Working-class mind-set fueled Duran’s historic rise to House Speaker

At a Democratic National Committee meeting late last year in Denver, party leaders took a brief break from diagnosing what went wrong to listen to a few success stories.
One of them was Crisanta Duran.
At age 36, the rising star of the Colorado Democratic Party had just been elected the state’s first Latina Speaker of the House. Colorado, she reminded party leaders, had just voted for Hillary Clinton, elected Michael Bennet to the U.S. Senate and expanded the Democratic majo