By Ernest Luning 01/30/2023 via ColoradoPolitics.com
JoyAnn Ruscha was sworn in on Jan. 10 as a member of the Regional Transportation District’s 15-member board of directors as the newly elected representative of District B, which covers Northeast Denver, including Park Hill, Central Park, Montbello, Green Valley Ranch, Denver International Airport and parts of Aurora and unincorporated Adams County.
Ruscha lost a bid for the seat four years ago but had the ballot to herself in November and won election as the only certified write-in candidate, after the incumbent decided against seeking another four-year term.
In her day job, Ruscha is director of government relations and grants at ARC Thrift Stores and volunteers with the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition to advocate for policies that advance residents with disabilities.
A veteran political communications and public policy strategist, Ruscha has been an advisor to Democrats Phil Weiser, Julie Gonzales, Robert Rodriguez, Eva Henry and Mike Merrifield, and worked for the Denver auditor’s office and the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters. During a stint as a lobbyist at the State Capitol, she worked on a sweeping public transit bill for the 2020 session with Rodriguez, state Rep. Dominique Jackson and former legislators Jack Tate and Colin Larson. While that bill didn’t make it to the governor’s desk, elements of it have been included in subsequently signed laws.
Ruscha and her son Judah, a senior at Northfield High School, live with their rescue dog Max in Denver’s Central Park neighborhood.
Colorado Politics: You took an unusual route to your seat on the RTD board, as the sole write-in candidate after the incumbent declined at the 11th hour to seek another term?
JoyAnn Ruscha: It was a couple of days after petition signatures were due when folks realized that Director (Shontel) Lewis wasn’t running again for RTD. I had gotten a call from a colleague who said that the seat was open and that Mayor Hancock would be appointing the next director, and I thought, “Wait, we could have recruited a disability advocate to run for the board.” So I looked at statute and checked in with the secretary of state, and it turned out that the write-in affidavit wasn’t due for a few more days, so I tried to recruit somebody to run for the board – I think we had maybe 36 or 40 hours to decide who was going to run – and my friends encouraged me to give it a go again.
So I spoke with my son, since I needed Judah’s endorsement first, and after Judah made me promise that I would not spend our dinners talking about the RTD budget, then they approved. They also joked that because they were going to college this fall, it would be nice if I had a new hobby that was not my teenager. So I went ahead and filed the affidavit for a write-in. After the deadline, I was notified that another gentleman was also running – he had pulled a petition but didn’t return the requisite number of signatures and was doing write-in instead – so initially, it was two of us. And maybe a month into it, he decided that he was not going to run after all, that he didn’t have the capacity to run a campaign. And so then I was the only certified write-in.
CP: Why did you decide to run for the board?
Ruscha: It was the same reason why I was trying to recruit a candidate – I wanted somebody who would be an advocate for people with disabilities and be an advocate for equity. I used to work in Montbello – I taught at the original Montbello High School before it shut down – and I saw firsthand what inequitable transit policies did to our students and to our families. I also am a parent of someone who relies on RTD, which means I also rely on RTD. Judah has ridden RTD since the age of 11 and has depended on it for school, and for the longest time, our schedules just lived and died by the RTD schedule. So RTD was a large part of my life before I ran the first time, and even though my son is older and sometimes rides with friends vs. taking the bus, they’re still a pretty high-frequency user.
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