STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — Former Routt County Commissioner and current Democratic State Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush of Steamboat Springs has announced plans to challenge Republican Congressman Scott Tipton for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District seat in the 2018 election.

Mitsch Bush was first elected to the statehouse in 2012. She currently serves as chairwoman of the House Transportation Committee and vice chair of the House Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resources Committee. During her tenure at the state Capitol she has consistently emphasized her track record as a legislator who has been able to work across the aisle with her Republican counterparts.

She has already taken a jab at Tipton on her web page over the current effort to replace the current federal health care act, writing, “We need a representative in Congress who actually … reads a bill and the CBO score before voting on it, genuinely tries to understand the implications for us — how that policy will affect us, and cares enough to ask us what we think.”

Tipton defeated Democratic challenger and former state legislator Gail Schwartz of Crested Butte in the 2016 election. Tipton also defeated Democratic incumbent John Salazar in 2010. District voters, who span Colorado’s Western Slope, plus Pueblo, Custer and Huerfano counties on the Front Range, have voted for Republicans in the last five presidential elections.

Mitsch Bush’s Colorado House District 26 comprises Routt and Eagle counties, where registered Democrats out-number Republicans.

She wrote on her web page that in her view economic and education inequalities have hampered residents of the 3rd District from sharing in an era of “unprecedented economic growth.”