Northern Colorado DSA 2026 Voter Guide

Julie Gonzales has represented Colorado’s 34th district in the state senate since she won her election in 2018. While in the state senate, Julie has worked to build more affordable housing, protect renters, prevent ICE from accessing state databases, expand in-state tuition to all graduates regardless of immigration status, protected our air and waters from toxic pollution, repeal the death penalty, strengthen the rights of vulnerable groups in court, and codify reproductive rights into law.

Julie is running to primary the former mayor of Denver and governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper, who has represented Colorado in the US Senate since he won his election in 2020. John has proven himself to be closer in ideology to Republicans than Democrats, as he voted to confirm 10 of Trump’s cabinet nominees and has the 6th worst voting record of any Democrat in the 119th senate.

Hickenlooper has also not been shy about using his money and influence to try and block any attempts at a good faith primary challenge. Back in 2020, when up against progressive Andrew Romanoff, Hickenlooper and his corporate allies in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) pressured consultants not to work with Romanoff and warned that any firms or vendors that work with insurgent candidates would be cut off. The DSCC then went on to break from longstanding norms by endorsing Hickenlooper over Romanoff in the primary which led to large-scale backlash from Colorado Democrats. It appears Hickenlooper wants to use the same tactics to beat Gonzales, as one of his former staffers who works for a Colorado Democratic Party campaign fund threatened to blacklist any staff or firms that support Gonzales (the Colorado Democratic Party tried to distance itself from these claims once they became public). In addition to these more serious threats, Hickenlooper has also utilized childish tactics like purchasing the domain julieforcolorado.co and paying to redirect Google searches for Julie Gonzales to his website.

By contrast, Julie Gonzales has committed to fight for Medicare for All, federal homebuilding programs, raising the federal minimum wage, an arms embargo on Israel, restoring anti-trust enforcement, strengthening union power, getting money out of politics, abolishing ICE, codifying abortion rights, and strengthening voting rights. We recommend voting for a fighter for all working people of this state, rather than a corporate dem who will do nothing but shake hands with Republicans while we all continue to suffer.

Manny Rutinel was an attorney who spent his career fighting against corporations breaking the law at the expense of local communities before he joined the Colorado General Assembly in 2023. Rutinel is running to tax the rich their fair share, strengthen and expand social programs like SNAP/Medicare/Social Security, lower healthcare costs, create more affordable housing, and stop Trump’s corruption and ICE cruelty.

Manny Rutinel has proven himself legislatively as well. Rutinel voted yes on both of the major anti-ICE bills we organized around as DSA. These were The Protecting Colorado Families Act (HB26-1276), which required frequent health and environmental inspections of immigration detention centers and expanded liability for organizations responsible for leaking personal identifying information of Coloradans, and Liability for Harm Caused by Civil Immigration Enforcement (SB26-005), which allowed individuals whose constitutional rights were violated by ICE or CBP to sue the agents responsible in Colorado civil court. Manny also sponsored and passed HB24-1339 which cracked down on polluters breaking the law and required impact analyses and real-time pollution monitoring, and SB24-141 which expanded telehealth access for Coloradans, particularly in rural communities. Manny Rutinel has also co-sponsored and passed SB25-276, a bill that contains numerous protections for immigrants in Colorado including the requirement that all public workers, at both the state and local level, not provide personal identifying information to ICE, SB25-129 which shielded Colorado abortion providers from out-of-state prosecution under the Trump administration, SB25-014 which protected marriage equality in Colorado’s state constitution regardless of any future federal court rollback, and many others which can be read about at the end of Manny’s issues page. 

