In the News

Brittany Pettersen's first year in Congress didn't start on time.

Like her fellow freshmen House members, the Lakewood Democrat was sworn into office four days late, once the chamber's majority Republicans finally elected a speaker after days of infighting before Kevin McCarthy won the position.

The California Republican, who has since resigned from Congress, lost the gavel nearly nine months later when a small group of GOP lawmakers voted to oust the speaker. That was followed by three more weeks of turmoil until Louisiana's Mike Johnson emerged as the GOP's consensus choice.

By year's end, the House had censured three Democrats, expelled George Santos and formally launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden — and not much else.

In 2023, Congress had its least productive year in decades, passing just 27 bills that were signed into law by the president, marking a modern legislative low point.

"This is historic dysfunction, and not the type of history-making that I was hoping for," Pettersen said with a weary chuckle in a recent interview with Colorado Politics at her Lakewood office.

She marveled that a year had passed since the former state legislator went to Washington.

"You're moving at such a high pace the entire time, and every minute of your day is accounted for, so somehow time goes by even faster," she said, an easy laugh peppering her words.

"It has to get better," she added. "And I'm going to keep doing my part, trying to make it better and being part of the solution."

Pettersen, who served three terms in the state House and one term in the state Senate, represents the Democratic-leaning 7th Congressional District, which covers Jefferson County and Broomfield, along with six mountain counties — Park, Lake, Chaffee, Teller, Fremont and Custer — and tiny slices of a few others. She replaced eight-term Democrat Ed Perlmutter, who didn't seek reelection.

The newly redrawn district was initially targeted by both major parties as as competitive, but as Election Day approached, Pettersen pulled away and won by a more-than-comfortable 15-point margin over political newcomer Erik Aadland, the Republican nominee.

Her district office, on the fourth floor of a bank building at the edge of Lakewood's Belmar shopping district, boasts a panoramic view. While the foothills obscure much of the district's terrain, she can see nearly the entire Front Range portion of the seat she represents — from Broomfield and Arvada at its northern boundary, south past Pikes Peak to Cañon City and Florence. Beyond the mountains lie Fairplay, Leadville, Salida and Westcliffe, making for one of the most picturesque congressional districts in the country.

"I want to just give a huge shout-out to my team, because I couldn't do any of this without them," she said, nodding to the aide who companied her and gesturing toward the reception area, which was staffed by an intern from Metropolitan State University of Denver, Pettersen's alma mater.

"We look for every single opportunity to advocate and get things passed, whether that's a must-pass bill that's going through and we're trying to get something on, and getting amendments to the floor to speak on, even if it's unlikely to pass but it really raises the concerns that we have," she said.

She credited her staff — including a handful of Perlmutter alums who stayed on — for plugging away behind the scenes while lawmakers mostly argued and spun their wheels.

"If you just watch what's happening on the TV, you can feel very hopeless," Pettersen said. "There's plenty of times where it is incredibly frustrating to be there, to watch the dysfunction, the lack of focus on things that matter to people, to actually addressing the issues that people are facing. But if you actually put your head down and focus on the work that you can do to make an impact, it's amazing what our office — outside of that — has been able to do."

That's everything from arranging a hectic pace of meetings with constituents, businesses and nonprofits throughout the sprawling district — "to better understand the barriers that they're facing, and to take that back to D.C. with tangible bill ideas," she said — to helping more than 1,000 constituents navigate Social Security, Medicaid and veterans benefits, and securing some $3 million from the IRS and other agencies.

Pettersen said she's often struck by the gulf between perceptions about what it means to be in Congress and the reality.

"These are not luxurious lives or lifestyles," she said with a laugh. "We are truly public servants — or, if you're doing it right, you are. I know myself and Yadira (Caraveo), having been freshmen coming in at the same time, being friends from the legislature — we are working every minute of the day, every day of our calendar is planned out. It is much different than the perception of what this job is."

Caraveo, a Thornton Democrat, won election in 2022 to represent Colorado's new 8th Congressional District, which stretches from the Adams County suburbs north of Denver up to Greeley.

Pettersen said serving as a state lawmaker prepared her to be effective in the House "from Day One." She's also one of just two freshman members named to what are known as exclusive committees, the chamber's most powerful panels — in Pettersen's case, the Financial Services Committee, where she sits on the Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance and is vice ranking member on the Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance and International Financial Institutions.

"So, I think it's the decade of experience in the legislature that has really made this transition a lot more smooth than I think it could have been— not that it was smooth, there's plenty of bumps along the road trying to figure this new life out," she said, adding that Perlmutter has been an invaluable friend and mentor.

Pettersen said with a wary smile that she hopes she'll have two things to celebrate on Jan. 19.

That's the day her son Davis Silverii — a regular visitor to the Capitol — turns 4, the same day the first batch of temporary federal spending resolutions passed at the end of last year are set to expire.

Whether Congress passes appropriations bills by the deadline or triggers a partial government shutdown on her son's birthday largely depends on the approach the House speaker takes, as some House Republicans are pushing for spending cuts that have no chance of passing the Senate.

"I know that speaker Johnson is very conservative and an ideologue, and his beliefs are scary to me, with the consequences that that can bring," Pettersen said. "But from people that have known and worked with him, I hope that we're able to come to some way to govern together, and that he will not move forward with some of these significant cuts that will hurt people in this district and in Colorado."

Pettersen said she's been encouraged by Johnson so far and hopes he won't be boxed into the same corner as McCarthy was when he relied on Democrats to pass legislation.

"I think it's to be determined. We're going to go through this together," she said. "Most people didn't really know who he was before this happened. I just hope, for our country, for all the people who work for our federal government and provide critical services throughout our community, that we bring back some stability. We need a long-term plan to address our budget crisis, and that has to include revenue shortage. You can't bring trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the most wealthy and only come to the table wanting to cut services for the most vulnerable people."

Pettersen said she worries that some of the most conservative GOP lawmakers might pursue the fiscal brinksmanship that led to a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating last spring, during a fight over the federal debt ceiling.

"I just hope that the Republicans can get their act together," she said. "We know that just with the rhetoric, even though we didn't go over the financial cliff, that we had a credit rating downgrade. We know that there are billions of dollars of consequences in economic investment in the United States because people don't know if the United States will pay our bills anymore. This is absolutely unacceptable. We have to be responsible. We have to govern. We have to come to the table and be adults."

Pettersen, who has been public about helping her mother, Stacy, battle a decades-long opioid addiction, steered sweeping state legislation to address the addiction and mental health crises. She's passed a couple of bills on the topic in the House and is hopeful they'll become law.

"I really tried to bring the structural and comprehensive change that we need, which means actually working with legislators on big bill packages to address this issue, and working in a comprehensive and dynamic way, instead of everyone bringing their one thing," she said.

It won't happen overnight in Congress, but Pettersen said she's making strides.

"A part of being a freshman is you're trying to prove yourself, that you actually know what you're talking about, that you're bringing good ideas, while building those relationships with your colleagues," she said.

"We'll see how next year goes. But I think that we're going to have a lot of wins by the time the term ends, if we get back on track and are not just creating chaos, and we get back to actually trying to find bipartisan solutions. And so that's where my hope is."