Matt Grubesic Enters the District 1 Commissioner Race as a Write-In

A finance veteran, economics graduate and author who spent two years on the Ford Amphitheater noise dispute is running for the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners on growth, water and evacuation capacity. His name will not be printed on the November ballot, and a vote for him requires writing it in.

Matt Grubesic is running for county commissioner in District 1, the seat covering northern El Paso County — the north and north-east of Colorado Springs, the Air Force Academy, and the unincorporated communities of Woodmoor, Gleneagle and Black Forest. Tri-Lakes readers should note the boundary: Woodmoor sits in District 1, but the incorporated towns of Monument and Palmer Lake do not. Under the redistricting plan adopted in 2023 they are in District 3. He will not appear on the printed ballot. Voters who want him must fill in the write-in oval and print his name on the write-in line.

He filed his affidavit of intent on July 6th, ten days inside the statutory deadline, which is what makes those votes countable. Write-in campaigns that miss it produce ballots nobody tallies.

The seat is open. Holly Williams, who has held it since 2019, took the oath for her second four-year term in January 2023 and is term-limited.

Grubesic, who moved his family to Colorado Springs in 2002, describes a 40-year career in finance and economics that began as a runner at the Chicago Board of Trade and led through trading and mortgage banking. He holds an economics degree from UCCS and co-wrote Boom and Bust: Killing the American Dream with the historian Mike Crane. On his campaign site he says he did not set out to run and did so after residents asked him to; the site carries the banner “no developer donations” and names his committee as Friends of Matt Grubesic.

His platform sets out six priorities: public safety and wildfire evacuation, responsible growth, quiet communities, parks and open space, government integrity, and lower taxes. The thread running through them is sequencing — that roads, water and emergency response be demonstrated before approval rather than after. “If we can’t get people out safely, we shouldn’t keep packing more people in,” his growth page argues. He writes that his family evacuated during the Black Forest fire, in which the National Weather Service estimates 38,000 people were displaced.

Where He Stands

Grubesic answered the Integrity Matters candidate questionnaire in full. He opposes a Buc-ee’s travel center at the I-25 and County Line site, writing that “Monument Hill is the wrong location” and that the region “already voted against this development.” He opposes developing the Karman Line parcel in the unincorporated county. He would make the county’s water-adequacy findings binding rather than advisory, supports mandatory wildfire evacuation modeling before approvals, and wants a temporary moratorium on data centers, adding: “I am against all data centers.” He supports using the county’s 1041 powers more actively and opposes debt mechanisms that bypass a public vote.

On noise permits, the questionnaire asked whether he supports restoring local governments’ authority to set standards “as the failed 2026 state legislation proposed.” He checked no, consistent with his campaign against that legislation: his explanation calls SB26-098 “a horrible bill that we defeated” and adds, “I support Quiet Communities.” The measure, supported by the Colorado Municipal League and opposed by residents near the Ford Amphitheater, passed the Senate and was postponed indefinitely by a House committee in April. On homelessness, he checked yes on making Housing First the county’s primary response; his written answer calls the issue “a failure at all levels of government in America.”

The Record He Is Running On

Grubesic’s central claim is that over the past four years “approximately 360 development and zoning applications have been approved while only two were denied.”

The totals are close to this newspaper’s own reconstruction, though the periods are not identical: our review runs from November 2021 through June 2026 — four years and eight months — and found 357 matters decided, 355 approved and two denied. The two were a homeowner’s request to split five acres and Xcel Energy’s regional power line. Neither was a developer’s project.

The record has since moved. On July 23rd the commissioners denied both Highway 83 and Walker Road rezonings, 3–2 — by our reckoning the board’s first denial of a developer application in that span, though the denial leaves several routes back open. Williams voted to deny.

That hearing supplies the grievance Grubesic returns to most often. Shortly before it began, residents were told their speaking time would be cut from three minutes to 90 seconds and that time could not be pooled, leaving opponents to rework a long-planned presentation over the lunch break. The board’s governing resolution sets no numerical speaking time and creates no right to pooled time, so the change broke no rule; it did upend the plan. He calls the treatment “disgraceful.” “Residents deserve more than 90 seconds at a podium,” he writes. “They deserve a voice at the table.”

On water, Grubesic argues the Buc-ee’s proposal has been sized on stale traffic. The original analysis, he writes, projected about 1.1 million gallons a month from roughly 11,000 vehicles a day; applying that rate to 27,000 vehicles on weekdays and 40,000 on weekend days, he arrives at roughly 3 million gallons a month. The arithmetic follows from those inputs, but his site does not say where they come from, and this newspaper could not reproduce them. Published counts from an existing Buc-ee’s describe multi-day totals — about 27,000 vehicles across two weekdays and 42,000 across a three-day weekend — which work out to roughly 13,800 a day and, by his own method, about 1.4 million gallons a month. The linear assumption behind either figure is itself untested.

