Republican Mike Samson has served as a Garfield County Commissioner for 16 years. He is running again to represent District 3. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Get to know Samson’s opponent, Democrat Steven Arauza, here.
The Sopris Sun: What have been the Garfield County commissioners’ two best decisions in the past four years? And how were these decisions in the best interest of the county?
Mike Samson: The Flying M decision was tough because we need housing. There were a couple things that I really wrestled with. The number one thing that stood out to me was the traffic. The second thing was teacher housing and the cost for rent. I’m saying to myself, teachers aren’t going to be able to afford this.
A super good [decision] was to get the Center of Excellence at the airport. [It’s] main purpose is to do experimentation and investigation and research into fighting fires, specifically, nighttime firefighting.
Another tough one was the Ascendigo decision. Very controversial. I mean, good people with good intentions. It is a personal note to me because I have a grandson who is severely autistic. I try to get along with people. I try to work with people. But sometimes you gotta be a tough S. O. B. I heard a guy say once, it’s hard to tell your enemies “no,” but it’s really hard to tell your friends “no.”
Every decision I make, I ask “the guy up there” to help me. And I always, in the end, try to say, what’s the best for Garfield County?
What issue in the county do you think needs more attention?
A lot of people come before us with two concerns and to me, they’re intertwined: economy and housing. I want to have the economy improve in a lot of ways. One is good paying jobs, which brings me to natural gas. I’m a proponent of natural gas, always have been, always will be. Those people working in the natural gas field made good money.
When I was on the Rifle City Council back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, we had the Exxon bust. Black Sunday. May 2, 1982. You know what [Exxon] did? They had the morning shift coming in to work. They hired private security guards and they told people at the gate, turn around, go home, you’ll receive your last check in the mail, you no longer have a job. It screwed up the economy from Grand Junction to Glenwood Springs. Parachute was devastated. Rifle was devastated, the whole nine yards.
From 2008, for the first four, six years, did Garfield County have a lot of money? Yes, we did. Why? The tax revenues coming in from natural gas. We don’t have the money we used to have.
How can Garfield County diversify in light of the fact that natural gas is in a slump right now?
What have we been doing out at the airport? That was my pet project. I grew up with that. I remember going out to that airport and seeing those planes on that dirt runway and just being amazed. The main thing they did then was crop dusting. Slowly but surely, we’ve gone from the mom-and-pop airport to where we’re at right now, but you ain’t seen nothing yet.
I don’t want just hangars; I would like to see many things come in there. Garfield County’s got land out there that we could sell to “Company X” that’s going to manufacture whatever widget it is. Maybe somebody would come in there and build something that the aviation industry needs. Good paying jobs so people can have nice houses.
Garfield County is now a non-sanctuary county. You drafted that resolution. Why?
This is how I look at immigration: I don’t want anybody to starve. I don’t want anybody to freeze. We said “no” to the $50,000 that Carbondale requested of us. And that’s what I told them, I said, guys, I got homeless, I got vets, I got old people that are not making it. I got young families. I can’t give $50,000 to you guys to take care of people that just came here when I got all these other people to take care of.
I think one of the major problems in the United States right now is illegal immigration. There’s millions of them and that’s draining resources.*
I take my little 5-year old grandson [to pre-school]. About a month after we passed the resolution, a Latino lady driving this nice pickup rolled down the window and said, “Commissioner Samson, you did the right thing, passing that non-sanctuary status.” Then, she says, “The problem is the people that have come here legally and got their status and have their jobs and are paying their taxes, don’t like it.”
You have millions of people coming in and just gimme, gimme, gimme. We cannot continue to do this. You’re overloading the system.
How do you approach working with someone whose political views differ from yours?
I try to get them to understand that you’re not going to get everything you want or I’m not. But hopefully we can compromise. I have found in my lifetime, as a high school teacher, as an administrator, as a county commissioner, and all the boards I’ve sat on, being a father of seven, a grandfather of 21, there’s all kinds of views. Don’t ever think you’re always right.
Anything else you’d like to add?
My opponent Stephen Arauza is a different guy than Mike Samson. Educate yourself about where he’s coming from because his vision and the way he wants to do things in many ways will be different from mine. Uneducated, uninformed voters drive me crazy. *According to the Pew Research Center, the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States grew to 11 million in 2022.