Calandra “Callie” Vargas is a profile of seeming contradictions.

She’s a very conservative millennial.

She describes herself as a country girl who helps take care of horses, but also a hipster who is a beer and coffee snob.

Vargas hopes to be the future of politics, replacing what she not-so-affectionately calls the “khaki-pants wearing men’s club.”

Vargas puts her GOP primary opponent for the 5th Congressional District, U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, in that camp of fashion faux pas.

She is unforgiving in her scorn of the almost 10-year incumbent.

“Doug Lamborn is the worst. He’s just the living worst,” Vargas said. “People need to know that Doug Lamborn is the worst. He makes Christians look stupid. He makes Republicans look mean, and he doesn’t offer solutions.”

Vargas, 32, is well-known in some Republican circles because of her work as a campaign consultant and a legislative aide at the Colorado Capitol for a senator from Grand Junction.

But she was relatively unknown among the hundreds of delegates at the 5th Congressional District assembly when she made her impassioned plea to get the GOP nomination for the six-county district.

Vargas wowed the crowd and won top line on the ballot over Lamborn. She nearly kept the incumbent from getting his name on the ballot, too.

But in the two-and-a-half months since then, it’s unclear whether Vargas has been successful in getting her name out to voters.

Vargas has a couple of things helping her.

First, she’s a hometown candidate who went to Lewis-Palmer High School, while her father was stationed at Fort Carson.

A true Army brat, she spent time abroad in her formative years, moving to Europe when she was 7-years-old.

Now she lives in Black Forest with her mother. She has been unemployed since she had to quit her job as a legislative aide to run for Congress.

Asked if she considers herself a member of the boomerang generation – kids who came back home after college, Vargas says she’s wrestled with that.

“I could live on my own. It’s either a crappy apartment or I live in a beautiful place where I can take care of horses,” Vargas said. “I help take care of my mom. I help pay bills. In order for her to keep the house that she loves, I help her pay the bills.”

Vargas went to college at Oral Roberts University and later got a master’s degree from Regent University in Virginia. Both are private Christian schools. She studied abroad in Ghana and Israel.

Later she went to Switzerland, China and Argentina on mission trips.

Those experiences, she said, have helped her have a more empathetic worldview.

She was an unpaid intern for Lamborn in Washington, D.C., for a time.

She later filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, something she said was sad and hard. She said going broke taught her that despite the best intentions, sometimes things don’t work out as planned.

In Congress, she would work to improve the economy to help those trying to make ends meet.

“There is such a huge regulatory burden on small businesses,” she said. “The government is making more than they are just on the fines and fees. What can I do to peel back those ridiculous regulations that do nothing but fill the IRS bank accounts.”

Vargas advocates for doing away with the IRS and going to a flat-tax system, similar to what Ted Cruz proposed when he was running for president. That proposal would impose a 10 percent tax across the board, with a sliding scale of tax exemption.

For example, Cruz’s website says under his plan a family of four wouldn’t pay taxes on the first $36,000 of income.

She also said she’d focus on veteran’s issues, trying to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Vargas said by the end of the primary election on Tuesday, she’ll have raised and spent about $20,000.

“I didn’t want to spend this whole two months fundraising. I wanted to be out meeting people,” Vargas said.

Her opponent has raised almost a half-million dollars.

“It’s just a shame that if he wins this election it’s because he bought it with D.C. PAC money,” Vargas said. “It’s because people don’t vote. The amount of turnout is abysmal.”

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Contact Megan Schrader: 286:0644

Portrait Photography Colorado Springs

John Vandervalk