If he never finds a place in elected office, it won’t be because he didn’t give it his all. California ex-pat, now Denver resident Andres Carrera is taking aim at the soon to be vacant Colorado Senate seat now held by Democrat Julie Gonzales.
While Carrera is steeped in policy, having worked for both legislative and city office holders as well as municipal government, he makes no apologies for wanting to stress his near-Quixotic desire to make life better for those having the least. Those would be the immigrants who ask for nothing more than a chance for a better life than what was left behind.
This passion, he said, is born out of stories like his immigrant grandfather’s, who came to the country when he was 32, the same age Carrera is today. “My grandfather came here from Chihuahua,” he shared. With three young children and a wife, he set up what is still operational today, the Moriel Upholstery shop in Glendora, California. “I worked (for him) in the summer,” Carrera said, “helping deliver furniture to his clients.”
He saw the pride his grandfather took in his craft, making sure he delivered what he promised. Going halfway was never an option.
But where Carrera also saw the same ethic, was in another grandfather, who also left Mexico for a better life. That grandfather worked his whole life as a janitor. His wife was a seamstress. Seeing them, he said, gave him a direct line of sight to people who today have little in the way of worldly goods but continue to do their best to move ahead.
Carrera, his family’s first child to be born in the U.S., moved here when his father, Mario, was recruited to Denver to run a Spanish-language television station. And while that may have afforded him an easier go than his grandparents, the teenaged Carrera instead chose work.
The first job was at Taco Bell, followed next with one at Long John Silvers. Aside from being both fry cook and cashier, along with other assigned tasks, he was the unofficial Spanish language interpreter at both.
After high school, he enrolled at CSU-Fort Collins where he earned a degree in international studies. “I thought I wanted to be a foreign correspondent,” he joked. While he studied for the job—he was editor and chief of the school’s paper—it just wasn’t his calling. But the foreign part worked out, just not in the way he once imagined.
He found himself in China teaching English. But in order to better do his job, he learned Mandarin. The experience, he said, was both priceless and fascinating. “You learn to understand what it means to put the group first.” The experience also taught him something else. “If I could collaborate with people fundamentally different than myself,” he wondered, “why can’t we accomplish it (here).”
While he knows the field for the District 34 seats will grow larger and questions will become both new and nuanced, he thinks his time working in the legislature, city hall and with Adams County’s board of commissioners, are a good foundation to do the job as ‘the people’s voice.’
“It’s all about mobility,” Carrera said. By that, he means upward mobility. He said he will go to where they are to hear what they want and need. The bottom of the ladder, where so many immigrants reside, should not be a life sentence, but a start.
One immediate challenge is to at least work on lowering tuition for both students in traditional college and vocational schools. A recent conversation on these costs, he said, was more than jolting.
An immigrant woman he spoke to who was trying to learn a new skill found herself economically locked out when she learned the costs of basic community college English language classes. Two credit hours, she told him, would cost $1,500. “She wants to help people (by learning the language) and the first thing she runs into is the price tag.” There have to be options, he said. Perhaps collaboration with others in the legislature will solve, reduce or find imaginative new ways to lower the barriers.
Because immigration is central to his own life, Carrera will be sounding that drum early and often. While his own family’s story may reflect an ‘American dream,’ he knows it’s not everyone’s.
“I care about public service,” the 32-year-old Carrera said. “I stand on the shoulders of janitors, farmworkers and seamstresses.” They are the symbols that inspire his dream.
With a term-limited Gonzales holding the seat for another year, Carrera knows the field will certainly grow. But, he said, between now and when Democrats choose their candidate, he’s going to be meeting as many people as necessary.
Because of the work he’s already done at the Capitol and city hall, he says he already has a ‘lay of the land’ and relationships with current and former elected officials. Though it’s early, he’s already picked up endorsements from former Denver City Council members Ramona Martinez and Debbie Ortega and former Democratic legislator Penfield Tate. Their advice? “Listen, listen, listen and be available.”
While endorsements, said Carrera, are nice. He knows the most important endorsement is the one that comes from voters. Carrera also knows the 2025 General Election may seem like a long way off and it is. But he plans to invest as much time and energy making sure the sacrifices made by those who came before him, people like Cesar Chavez and Rudolfo ‘Corky’ Gonzales, “are honored.”
Like Chavez and Gonzales, Carrera knows he is a “child of two worlds.” Through his own family and its immigrant roots, he has learned the often-daunting odyssey today’s immigrants face. He says he begins each day knowing he cannot let up. Losing the election, Carrera said, won’t be worst thing. The worst thing would be failing to work as hard as he could have when so many people were depending on him.