It is no surprise then, that out of the $3.5 million Manny Rutinel has raised for his campaign, it is all individual donors besides three PAC’s. These PAC’s are 314 Action, a progressive group dedicated to electing democratic scientists to office (Rutinel’s bachelor degrees were in microbiology and economics), Blue Momentum PAC, a group dedicated to flipping red seats blue, and CHC BOLD PAC, an arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Manny’s opponent, Shannon Bird, has broken with the democratic establishment throughout her career… to side with Republicans and oppose legislation with even a whiff of progressive backing. In 2025 Bird voted against HB25-1010, a bill brought forward by DSA-endorsed Representative Yara Zokaie that combats price gouging in the case of an emergency or disaster. That same year she was the only Democratic Representative who voted against SB25-276, a bill that contains numerous protections for immigrants in Colorado including the requirement that all public workers, at both the state and local level, not provide personal identifying information to ICE. Shannon Bird voted against protecting immigrants from ICE in Appropriations Committee and found herself conveniently absent when the Bill was read on the House Floor. In past years she has voted against restricting government involvement in immigration detention, legalizing rent control in Colorado, and overdose prevention centers multiple times. 

In order to fully capture the political context Shannon Bird has wrapped herself in, we have to do a deeper dive into an organization called One Main Street (OMS). OMS is a relatively recent formation and acts as the major hub for corporate influence in Colorado Democratic primaries, attacking progressives and supporting their opponents across the state in the legislature as well as city council elections. They have shown up to fund the opponents of DSA candidates in every election we run in, even sporting a donation page titled “Donate to One Main Street & Defeat DSA”. In Northern Colorado, OMS spent large sums against both of our recently endorsed candidates; in 2024 they backed Ethnie Treick against Yara Zokaie, and in 2025 they backed Amy Hoeven against Zoelle Lane while falsely implying Amy had the endorsement of Yara Zokaie. In 2025, Democratic legislators whose campaigns were propped up by One Main Street funds formed what they called the “Colorado Opportunity Caucus,” or COCs for short. Both the organization and the caucus gained a degree of notoriety last year when OMS spent $25,000 on a retreat for the Opportunity Caucus in Vail, prompting an Independent Ethics Commission to investigate whether this retreat was a violation of Colorado’s gift ban. Neither One Main Street nor the Opportunity Caucus have released their list of donors, although SB26-168 brought forward by Senator Mike Weissman and Representative Yara Zokaie would have addressed this by requiring funding transparency for legislative caucuses. The bill was voted down and postponed indefinitely due to Opportunity Caucus member William Lindstedt siding with the Republicans on the Senate State, Veterans, & Military Affairs committee. Though their full list of donors remains in the dark, known contributors to One Main Street include Xcel Energy, the Apartment Association of Metro Denver, and the Associated General Contractors of Colorado.

All of this is to say that if you hear about Colorado Democrats killing progressive legislation you were excited for, you can pretty safely assume it was thanks to the members of the Opportunity Caucus along with One Main Street for getting them elected. How does this pertain to the CD8 race? Well, Shannon Bird was the founding chair of the Colorado Opportunity Caucus. It should be no surprise that the champion of conservative Democrats in Colorado would receive donations from Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, Blue Dog PAC, and the leadership fund of almost every current member of the Opportunity Caucus. 

PS: We recognize that there has been some concern from our members based on the recent development of Manny turning his back on several of his previously held progressive positions. While this is obviously disappointing, we still believe that the recommendation stands. It is possible Manny may end up becoming a disappointing moderate like Joe Neguse, but that would still be better than Bird becoming the next John Fetterman.

After 8 years, Jared Polis’s iron grip on Colorado politics will finally loosen as 2026 draws to a close. Our term-limited incumbent Governor—a multimillionaire, r/neoliberal Redditor, and when he was in Congress, the only Democratic member of the Liberty Caucus—has meddled in virtually every part of state politics since taking office in 2019. Polis’s reputation as the “weirdest Democrat in America” has been earned through years of high-profile deviations from the Democratic mainstream. While the most recent and prominent of those deviations took the form of his commutation of Tina Peters’ sentence, his record as Colorado’s self-professed libertarian Democrat has led to a number of confrontations with different parts of the party base over the course of his gubernatorial tenure. For instance, long before Polis’s reputation as a MAHA Democrat, he clashed with mainstream parts of his party on tightening immunization exemptions, describing himself as “pro-choice” when it came to vaccines. Years before he rejected charter school accountability measures, he had appointed the director of Democrats for Education Reform (which endorsed his 2018 gubernatorial campaign) to his transition team’s education division, and before that, he’d founded two charter schools of his own. And while many have been shocked by Polis’s attempt to force state employees to share information with ICE, his previous resistance to efforts to decouple policing from federal immigration enforcement was a harbinger of how he’d handle this topic.

