House District 38 had no Republican willing to run. Madrigal says she prayed on it

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

Allison Madrigal had two days before the deadline, and she spent them making a deal with God.

A friend called her in March. The Republican preparing to run for Colorado House District 38 had fallen ill and dropped out, she was told. Nobody else was stepping forward. Would she pray about it?

“I’ll put it in God’s inbox,” Madrigal told her.

Then she learned she could not run as a Republican even if she wanted to. When she registered to vote after moving to Colorado in 2021, she checked unaffiliated.

“The Holy Spirit said, stop, check unaffiliated. It’s strategic,” she said. “I’m like, okay.”

The deadline to switch parties had passed. Arapahoe County Republicans were meeting that Saturday to see if anyone would step up. So she set a condition.

“I put a fleece before the Lord,” she said. “And I said, Lord, if nobody stands up at that meeting, I will stand up. I will know you’re telling me to.”

Nobody stood up.

A district with no Republican on the ballot

Madrigal is now the only candidate running as a conservative on the Nov. 3 ballot in a Littleton-centered seat Republicans held until 2020. Democrats flipped it that November, under lines that have since been redrawn.

The Secretary of State’s official candidate list shows four names. Incumbent Democrat Gretchen Rydin, Tim Martin of the Center Party, Libertarian Norm Olsen, and Madrigal.

No Republican filed, and none appeared on the June primary ballot either. That leaves about 15,000 registered Republicans without a nominee.

Unaffiliated voters outnumber both parties in the district, at 32,934 of 66,031 active voters, according to state figures from Sept. 1.

She qualified by petition with 1,069 valid signatures, the Secretary of State announced July 15. She got there with help from the party that had no candidate of its own.

“It was a ground movement of boots on the ground Republicans that were helping me get the signatures,” she said.

She knows the label makes winning harder.

“If I win as unaffiliated, it’s going to be really interesting, because I’m not answering to a party,” she said. “I can absolutely vote on policy in what I believe. I’ve heard in both parties, you know what, if you don’t go this way, you’re out.”

From Rescue Houston to Rescue America

Madrigal grew up in a Nebraska town of about 40,000 and took her first job in Houston at 22, alone.

“I learned very quickly that not everybody’s a good person,” she said.

Eight years in insurance followed, at Liberty Mutual and then at Alliant, where she brokered construction and health care risk.

In 2010, by her own account, she was wrapping Christmas gifts when she learned her brother and sister-in-law had been told they would never conceive. The family turned to in vitro fertilization.

“I looked at the money they were spending on IVF and vitro fertilization, not guaranteed a baby,” she said. “My entrepreneurial hat went off and I actually created an insurance product.”

She left corporate work in 2012 to launch it and became an aunt twice along the way.

Around the same time, a mission trip to India introduced her to trafficking. She took it for a problem that happened somewhere else.

“I only thought it was in India,” she said. “And very shortly after, God opened my eyes to see that, hey, trafficking’s in your backyard.”

In 2014 she launched a 24-hour hotline and called it Rescue Houston. Outreach groups and safe homes already existed, she said.

“We’re really the broker from the survivor being on the street to that best safe home fit for her,” she said.

Cherry Hills Community Church brought her to Denver in 2021 after a survivor turned up there with nowhere to go. Rescue Houston later became Rescue America.

The organization announced last October that its founder was stepping away.

Madrigal says she decided in July 2025, months before anyone asked her to run.

“The Lord spoke very clearly to me,” she said. “He said, get everything off your plate. I have something new for you.”

Root cause, not Band-Aids

Getting to the root cause of a problem is one of her main campaign messages, she says, and it is how she judges a bill.

“It’s not an automatic no for me, but I will go deeper and force a deeper conversation,” she said. “I have an MBA with a consulting emphasis and how you actually go consult on a problem. You’ve got to get to the root cause. Otherwise you’re just putting Band-Aids on it.”

On health care, the largest share of the state budget, her example comes off the hotline.

“A trafficking survivor will go to the emergency room over and over and over again because they’re in an abusive relationship. They’re using drugs, they’re using alcohol,” she said. “If we don’t get that survivor into a safe home that knows how to deal with trafficking survivors and stop that cycle, we’re just repeating costs over and over again. It’s a circle that goes around and around and around that’s actually costing taxpayers money.”

On taxes she is unsparing. “Colorado has a spending problem. We’ve got to look at our budget and see what our tax dollars are actually producing.”

