Marsha Looper, an eastern plains business owner and activist, has announced her candidacy for Colorado House District 19, which includes the towns of Falcon, Calhan, Peyton, Rush, Hanover, Fountain and Widefield. Looper is seeking the seat of Richard Decker, whose term ends in November 2006 because of term limitations.”I’m running because our state needs legislation and constitutional changes to protect our property and water rights,” said Looper at a rally at the Fountain City Hall in early January. “We must stop eminent domain in the Colorado Legislature.”Looper, age 46, founded the Eastern Plains Citizens Coalition in 2004. The group opposes the building of a private toll road in eastern El Paso County. She also recently formed the Colorado Citizens for Property Rights, a group concerned with abuses of the powers of eminent domain. The latter group is collecting signatures for a ballot initiative limiting the state’s power to condemn private property for public or private use.Looper previously worked for the Fountain and Widefield school districts installing computer networks and telephone systems, and was a systems engineer for Rolm and IBM. She and her husband currently own a real estate company, Phoenix and Associates. They have three children.She talked about her observations of how things operate at the state level.”I spent most of last year up at the capitol babysitting bills, and I saw how things work,” Looper said. “Lobbyists are running the state. The solution is to get citizens involved.”Looper’s Eastern Plains Citizen Coalition organized several protests last spring in Denver against the plan to build the Front Range Toll Road, a 220-mile road that would run from Fort Collins to Pueblo. The Legislature passed two bills limiting the toll road project, but both bills were vetoed by Gov. Owens in June. Two similar bills have been introduced in the current legislative session.Colorado Citizens for Property Rights, headed by Looper, is focused on protecting private property from seizure through eminent domain for economic development projects. “Fighting eminent domain is about much more than the toll road,” said Looper in a news release announcing her candidacy. “Now the government can take any private property from anyone, anywhere in Colorado, if it will bring in more sales tax.”Looper also expressed concern about the number of illegal immigrants in Colorado. “A conservative estimate of 250,000 illegal citizens are living within the borders of our state and consuming valuable resources that should be used for legal, tax-paying Colorado citizens,” she said in a news release.”I will work closely with members of the House to develop laws that will protect these institutions from this type of assault.”
