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Smith for coroner

Tenure with office edges La Plata County incumbent over qualifed challenger

The contest deciding who will be La Plata County’s next coroner is one that will produce an excellent result, regardless of which candidate garners more votes. Beverly Begay, the unaffiliated challenger to Republican incumbent Jann Smith, has a résumé packed with relevant and interesting experience, while Smith has in her curriculum vitae 28 years on staff at the county coroner’s office, plus decades of service with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the town of Ignacio. She has served the county well and deserves re-election.

Begay is a relative newcomer to the area, having moved here in 2012 from Houston, where she spent 13 years working as a medical investigator for Harris County. Before that, she did similar work for the city of Albuquerque and the Navajo Nation.

She is interested in and experienced in forensic science and crime-scene investigation and is a skilled communicator. Begay would like to use the coroner’s office to educate and advocate for prevention. She would make a superb coroner.

Smith has been the county’s coroner since November 2012, when Carol Huser left the position. She had been deputy coroner for the 26 previous years. She knows the office extremely well, and has solid relationships with the relevant cooperating agencies including law enforcement throughout the county, the district attorney’s office, Colorado State Patrol, San Juan Basin Health Department, Mercy Regional Medical Center and many others. Her experience as the Southern Ute Tribe’s coroner and as a police officer for the town of Ignacio give Smith important connections to the broader county community.

Smith has been in La Plata County for 44 years and has quietly established a lengthy record of service to the area. Her tenure in the coroner’s office is one of professionalism and effectiveness and she has built key relationships across the county to ensure that the synergy continues. While Begay is eminently qualified to be the coroner, she would face the learning curve of being a newly elected official and relative recent arrival to the region. Smith does not face such a hurdle.

It is somewhat of a rarity that in the coroner race – an office for which there are very few state-dictated qualifications – two candidates with such exemplary experience appear on the same ballot.

Jann Smith, with deep roots in the community and the relationships those connections yield, has the edge in this election. Elect Smith as La Plata County coroner.



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