Kim McGahey’s “Welcome to Sacramento, Colorado” column is as hateful and misguided as the author himself.

I am one of the Summit County newcomers McGahey attempts to stereotype in his hate-filled column which fails to describe who I am, where I came from, and why I moved to Summit County.

McGahey’s column describes liberals flocking here after “abandoning over-populated, over-regulated and over-taxed blue states … and cities that they have made dirty, diseased and dangerous.” This certainly doesn’t describe me, and I suspect it doesn’t describe a single person who moved to this county as a full-time resident in the past year.

Many newcomers seem to be more like me: 30-something professionals from the Midwest with families looking for a higher quality of life than suburban America has to offer. While I am from Indiana, I came to Summit County with my family via a small town in a red state. More specifically, I moved here from Brentwood, Tennessee, shortly after my son’s school made national headlines for asking eighth graders to “create a list of expectations for your family’s slave” as part of a homework assignment, which also included “creating a political cartoon depicting immigrant labor.” This type of ignorance and intolerance in rural red America prompted my wife and me to raise our children elsewhere.

After a year here, we think we made the right decision moving to the blue state of Colorado. It’s great living in a place where residents get engaged and work to improve the community. We certainly don’t miss living in a rural red town that percolated white grievances and intolerance like McGahey’s column.