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Boulder County Democratic state Rep. Tracey Bernett resigned from office, effective Monday, so she could focus on fighting criminal charges related to her candidacy, her lawyers announced.
Bernett was charged in November with attempting to influence a public servant, forgery, providing false information about a residence, perjury and procuring false registration. The charges stem from her allegedly lying about her primary residence in her 2022 re-election bid.
Bernett was first elected in 2020, and listed an address in unincorporated Boulder County, just south of Longmont, as her primary residence. During the 2021 redistricting, that residence was drawn into a district that non-partisan analysts gave a slight Republican tilt. In her 2022 re-election bid, she listed her primary address as being in Louisville, and in a district with a distinct Democratic advantage. She overwhelmingly won re-election this November.
Investigators with the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office determined she did not actually live at that address but rented an apartment there to run for office. She is scheduled for an arraignment hearing Feb. 10.
Bernett is resigning to address those charges “rather than compromising the policy initiatives she deems important” to her constituents and the state, according to a statement from Denver law firm Stimson LaBranche Hubbard. She named climate change and air quality as chief among her priorities and that she’d continue to fight for them.
“I am proud of what I have accomplished in my time in office and want to thank all the people who have supported and worked with me in moving Colorado forward,” Bernett said in a statement.
The Colorado Legislature begins its 2023 session Monday. Democrats hold a supermajority in the state House of Representatives and are one vote shy of that threshold in the state Senate. Bernett’s replacement will be chosen through a vacancy committee.
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