Janak Joshi is a retired physician who served in the state House in the 2010s, representing El Paso County. He is a longtime resident of Colorado and the previous owner of a medical clinic and dialysis centers.
Joshi holds a medical doctorate from Gujarat University in India and an M.S. in Business Administration from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.
Joshi’s policy platform centers on small-government issues, including de-regulation and lower taxes, as well as describing him as opposed to abortion (“100% Pro-Life”) and supportive of 2nd Amendment rights and “traditional family values.”
Joshi was “forced by the state medical board in 2008 to permanently surrender his medical license,” The Denver Post reported in 2010. He had failed to undergo recommended retraining in nephrology after previously receiving a “letter of admonition from the state Board of Medical Examiners in 2006 for failing to properly evaluate and adequately treat a patient, as well as failing to provide adequate documentation of the patient’s treatment.”
Joshi said he decided to retire rather than deal with the legal fees to fight the board’s decision, calling it a “frivolous” complaint. He would go on to win election to the state House in 2010, serving three terms before losing in a primary in 2016.
Joshi spoke with CPR News about his positions on issues voters in the district said are most important.
On democracy and good governance
Joshi blames federal overreach for eroding the public’s faith in government.
“The regulations keep on increasing. And it's costing both individual citizens as well as businesses,” he said. “So people want good government, so that our life is what we all expect it to be, when the Constitution says, ‘Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” I mean, there is no happiness anymore.”
Asked if he has any concerns about the reliability of 2020 election results, Joshi said: “If there was, it’s all behind us now. I mean, my focus is basically on the current election, which is coming up quickly.”
On the economy and cost of living
Joshi blamed increases in the cost of living on overspending and deficits run up by Congress: "We need to make sure our budget gets balanced … And if we start to do that, I think the whole economy is going to turn around."
Asked what federal spending he would cut, he pointed to earmarks — the money that legislators direct back to projects in their own districts or states, often bypassing competitive allocation processes.
“Every congressman got earmarks for their projects, that total amount has come to several billion dollars. There was absolutely no need for that. It was nothing more than pork, fat,” he said.
Joshi said that he would still seek money for justifiable projects but that legislators should cut equivalent amounts elsewhere when they get funding for a project.
On immigration
Joshi, a naturalized citizen who arrived from India five decades ago, has described illegal immigration as “destroying our country.”
In a previous statement to Colorado Politics, Joshi said he would “finish the wall, crack down on sanctuary cities, and stop the flow of illegal immigrants pouring over our dangerously open borders."
In an interview, he said he wanted to deport large numbers of undocumented immigrants and then consider whether individuals should be re-admitted. When it comes to what criteria the county should use to decide who can return, “I haven't looked into in detail, how we will figure it out,” he said. He pointed as a model to a deal in which Albania is holding and processing thousands of new immigrants for Italy.
