Tyler Allcorn wanted to ‘do more.’ So, he’s running for Congress

Allcorn, 37 and married with no children, said he was actively looking for another path to serve his country — especially making a difference in the lives of military veterans. He works for Shift.org, a group that helps armed services veterans transition from the military to new careers, a job he gravitated to partly because he believes they are given short shrift by policymakers in Washington, D.C. And that’s putting it mildly.

Like many veterans who have spoken to the Washington Examiner this cycle about their maiden campaign for Congress, Allcorn said it was the botched U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and President Joe Biden’s handling of the issue, that convinced him to seek federal office.

“It was an absolute disaster, and it shouldn’t have happened that way,” he said. “It showed the ineptitude of Joe Biden.”

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There’s more.

“The policies [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer are trying to push through — their anti-oil and gas rhetoric, their soft stances on crime … There’s just a lot of things that needs to be fixed,” Allcorn said.

Democrats take issue with Republican accusations their party is soft on crime. Indeed a major part of Biden’s State of the Union speech was his declaration the police need more funding versus the “defunding” proposed by some on the far Left.

But there are undeniably stark differences between Democrats and Republicans on energy issues. The GOP is a proponent of more domestic fossil fuel exploration, consumption, and exports, particularly since Russia, a major energy exporter, launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Democrats, concerned about climate change, are continuing to push an energy agenda that calls for reducing and eventually ending U.S. reliance on oil and natural gas. And it’s this issue that, along with national security matters, is driving Allcorn’s run for office.

“My dad worked in the oil field, and it’s how we came to the States,” Alcorn said. “It’s something that’s very important to me.”

It’s important to Allcorn personally, and it’s a matter of what he believes to be sound policy.

Allcorn is a naturalized U.S. citizen, officially from Canada because his parents were Canadian citizens when he was born in Saudi Arabia. He lived in Southwest Asia and Europe as a child as his father globe-trotted from one oil industry job to the next, finally emigrating to the United States from France in 1993, at age 9.

“I became a citizen as soon as I could,” he said.

Allcorn said his father grew up impoverished and that the oil and gas industry offered him a path to prosperity that might not have otherwise existed. That prosperity had a profound impact on his childhood and his approach to energy policy as a would-be congressman.

Allcorn emphasized oil and gas are critical components of the U.S. economy, and in any event, a period of historically high inflation is the exact wrong time to strangle the industry with regulations that make fossil fuels more expensive. He did suggest an openness to policies that promote renewable fuels but said that sector of the energy industry is not nearly developed enough to satisfy the nation’s domestic needs.

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“It’s not that green energy is bad, it’s just that they’re not ready to displace oil and gas,” Allcorn said. “We need to do more to make sure that we’re empowering that industry to do more for our country.”

In the 8th District Republican primary, Allcorn is facing state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, Thornton Mayor Jan Kulmann, and Weld County Commissioner Lori Saine, among others. He lives in a community just outside the district, which Colorado picked up in reapportionment. However, he said he would move into it after winning the general election in November.