The 6th Judicial District Nominating Commission has named three finalists for the district court judgeship created by the retirement of District Court Judge William Herringer.

The nominees are William Furse of Dolores, Kim Shropshire of Durango and Anthony Edwards of Silverton.

Furse is a former public defender who eventually became district attorney for the 22nd Judicial District, which includes the Cortez area. After becoming term-limited, he became the assistant district attorney in the 22nd Judicial District.

Shropshire is a longtime Durango attorney who has worked for Colorado Legal Services for more than two decades. Colorado Legal Services is a nonprofit that helps low-income individuals with civil legal matters. She is experienced with civil and family law.

Edwards serves as the San Juan County judge in Silverton, a position he has held since 2014. He also maintains a part-time civil law practice in Silverton and serves as the town of Silverton’s municipal judge, according to a judicial performance evaluation done in 2020.

Gov. Jared Polis has until March 2 to appoint one of the three judge nominees to the 6th Judicial Court District, which includes Archuleta, La Plata and San Juan counties.

The public can submit comments about the nominees to Polis at gov_judicialappointments@state.co.us.

The three finalists were chosen from 10 candidates who applied for the job. None of the three finalists returned a phone call seeking comment for this story.

The Durango Herald has requested the public portion of the nominees’ applications, but those were not immediately available through the governor’s office on Monday, which was a federal holiday.

In addition to the finalists, the applicants included: