s affidavit is not a statement of qualification for ballot access or an official declaration that the candidate is eligible to run for a certain office. The affidavit merely serves as certification that the candidate is familiar with campaign finance laws.

“Although we ask for an address on the affidavit, statute actually does not require it and we use it primarily as a means to communicate or send official notices and penalty statements to the candidate. A candidate can use a commercial mailbox or Post Office box both as the mailing address and physical address,” the state election office said. 

That’s a common practice among candidates for the General Assembly. A review of the 62 candidates who have filed for the House for 2022 showed at least a dozen who used either a commercial mailbox or Post Office box for a mailing address, physical address, or both.

The other issue – that McKean doesn’t live in the address listed on his voter registration information – is a separate matter.

The gold standard for the Secretary of State is the address that a candidate lists for his or her voter registration, and that address must be the one the candidate lived in one year prior to the November 2022 election, scheduled for November 8. 

Hein alleged the address on McKean’s voter registration is for a vacant lot in Loveland. That’s a site on which McKean is building a home and which will be his primary residence. Larimer County property records show the owner as a revocable trust with the same commercial mailbox address as McKean’s. 

McKean’s voter registration changed to that new address on November 23.

However, McKean did live in the district on Nov. 8, 2021, one year prior to the election, in an apartment in Loveland, which is leased in his name. He told Colorado Politics he still lives in that apartment. 

“My opponent, instead of offering ideas for how to help the fine folks of Loveland and northern Colorado, is unsuccessfully attempting to practice the ‘gotcha’ type of politics we usually see in Washington, D.C,” McKean said. “Loveland deserves better than the mud slinging we’ve seen in his race so far.”

Questions about residency have caused problems for at least two lawmakers in the recent past: Rep. Don Valdez, D-La Jara, who claimed in 2018 he lived with his parents in La Jara instead of in Pueblo West with his then-wife in her multi-million-dollar home that wasn’t in the district.

Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta, said he lived in a Delta home when he became a first-time candidate in 2018, although the home’s renters told reporters his mail was delivered there but he didn’t live in the home, which was owned by his mother, Betty Ann Soper. The renters were later evicted. A formal complaint filed with the Secretary of State was later dropped because the complainants couldn’t come up with a required $13,000 surety bond to cover court costs, which would have allowed the complaint to move forward.

An investigation by the District Attorney of the 7th Judicial District concluded Soper “can substantiate that he established legal residency within the territory included in the limits of House District 54 as required and as defined by Colorado law.”