The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel: O'Dea rallies support during Grand Junction appearance

This article appeared in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

Joe O’Dea continues to try to amass the support needed to oust incumbent U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet from office.

O’Dea staged a rally Friday afternoon where a handful of supporters gathered outside the Old Mesa County Courthouse to hear him speak in downtown Grand Junction.

“I like O’Dea a lot,” said Marla Hernandez, a Grand Junction resident and self-described O’Dea supporter. “I think he is the type of guy who can help drain the swamp.”

The Republican candidate is challenging Bennet for his position, one the Democrat incumbent has held since 2009.

Climate and clean energy have been some of Bennet’s focal points since he was first elected. Straying from the mantra of other Republicans, like Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, O’Dea acknowledges the existence of climate change as well as human activity being a “significant cause.”

Still, O’Dea’s official stance is that the United States simply is not ready to phase out fossil fuels which, according to his website, is what “Joe Biden and Michael Bennet want.”

Some of the Republican candidate’s main issues center around debt reduction and national security. O’Dea blames the country’s economic volatility on financial mismanagement and irresponsibility on the part of the Democratic party, particularly President Joe Biden and Bennet.

“We don’t have a voice with what they’re spending our money on. They tax us, and they tax us and they tax us again. And they spend the money on stuff that I’m not too fired up about,” O’Dea said. “I don’t want to pay anybody to be on the couch. That’s not where I want my money to go. I want my money to go to infrastructure, I want it to go into our military, I want it to go into our cops. We should be backing our cops 100% of the time.”

Many GOP members have placed the blame for the country’s economic conditions on Democratic bureaucracy, particularly when it comes to gas prices, something O’Dea mentioned throughout the rally.

Gas prices have been high globally for months, driven in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We’re going to be choosing to eat or heat our homes. And a lot of us make enough to get through it, but there’s a lot of people that don’t. And that’s why I got in this race. I got in this race to be the voice of working Americans here in Colorado,” O’Dea said.

Despite being considered an underdog in the race, O’Dea feels confident that his constituents will put him into office.

When asked if he thinks he’ll win, O’Dea said, “I know I am. We’re working hard, we’ve built a huge coalition across the state. It’s good GOP, it’s good Trump Republicans. We’ve got a lot of unaffiliated. We’ve got a bunch of disenfranchised Democrats that are voting with Joe O’Dea because they know I’m going to Washington to be a voice for working Americans here in Colorado. So I’m excited to be your next U.S. Senator.”