Marine. Business owner. Built a company while living out of my car — nothing but a phone and a work ethic. Now I want to build something for District 31.
Maybe it was a marriage that fell apart. A job that disappeared. A health scare, or a kid who needed more than you had that month. Nobody handed you what you have now. You didn't wait for someone to fix it — you figured it out, because that's what you do. I know, because that's my story too.
I'm a United States Marine — Gulf War, ground radio repair, first regiment into country. I came home, worked insurance for ten years, and then started a window and gutter cleaning company while living out of my car. Not "with" a car — in it. No investors, no loans, no connections. Just a phone and a work ethic. I'm not proud of the living-in-my-car part. I'm proud of what came after it.
Windows Gutters Etc is now trusted by hundreds of families across Thornton and Adams County — nearly 1,000 five-star reviews, most with my name in them, because I don't hide from the work I do. I've turned down offers to buy the company. I've fallen off more roofs than I'd like to admit, and gotten back up every single time.
But here's the part I'm actually proudest of: building this company didn't just change my life. It gave other people steady paychecks — a way to feed their own families, put a roof over their own kids' heads. I didn't just build a business. I built a way for other people to take care of theirs.
I've also been divorced twice, started over more than once, and raised a daughter I'm proud of along the way. I'm not telling you any of this because it's impressive. Plenty of people in this district have a harder story than mine. I'm telling you because I know what it costs when you build something back yourself — and I know what it feels like when government makes that harder instead of easier.
We all need help from time to time — I don't know anyone who hasn't. But I'd wager you don't want to spend your whole life dependent on government to give it to you.
Every time government "gives" you something, there's a form attached to it, a box you have to check, a rule about how you're allowed to use it, and someone whose job is to make sure you followed the rule. That doesn't make it evil — sometimes it's genuinely necessary. But it's never actually free, and nobody tells you that part on the way in.
You already know how to build something without waiting for permission. You've done it — with a business, a budget, a family, a second chance you gave yourself when nobody else was going to. That's not a gap government needs to fill. That's the thing government should get out of the way of.
You've done the same thing. Maybe you don't call it faith — maybe you call it grit, or just not having a choice. But nobody wired you a check when the roof caved in, when the marriage ended, when the paycheck didn't stretch to the end of the month. You got up and used what you already had. I'm not telling you my story because it's rare. I'm telling you because it isn't — I see it in this district every single day.
District 31 didn't get here because government showed up and saved it. It got here because the people in it never stopped building, on the days nobody was watching and nobody said thank you.
This campaign isn't about what I can do for you. It's about a government that finally gets out of the way of what you're already doing for yourself.
Not slogans. Not talking points every politician recycles. Real questions, and honest answers.
Not "should" — how. That's the question I want my opponent to actually answer out loud instead of dodging behind a slogan for one sentence and moving on. If the honest answer is "call 911 and hope," say that.
Colorado's fentanyl deaths went from 222 in 2019 to 1,631 in 2024 — a sevenfold increase in five years, now costing the state an estimated $13.1 billion a year. Thornton already runs its own Homeless Outreach Team, because this isn't happening somewhere else.
Colorado’s Initiative 109 asks whether K-12 and college sports teams should be divided by biological sex. It already qualified for the November ballot — and several districts, including Colorado Springs D11 and Academy D20, already run it that way after a December settlement.
I built a company from nothing, with no help from the state. I want to know exactly what state government is doing that makes it harder to start or grow a private business here — and I want it gone.
Test scores aren't improving. If a business had these results year after year, we'd change the plan — not blame the customer. This isn't about teachers doing their best with what they're handed. It's about the people above them.
That's from the Home Builders Association of Metro Denver's own fee study — $57,043 of it is the water tap fee alone, the highest in the metro area. Build the same house in unincorporated Adams County instead and the fee stack drops to $36,247. Same house. Same dirt. Different paperwork. And the small stuff adds up too: $75 to re-inspect, $100 for a hearing, $1.50/sq ft in park fees before you've poured a foundation.
I'm pro-legal-immigration — I've personally vouched under oath that friends' marriages were legitimate so their spouses could stay here the right way. But "just go after the worst of the worst" isn't good enough when the system is already failing to enforce warrants that exist right now.
The IRS has never once stopped anyone from donating extra, or skipping a deduction they were entitled to. If you trust government to spend it well, you can already give more. If you'd rather see it go straight to someone who needs it, a local charity will put it directly in their hands — and answer to you personally if it doesn't.
It's already written into the state constitution — no state representative can change it, on either side. Anyone telling you otherwise, in either direction, is selling you something they can't deliver.
Gabriel Cervantes wants to ban corporations from buying single-family homes in Colorado. He's onto something real. He just hasn't gotten specific enough yet — I have.
I actually agree with the goal here. Homes should go to families, not investment portfolios. But "ban corporations" is the kind of line that sounds good on a flyer and falls apart the moment you try to write it into an actual law — because it doesn't say which corporations, buying what, for what reason.
Here's what almost nobody brings up: the large-scale institutional buyers actually driving this concern aren't just generic "corporations" — they're REITs. Real Estate Investment Trusts. Companies like Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent, built specifically to buy up single-family homes as long-term rental inventory. The five largest of these firms collectively own close to 300,000 homes nationally. That's the real target if you're serious about this — and a law that just says "no corporations" either misses REITs on a technicality or nets a completely different kind of buyer by accident.
Like a contractor who leases three or four homes for a year to house a relocated crew, or a company temporarily housing traveling workers. That's not somebody's forever home getting pulled off the market — it's not even being offered to the public. It's a business housing its own people for a defined stretch of time, and it shouldn't get swept up with a REIT buying an entire subdivision.
Even the federal version of this exact ban, which just took effect, has eleven separate written exceptions — build-to-rent programs, foreclosure purchases, age-55 communities, and more. Not one of them covers legitimate employer relocation housing. If Washington couldn't get that detail right, copying their homework in Colorado won't fix it either.
REITs and institutional investors buying single-family homes purely as long-term rental inventory — the actual driver of the concern.
A written exemption for short-term employer/corporate relocation housing that isn't rented or offered to the general public.
Campaign finance transparency. My opponent is running on campaign finance reform. So am I. Voters deserve to know exactly who's funding every campaign asking for their vote — mine included.
The fentanyl crisis is an emergency. Whatever we'd disagree on for the exact fix, if my opponent agrees Adams County needs real shelter and treatment capacity right now — that's common ground before we ever get to the ballot box.
That's not a knock on the goal — it's the difference between a law that actually works and one that just makes a good yard sign. Get specific enough to hit REITs without accidentally hitting a small business housing its own crew, and you've got something I can support.
See Where I Actually Stand →Every issue above has its own short video answer — click "Watch Ray Answer This" on any card. These two are the general introduction.
We're doing signs differently in HD31 — no cookie-cutter "Roll for State Rep" signs. Just questions people can't stop thinking about.
Every dollar goes to actually reaching District 31 voters — not consultants, not polish.