By Justin Crawford

Campaigning in Arvada last summer, Jessica Corry, center, holds a report she issued containing property-rights abuse allegations in the city.

Like many young graduates of the School, Jessica Corry ('01) was on the state election circuit last fall. But unlike most of her peers, she was a candidate for office, not a reporter covering the race.

"In a district of more than 100,000 people, we came just a few thousand votes shy of winning, making it the closest race in the state," she said.

Corry, 26, lives in Arvada, which is in Colorado's Senate District 19. She ran as a Republican against a two-term Democratic incumbent. She said she had no regrets about losing the race.

"The campaign was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life," she said.

Now Corry splits her time between various projects. She is the director of the Campus Accountability Project at the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, and is a policy analyst for the Claremont Institute. Her opinion pieces have appeared in Colorado newspapers, including The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, and currently can be heard every Sunday night at 5 p.m. on KNUS 710 AM in Denver.

"I'm also working on completing my first book, a critique of the culture of race in higher education," she said.

Together with her husband, Robert Corry, a Denver civil-rights attorney, Corry said she enjoys contributing to the ongoing debate over political issues affecting state universities such as CU. The two recently co-authored an analysis for the Claremont Institute calling for the termination of CU Professor Ward Churchill.

"When I see something I don't like, whether in the state legislature, higher education or elsewhere, I get to speak out on it and help shape public opinion," she said. "I cannot imagine a more rewarding daily challenge."
Though she recognized the irony of her words – she was trained as a reporter, after all – Corry said her greatest difficulty is dealing with the press.

"It's hard when you know a reporter has a bias or you see a story that has mistakes," she said. "My first job out of college was as a press secretary in the U.S. Senate; in Washington, I saw that a lot of politicians and public officials were scared of reporters."

But thanks to her formal journalism training, Corry said she knows how to handle that problem.

"The skills I learned as a student, including writing on deadline, speaking in sound bites, writing press releases and framing issues, are something I still use every single day."

Corry said she owes her professional tenacity to her grandfather, Albert Weeks. He and her grandmother started a newspaper in Virginia with little more than a printing press. She said their personal determination and subsequent success inspired her.

"I brought this grass-roots vision of journalism with me to the J-school, where I was lucky to have many professors – Vicky Sama, Lee Hood, and Alan Kirkpatrick – who made their students believe that despite the difficult odds against us in the industry, success was ours if we worked hard enough to achieve it."

She said she has kept in touch with one longtime friend and fellow alum, Adrianne Brassell ('01). The two grew up together in Arvada, and they were "partners in crime" in Newsteam, she said. After graduating with honors from CU, Corry earned a master's degree in government from Johns Hopkins University.

She and Robert were married in August 2003, and they are expecting their first child in June. jessicapeckcorry@yahoo.com