January 12, 2017 02:29 PM UTC

Uncut: Speaker Crisanta Duran's Opening Day Remarks

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• by: Colorado Pols

With so much political news flooding the proverbial zone this week, we wanted to make sure that one particular bit of history didn’t get lost in the shuffle. Yesterday, Colorado formally elected the state’s first-ever Latina Speaker of the House, Crisanta Duran. The Denver Post’s Brian Eason reports:

New House Speaker Crisanta Duran kicked off the 71st Session of the Colorado House of Representatives with a call to keep “Washington-style politics” — marked by cynicism, divisiveness and broken promises — out of Colorado.

“We must rise above ugly politics to forge a new path forward,” said Duran, a fourth-term Democrat from Denver. “The people of Colorado are depending on us to make a difference beyond the talking points, the Twitter feeds and the headlines.”

…[I]n her opening remarks, Duran paid tribute to the leaders that came before her, recognizing the first Latino Speaker, Ruben Valdez, and her predecessor, former Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, before turning to her own story — that of a sixth-generation Coloradan from working class roots.

“It’s the American story,” she said, “but not one that we can take for granted.”

Watch Speaker Duran’s remarks in their entirety above.