A doctor, not a politician

Working to ensure opportunity, fairness, and a brighter future
for all Coloradans

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Dr. Alexis, her partner, Isele, and their dog stand in front of a lake at sunset. Photo by Kaytlyn Perez Photography.

Photo by Kaytlyn Perez Photography

Meet Alexis

Hi! My name is Alexis Hoffkling. I am a family doctor, a foster mom, a proud union member, and your candidate for Colorado House District 23.

I’m a Colorado native thrilled to have made my forever home in Wheat Ridge, CO with my partner Isele. I grew up the daughter of an educator and a children’s lawyer.  Before medical school, I worked low-wage manual labor, sorting through construction site dumpsters for recyclable materials. My love of science and commitment to compassionate service led me to medical school, which I was able to do with the help of my partner’s veteran’s disability benefits.

As ‘Dr Alexis,’ I am blessed to care for patients of all walks of life and am honored by the trust my patients give me. My role as a family doctor has shown me the many ways government programs can protect and uplift those who need it, as well as the ways government and policy can hurt the people they are supposed to help. I carry their stories with me: The teenager learning to love herself even though the president of the United States tells her she is an abomination. The single mom leaving an abusive relationship, who was able to keep her kids housed and fed with public assistance while she got her feet back under her. The middle-schooler hospitalized for asthma because of climate-change-strengthened wildfires. The eight-year-old afraid to go to school because of gun violence and fear that his parents will have been taken by ICE when he returns home.

I fight every day to improve my patients’ lives. Their stories demonstrate that to properly address the problems and opportunities that shape our lives, we must look beyond the walls of the hospital, and into the halls of power. 

So, in response to urging from patients, coworkers, neighbors, friends, and my family, I am answering their call to be an advocate for sensible policy at the state Capitol. I will bring my commitment to everyday people, hard work, and real-world thinking to the Colorado legislature, where I will fight for everyone’s right to a better world.

Issues

Healthcare is a Right

No one should have to die because of their financial limitations.

No one should have to be financially ruined because they get sick.

Every single human being deserves access to quality healthcare.

The best role of government is to reduce barriers to realizing healthcare for all, and to ensure that business and profit motives are able to foster innovation. Government must also safeguard against the risks of mixing profit-seeking with the project of meeting our individual human rights as patients.

We Deserve an Economy that Works for Everyone

A thriving society is one in which anyone who works hard can have a safe and comfortable life.

Our economy overall is prospering, but not everyone gets to see the benefits.  We deserve an economy that works for all of us, not one that forces some of us to live on the edge while working for the wealth accumulation of others.  I believe in strong labor unions, living wages, and everyone’s right to job security as they navigate personal and family illness, disability, and having children.

Colorado is a gorgeous, thriving, and welcoming place. No wonder so many people want to live here!  And our progressive culture and policies are part of why this is such a desirable place to live.  But this comes with a risk. If we follow the path that New York and California and Illinois and other blue states have followed, and that we have begun to move toward, living here will end up being a luxury good - great if you have the money to afford it, but unobtainable to most regular people.  This in turn leads to homelessness, long commutes, and ultimately people who love living here being forced to move away. 

The alternative path is clear: we must remove barriers to building housing, so that supply can meet demand (and keep prices affordable), and we must contain price gouging in the meantime, and encourage owners of empty housing units to put those units back into the supply pool.  Hardworking Coloradans should be able to afford to rent or buy homes in the communities where they live and work. 

Our Children are the Future

Investing in our kids is essential - for each child as an individual, and for our state at large.

Teachers are the heroes building the foundation for the future we all want.

Public schools have borne the brunt of state budget constraints for too long. We need to increase, not decrease, our investments in education. And we need to empower schools to further break out of one-size-fits-all education, so that we can give each child what they need, and so that we can better move toward the education system we will want in another generation.

Today’s kids are facing a whole new era of challenges than we did a generation ago.  Teen pregnancy and drunk driving may be down, but social-media-fueled mental illness is way up, and only projected to get worse. Unless policymakers step in soon, the relentless attention-hacking of AI-powered social media algorithms will hurt countless more children, in ways we will still be unpacking decades from now. We must set strong guardrails. Inaction means letting big tech CEOs shape the world our kids grow up in, and we know they care about profit, not the wellbeing of our children.

We Must Anticipate Problems Before they are Crises

As a primary care doctor, I deeply appreciate the importance of thinking ahead, anticipating and staving off problems before they become crises. Every day, we save lives and prevent suffering by identifying and treating pre-cancerous problems before they become life-threatening and by treating the risk factors for strokes and heart attacks long before they cause us pain, so that they never end up hurting us. This both prevents suffering, and saves money, because cancer and strokes and such are quite expensive! 

Similarly, we need leaders who not only address the problems of today but also look toward the horizon. What are the hazards and opportunities the coming decades might throw at us? Will our society be positioned to avoid the harms and seize the positive possibilities? These are just a few of the hazards we must be looking out for, and getting ahead of:

  • Automation and AI affecting our economy and labor markets

  • Water scarcity

  • Climate change

  • Federal normalization of corruption and political persecution

  • Demographic changes and rising healthcare costs

Q&A with Alexis

  • Not currently! In fact, there is no physician in the entire Colorado General Assembly.

    Many bills every year directly address healthcare in Colorado.  And a great many more direct policies that have a direct or indirect influence on the health of Coloradans. Healthcare spending is one of the biggest expenses in the state budget, and in many families’ budgets. And yet there is currently no physician in the Colorado State Legislature. When legislation is being crafted and debated, we need someone at the table who understands the complex realities of healthcare, someone who will be a relentless voice on behalf of the health of every one of us.

    Let’s get Dr. Alexis in the House!

  • I attended medical school at UC San Francisco, during which I also earned a Master’s degree in Health and Medical Science at UC Berkeley.  After that, I completed my family medicine specialty training at Kaiser Permanente, in Santa Rosa, California, followed by an advanced fellowship in caring for people with  high-risk pregnancies and childbirth in Oak Park, Illinois.

    These days, I practice at a safety-net community health center that is part of Denver Health. As a family doctor, I care for everyone, both in the clinic and in the hospital. I provide primary care for all ages, deliver babies, and care for people with serious illnesses in the hospital. I also spend a lot of time teaching medical students and residents.

  • Yup! I am a trans woman. It’s not central to my campaign, but it’s also relevant to who I am. As a trans person in a queer relationship, I deeply appreciate how important activism and lawmaking are, to establish and protect our civil rights. Not just for LGBTQ Americans, but for all marginalized communities.  And we can see so clearly now, how the fights for civil rights, acceptance, and belonging are not battles of the past that have been won, but ongoing struggles that must be advanced every day.

  • As a foster parent, and host-mom to an exchange student, I have been blessed with the opportunity to nurture and care for several young people in recent years. Due to their legal and ethical rights to privacy as minors, I have chosen not to publicly share photos or details about them. My spouse Isele, and dog Cubit, however, are delighted to be seen in public with me. 

  • If we want our government to work for the people, not wealthy special interests, then we need representatives who are brought to office by the people, not the 1%. So, you can: