Alternate delegate for Mitt Romney
For most of her adult life, Michelle Gilleland has been focused on making a home for her husband, John, and their one girl and four boys.
Were boring. Were really conservative. Were super family-oriented, she said. Thats why I stay at home. I feel like thats our number one job.
They run a gravel business and also are investing in barbecue restaurants in Colorado and Utah.
A few years ago, she got politically active, around the same time the Tea Party movement was taking off.
She said she and her husband see firsthand what the economic slowdown does to the construction business and to their employees. She blames heavy regulations by the Obama administration.
Gilleland serves as secretary of the La Plata County Republican Party, and she ran to be a national convention delegate on the official Mitt Romney slate at her congressional district assembly. A coalition of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum supporters beat her out, but she finished high enough to be an alternate.