By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
Jill Haffley knocks on thousands of doors, and she has noticed that almost nobody wants to argue about politics on their own porch.
“Most people aren’t interested in having a partisan argument on their front porch,” she said. “They want to know whether they can afford groceries, utilities, insurance, and housing. They want safe neighborhoods and good schools. They want government to make sense with minimal interference in their daily lives.”
That is the pitch Haffley, a Republican and a retired 30-year classroom teacher, is carrying into one of the most closely divided legislative districts in Colorado. House District 16, which includes part of Colorado Springs, was decided by three votes in 2024, when Republican Rebecca Keltie unseated Democrat incumbent Stephanie Vigil.
The seat has flipped between the parties in consecutive cycles. Keltie is not running again, and Haffley faces Vigil in November.
She describes what drives her in terms of outcomes rather than tenure. “Thirty years in a classroom taught me good intentions don’t necessarily produce good results,” she said. “You have to be willing to look at what is working and change what isn’t.”
Asked what she most wants to point to a few years from now, she does not reach for a list of bills. “A few years from now, I don’t want to point to how many bills I sponsored,” she said. “I want to point to measurable results and say, ‘We made Colorado better.'”
Why the seat is worth watching
The margin is not the only reason HD16 draws attention. Democrats hold 43-22 in the House and 23-12 in the Senate, one seat short of a two-thirds supermajority in each chamber.
A supermajority would let the majority party refer constitutional amendments to the ballot and override a governor’s veto without a single vote from the other side.
Haffley wants voters to understand what that math means for a district this small.
“I hope voters understand how important this seat is to the balance of power in the Colorado House,” she said. “Democrats are currently one seat short of a two-thirds supermajority, and HD16 is one of the seats that could determine the change. Healthy government needs balance.”
She does not soften her own politics to make the point. “I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise,” she said, “but I spent 30 years teaching students and working alongside people with every political viewpoint imaginable. I know how to listen and work with people without abandoning my values.”
That closeness, she said, is a lesson in who counts. “This district being decided by three votes should remind anyone running for this seat that every voter matters,” she said. “I intend to represent all of HD16, including the people who don’t vote for me.”
What she says she offers
Asked what she brings that Vigil does not, Haffley pointed to record and experience rather than party.
“I offer 30 years’ experience in a public-school classroom, experience governing on an elected school board, and a record of making difficult decisions rather than simply talking about them,” she said. “I understand firsthand how government decisions affect teachers, parents, students, employees and taxpayers.”
She frames the choice as one about the reach of government. “Government should protect the ability of people to make their own choices, raise their families, build their businesses and live their lives without government interference,” she said.
She casts the race as a decision voters should make with eyes open. “Voters have a clear choice between two very different approaches to government, and I’m asking for their vote to ensure the freedom and liberty they deserve,” she said. Whatever the outcome, she added, the job is the same. “When I’m elected, I represent everyone in HD16, not simply the people who supported me,” she said.
Affordability and a first bill
Affordability sits at the top of Haffley’s platform, and she is specific about where she would start. Not the income tax. Fees.
“Our legislature side steps TABOR by adding fees and surcharges without considering what those costs look like when they land on a family’s kitchen table,” she said. She wants a cumulative accounting of state-imposed costs before new fees are added, and she wants to eliminate fees she considers duplicative or obsolete. She calls herself “a strong supporter of TABOR” and says the answer to budget pressure is to “prioritize essential services, examine existing spending, eliminate waste and duplication, and grow the economy.”
If she is sworn in this January, she says her first bill would cut vehicle registration costs.
“I don’t want my first bill to be symbolic,” she said. “I want it to solve a real problem, earn bipartisan support, and make government more accountable to the people paying the bills.”
Parental rights and public safety
On parental rights, another central plank, Haffley starts from what she calls a simple principle, that parents are the primary decision-makers for their minor children absent abuse or neglect.
In practice, she said, that means curriculum transparency and parental notification and consent in schools, and keeping parents informed and involved in medical and mental-health decisions for their minor children, with narrow emergency exceptions that “shouldn’t swallow the rule.”
She has been endorsed by El Paso County Sheriff Joe Roybal, 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen, and the Fraternal Order of Police. Her first move on public safety, she said, would be to listen to the people doing the work and then focus on repeat and violent offenders, human trafficking, fentanyl, and school safety.
“We’ve reached a point where too often the conversation focuses more on the offender than the victim,” she said. “I want to restore balance.” Support for police, she added, is not the same as a claim of infallibility. “Supporting law enforcement doesn’t mean believing mistakes cannot be made,” she said.
On firearms, she said she would oppose new restrictions on law-abiding owners and revisit existing ones, naming SB25-003, the 2025 law regulating the sale of specified semiautomatic firearms, as an example. She also wants a single statewide standard so that gun owners do not face different rules crossing from one local jurisdiction to another.
The union vote, and the record she runs on
Haffley’s most consequential vote in office came in December 2024, when the D11 board voted not to renew its master agreement with the Colorado Springs Education Association, a contract dating to 1968. She serves as board vice president.
She casts the vote as an accountability decision, not an attack on teachers. “The goal was never to take anything away from teachers,” she said. “I spent 30 years in the classroom, and I’ve always wanted to make things better for educators.”
Her objection, she said, was structural.
The district held an exclusive contract with a private organization that was not accountable to voters, and, she said, roughly 40 percent of teachers were not CSEA members even though the agreement covered all certified educators. “I didn’t believe it was right for one organization to effectively speak for teachers who had made the choice not to belong to it,” she said.
She says pay has held up since. “Teachers have not only retained their benefits, but their salaries increased 10 percent over the last and current school years,” she said.
D11 markets its teacher compensation for 2026-27 as a 10 percent package, built from a 1 percent increase to base pay along with step and lane movement and a 7 percent non-recurring payment, which the district says is worth between $4,500 and $7,500 per teacher depending on steps, lanes, and eligibility.
A calling, not a title
Haffley describes the campaign as a calling, and returns, when asked what she wishes voters knew, to why she is seeking the seat.
“I’m not running for a title,” she said. “I’m running because I can do some good, and if the people of HD16 send me to the Capitol, I will never forget who sent me there.”
In a seat decided by a handful of votes two elections running, the doors she knocks may decide it again.