Building the Coalition Behind Grand Junction's Water Rights Campaign

The Challenge

For the first time on record, the Grand Valley Water Users Association's Historic Users Pool reached zero acre-feet. That single number signaled a turning point for Mesa County: the local water supply that had long supported agriculture and residential use was no longer keeping pace with new commercial development demands.

My Voice Counts (MVC) needed a campaign that could translate a technical water crisis into a question every Mesa County resident could understand and answer: should the county prioritize local agricultural and residential water rights over new commercial development allocations?

Bluescripts HQ was brought on to build that campaign from the ground up.

The Approach

The work started with the question itself. Rather than a simple yes or no, we designed a five point Likert scale survey that let residents express the nuance in their views, giving the campaign real, usable data rather than a blunt headline number.

From there, the campaign needed a coalition, not just a message. We built a stakeholder tracker covering 28 contacts across county government, agriculture, and conservation, then ran direct outreach to each one. That meant reaching Mesa County commissioners Bobbie Daniel, Cody Davis, and JJ Fletcher, along with Conservation Colorado, the Colorado Cattlemen's Association, the Grand Valley Water Users Association, and the Colorado River District. Retired Colorado Mesa University professor Tom Acker came on board as a campaign stakeholder, lending academic credibility to the water data driving the campaign's case.

To carry the message beyond email and meetings, we built out a full public facing infrastructure: a stakeholder presentation deck, HTML and PDF one pagers, a draft county resolution, press materials, selfie style video scripts for grassroots sharing, and Facebook posts tailored to local community groups. We also brought on a field organizer working 15 hours a week to handle direct voter contact, supported by a voter sign up app.

The Result

The campaign moved from a technical water supply problem to an organized, multi stakeholder public push in a matter of weeks, with a clear ask in front of the commissioners who control the outcome. It also built a coalition, elected officials, agricultural leaders, and conservation groups aligned around a shared position, that will outlast any single vote.

For Bluescripts HQ, the MVC water rights campaign is the clearest example of what full service political consulting looks like away from the traditional campaign trail: research and message design, coalition building, and field execution, all built around a single, defensible ask.