He also cites the hydrogeologist Daniel Niemela, whose August 2025 analysis found Palmer Lake’s Arapahoe Well A-2 had dropped 369 feet since 2001, an average of about 17 feet a year. That analysis was prepared on behalf of two opponents of the project, Ian Griffis and John Malone, rather than commissioned by the town as a neutral study. The opposition group Tri-Lakes Preservation has separately published its own analysis of how the project should be classified.

The Field

Ryan Graham, a retired firefighter and Colorado Springs real-estate agent who served six years on the Monument Academy board, five of them as its president, won the June 30th Republican primary over Lindsay Moore, 15,384 votes to 9,027 — 63% to 37%. He also sits on the Fourth Judicial District Community Corrections Authority. His campaign material is addressed largely to state politics, promising to defend conservative values and to direct tax dollars to roads and public safety.

Gavin Rainey, unopposed for the Democratic nomination, calls himself an independent Democrat “beholden not to donors or party insiders.” He has served on boards and committees for Colorado Springs, Academy District 20 and both parties. His stated priorities are protecting county services through budget cuts, ending county cooperation with ICE, broadening who sits on county boards, opposing large developments that drain public resources, and giving away part of the commissioner’s salary. Asked what the race overlooks, he named candidates’ funding and their “willingness to be open and answer questions rather than give vague or non answers.”

In a county this reliably Republican, the primary ordinarily decides the seat. Through June 21st, Graham had raised about $57,200 and separately lent his campaign $25,000; by this newspaper’s classification of the donors he disclosed, roughly two-thirds came from homebuilder and Realtor political committees and real-estate figures. Rainey reported $70 over the same period. Grubesic’s site directs readers to the Integrity Matters survey page, saying Graham “refused to answer” it; Integrity Matters’ own page states only that Graham did not respond.

For four and a half years the board approved all but two of the 357 land-use matters it decided, and neither refusal touched a developer’s project. On July 23rd it refused one, by a single vote, with Williams in the majority. That vote is the seat now on offer.

Grubesic’s case is that decisions in El Paso County are made before the public arrives. In a county where June’s primary usually ends the argument, he is asking voters to reopen it in November — by hand, one name at a time.

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s own coverage: Permission Granted: A County Board That Has Never Said No — the land-use tally Grubesic’s claim tracks · At Highway 83 and Walker Road, a Test of the County’s Own Rules and After the Denial — the July 23rd vote and what it leaves open · The BOCC Hearing Story Isn’t the Vote, It’s the Community — the 90-second limit · Board Games — how commissioners are elected and what they control · Follow the Money and The Final Countdown — the money in both 2026 races · Live Results — the June 30th primary · Woodmoor, Explained — the district’s largest community · Buc-ee’s Appeals and Call It a Truck Stop — the application now before the board.

Candidates: mattgrubesic.com · electryangraham.com · gavin4elpaso.com.

Public record: Grubesic’s completed questionnaire · Integrity Matters candidate surveys · El Paso County District 1 Commissioner · 2023 Redistricting Commission final report · official 2026 primary results · Colorado Secretary of State, write-in candidates · SB26-098 · Niemela analysis · NWS, 2013 Colorado fires · KRDO District 1 candidate questionnaires.

Methodology

Grubesic’s positions come from his completed Integrity Matters questionnaire, read in full. His selections are recorded as filled radio buttons and are not recoverable from the document’s text layer, so each was read from the rendered page images; the copy this newspaper worked from is the same file Integrity Matters links publicly, printed from the form owner’s administrative view. His noise-permit and homelessness selections are reported alongside his written explanations, quoted directly. Biographical detail and policy claims are from his campaign site and are attributed. District boundaries are from the redistricting plan adopted by El Paso County in August 2023 and effective from the 2024 election cycle, which places the Air Force Academy wholly in District 1 and the towns of Monument and Palmer Lake in District 3. The land-use tally is this newspaper’s reconstruction of every matter reaching a final vote from November 2021 through June 2026 — 357 in all, 355 approved — excluding items withdrawn, tabled or continued; it covers a longer period than the four years Grubesic cites and does not include the July 23rd denial, which falls outside it. The traffic and water figures are Grubesic’s; his site does not identify their source, and the alternative daily average shown here is derived from published multi-day counts at an existing Buc-ee’s. The classification of Graham’s contributions as development-industry money is this newspaper’s, not a finding of the state’s TRACER system.