She opposes Proposition NN, which would let the state keep more revenue than the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights now allows.

“TABOR was set up to only be increased by population growth and inflation,” she said. “Proposition NN would basically extend that cap under the guise of going to the schools … but we’ll keep the revenue after 10 years and not return it to the taxpayers. So I’m a no on the NN.”

Parental rights draw her sharpest language.

“I’ve been seeing what the legislature is voting into law, basically stripping rights from parents and giving it to the government, giving it to schools,” she said. “We’ve got to give the rights back to the parents.”

She points to students changing their names at school without a parent knowing. “Parents should be brought in to that conversation. And if the parent allows it, that’s one thing. But if you’re keeping that from the parent, that’s a whole nother issue.”

She volunteers the exception before being asked. “Now if there’s abuse in the home and all of that and neglect, that’s a whole different story.”

School choice is “a must,” and she ties it to what homeschooling families already pay. “You’re still paying taxes to the schools your children don’t go to.”

She is pro-life and says that starts long before a woman reaches a clinic. “Most women that are contemplating abortion, the male is not in the picture. So they feel all alone,” she said.

Asked what that looks like in state policy, she pointed to the church. “I believe this is the church’s role. I believe we need to surround that woman with care … how do we support that woman to choose life?”

On guns she is unequivocal. “I believe that people have a right to bear arms. I believe people have a right to protect themselves. 100 percent.”

“I do think the cause of all these shootings in America is mental health. It’s not because you have a gun,” she said. “You can use anything to kill. You can use poison to kill, you can use guns, you can use knives, you can use whatever. But what’s the underlying cause that’s making people kill? It’s mental health. And that’s what we have to tackle.”

The case on trafficking

Eleven years on a rescue hotline left Madrigal with one specific complaint about who Colorado punishes.

“The laws of actually holding the traffickers and the buyers,” she said. “If we can reduce the demand, which is the buyers, the traffickers aren’t going to traffic them. You’ve got to come in and you have to bring justice to the people who buy children for sex, and those who sell children for sex. And I don’t believe there’s laws in Colorado that actually brings justice to the buyers and to the traffickers.”

The numbers are small.

Nine people statewide were convicted and sentenced for trafficking a minor for sexual servitude between fiscal 2022-23 and 2024-25, according to the legislative fiscal note on this year’s Children Are Not For Sale Act.

John Kellner, then the district attorney for Arapahoe and three neighboring counties, told lawmakers in 2024 that of 33 sex trafficking cases his office had prosecuted in two years, only about a third of those convicted served time.

This year’s bill would have made the crime a class 1 felony carrying life without parole.

House Judiciary postponed it indefinitely on Feb. 10, 7 to 4, with the committee’s four Republicans in the minority.

A nearly identical measure, Proposition 133, is on the ballot alongside her.

Regulation and the cost of a house

Madrigal’s case on housing starts before anyone breaks ground. A homebuilder friend told her that clearing government requirements costs $130,000 before construction begins.

Published figures from a Common Sense Institute report released Sept. 23 put taxes and fees on a new 2,000-square-foot home at $24,295 in Colorado Springs and $101,616 in Boulder, the report’s high mark across 16 cities. Littleton was not among them.

Two bills this session would have pushed cities to allow smaller single-family lots. She says she would have voted against both.

“I believe the opposition, they were like, we need to create more affordable housing in District 38. So let’s split the lot sizes,” she said. “Well, that’s not going to help anything when a builder has to pay $130,000 in regulatory fees to build a house … so again, I would vote no on that because it’s not getting to the root cause.”

A Senate committee killed HB26-1114 and HB26-1308 in April. Littleton voters had already voted to amend the city charter last November to freeze the permitted uses in four of the city’s residential zones.

Her own money

Her campaign has reported $24,618 in state filings through Sept. 28.

All but $6,118 of it is her own, put in as two interest-free loans of $10,000 and $8,500.

Individual donors may give $225 per election.

“Honestly, if it wasn’t a call from the Lord, I wouldn’t be funding it myself. That’s my personal conviction,” she said. “He’s provided provision for me to help fund my campaign. And so when he asked me to do something, I am a person that goes, OK, Lord.”

Asked what voters should hold her to in two years, she named one thing.

“It should be that I would speak truth and tell them the truth no matter if they’re going to be mad at me or agree with me,” she said.