Abel J. Tapia is an American politician who served as a member of the

Colorado House of Representatives The Colorado House of Representatives is the lower house of the Colorado General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Colorado. The House is composed of 65 members from an equal number of constituent districts, with each distr ...

from 1999 to 2003 and the

Colorado Senate The Colorado Senate is the upper house of the Colorado General Assembly, the state legislature of the US state of Colorado. It is composed of 35 members elected from single-member districts, with each district having a population of about 123, ...

from 2003 to 2010. Tapia left the Senate when he was appointed director of the

Colorado Lottery The Colorado Lottery is run by the state government of Colorado. It is a member of the Multi-State Lottery Association(MUSL). The Colorado Lottery began on January 24, 1983, initially selling only scratch tickets. Its first drawing took place on ...

Career

Prior to his time in the General Assembly, Tapia served as elected member of the District-60 school board and as the President of the Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce. On March 28, 2014 Tapia announced his candidacy for

Colorado's 3rd congressional district Colorado's 3rd congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of Colorado. It takes in most of the rural Western Slope in the state's western third portion, with a tendril in the south taking in some of the southern porti ...

of the

United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the Lower house, lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States Senate, Senate being ...

. He was defeated by republican incumbent

Scott Tipton Scott Randall Tipton (born November 9, 1956) is an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 2011 to 2021. A Republican, he was previously a member of the Colorado House of Representatives from 2009 to 2011. Tipton was f ...

. In 2020, Tapia was a candidate for the

Pueblo County Pueblo County ( or ) is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 168,162. The county seat is Pueblo. The county was named for the historic city of Pueblo which took its name from the Spanish lan ...

Commission, running on a platform of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

economy recovery, improving Pueblo's existing jail, supporting small businesses. However, he was defeated in the June 2020 primary election by incumbent Garrison Ortiz.

References

External links

Colorado General Assembly - Abel Tapia official government website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tapia, Abel Democratic Party Colorado state senators Colorado State University Pueblo alumni Hispanic and Latino American state legislators in Colorado Democratic Party members of the Colorado House of Representatives 1949 births Living people People from Pueblo, Colorado