The Unaffiliated | Colorado Capitol personnel shake-ups: Meet John Padora
Jesse Paul | January 12, 2024

Lauren Boebert’s entrance into the 4th Congressional District race to replace U.S. Rep. Ken Buck has prompted a question no one was really asking before: Could a Democrat win in the state’s most Republican-favorable district?

Conventional wisdom says the answer is almost certainly “no,” but Boebert’s candidacy — and the intense public scrutiny and Democratic attacks that follow her everywhere she goes — has thrust the handful of Democrats running in the 4th District into the national spotlight. One, John Padora, is quickly emerging as the most likely to be the party’s nominee.

The Sun spoke at length with Padora to learn more about his past and why he’s running.

Padora, 35, and his family moved to Severance about three years ago from Pennsylvania. Born in Allentown, Penn., Padora said he started spending summers and winter breaks in Colorado visiting his aunt and uncle, who have a cabin in Estes Park and a townhome in Boulder, when he was 5. He said during those family trips he “traveled all over the state.”

Padora said his wife began considering a move to Colorado in 2018. “My family and I for quite some time have tried to relocate out here,” he said. “My wife has a lot of family in the Denver area. When the remote work happened, it kind of presented us with an opportunity to relocate to Colorado.”

In the middle of considering that move, however, Padora ran for the Pennsylvania statehouse. He lost to Republican Melinda Fee in the Lancaster County district by a whopping 46 percentage points.

“I didn’t want to run for that seat,” Padora said. “I was actually recruited to run. I knew from the beginning of that campaign that we were never going to have the steam that we needed to win. That was really just a way for me to activate myself and my team and get out there and make a difference.”

Padora, who launched his congressional campaign May 1, long before Boebert got in the race, says he is “committed to remaining in Colorado.” He said his family decided to buy a home in Severance because it was affordable.

“To be honest, I would say that the housing market drove us out a little further into Weld County than we anticipated,” he said. “I did want to be more central to the Loveland, Fort Collins, Longmont area where a lot of the jobs were available for me in my industry.”

Padora said he works as a manufacturing engineer at a company that makes medical devices, surgical implants and aerospace components. He said he also has a degree in environmental science, “but with a large family I’ve just found that saving the planet doesn’t pay as much as precision manufacturing.”

When asked which Democratic politician is most similar to him in terms of his policy positions, Padora said there’s no perfect match. He said he voted for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primary. “I know that he’s incredibly progressive, and so kind of my vote was just to urge the Democratic Party to pursue more progressive policies and candidates than Joe Biden.”

Padora said he knows running in the 4th District, which Buck won by 24 percentage points in 2022, is “a huge uphill battle.” But he feels he has a “good ability to communicate with conservative folks” and that with help from the Democratic Party he can make it close in 2024.

Padora believes gun regulations are one area where he can connect conservative voters. He said he supports “common sense” laws, like raising the age to purchase any weapon to 21, universal background checks and red flag laws — three things Republican politicians in Colorado have been almost uniformly opposed to. Padora said he doesn’t support an assault weapons ban.

“I would just kind of encourage everyone not to quite write this district off,” he said.

MORE : Padora struggled with substance abuse after a car crash when he was 19 years old. He said his head went through the vehicle’s windshield and that things “spiraled out of control” after he was prescribed opioids during his recovery.

“I almost lost my marriage, my family, my home, my career — everything,” Padora said. “I was arrested for drug possession multiple times for opioids with expired prescriptions, for small amounts of marijuana that I was also using for pain management at the time. I ended up in county prison for a few months and that is really what kind of changed my whole life.”

Padora now describes himself as a recovery advocate.