Governor Polis has used his veto—or the threat of it—to mold Colorado policy in his own image and maintain the ruling class’s control over our state. As of this guide’s writing, Polis has vetoed 55 bills since his 2019 inauguration, including at least 12 bills (and likely more when you read this) vetoed in just this last month. Here’s an extremely abbreviated summary of some of those more recent and egregious vetoes:

• In 2023, he vetoed a bill (HB23-1190) that would have offered local governments a right of first refusal to purchase properties and convert them into public housing.
• He vetoed three 2024 bills sponsored by labor unions (HB24-1008, HB24-1260, and HB24-1307) which would have, respectively, cracked down on subcontractor wage theft, protected employees from being subject to religious or political persuasion by their employer, and required that schools repairing air conditioning units seek out qualified contractors.
• He vetoed a 2025 bill (HB25-1004) banning algorithmic price coordination by real estate companies to drive up prices.
• He vetoed the Worker Protection Act (SB25-005 and HB26-1005) in 2025 and again on May 29, 2026. The Worker Protection Act would have eliminated the second election requirement for union security agreements and has been a major priority of organized labor and the broader Colorado left for the past few years.
• He vetoed a 2025 rideshare safety standards bill (HB25-1291) after folding to industry threats of capital flight.
• He vetoed a 2025 bill (HB25-1088) that would have banned surprise ambulance billings.
• He vetoed a 2025 bill (HB25-1122) that would have banned the use of self-driving trucks without having a commercial driver’s license-certified operator inside the vehicle. He vetoed a revised version of that bill (HB26-1286) again this year.
• This month, he vetoed 2 bills sponsored by Northern Colorado DSA’s elected member in the State House, Yara Zokaie. The first (HB26-1418) would have placed a 5% fee on video game microtransactions and directed the money from the fee to mental health and other youth resources. The second (HB26-1236) would have protected Coloradans from corporate abuse of arbitration.
• He vetoed a 2026 bill (SB26-005) that would have provided Coloradans the ability to sue federal agents for civil damages in state court for constitutional rights violations caused by civil immigration enforcement. Polis feared this bill ran afoul of the intergovernmental immunity doctrine, and he favored the broader No Kings Act (SB26-176) which did not limit remedies to constitutional violations to immigration enforcement alone. However, the No Kings Act was targeted by district attorneys, local governments, and the Attorney General’s office, and it died in committee.
• He vetoed a 2026 bill (HB26-1210) that would have prohibited the use of “surveillance pricing” where consumers are assigned different prices based on their purchasing habits.

Polis has weaponized his veto power to undermine Colorado’s democratic process, with one analysis finding that the sums of “yes” and “no” votes on the bills he vetoed in 2024 totaled 417 to 156, respectively. But beyond actually wielding his veto pen, Polis has become even more known for threatening it, letting him hijack the legislative process while keeping disagreements behind closed doors to temper public backlash. These threats alone have derailed bills to combat climate change, address homelessness, regulate automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras like Flock, and more. Apart from vetoes, Polis has abused his executive power to serve Colorado’s wealthy interests, exemplified by his 2025 decision to call a special legislative session in order to delay the implementation of AI consumer protections.

As democratic socialists, we believe that Colorado deserves a governor who will fight for working people instead of billionaires; who will protect Coloradans from ICE instead of complying with their abuses of power; who will take looming threat of fascism seriously instead of palling around with election deniers and white supremacists; and who will root out the corrupt political establishment that has kept working Coloradans struggling while the ultrarich make record profits.

Neither viable candidate for governor is likely to confront Colorado’s corporate establishment. At a time when our state desperately needs to move beyond the Polis era of executive meddling, austerity budgets, and mass privatization, neither Democratic candidate for governor has presented a vision for Colorado’s future that breaks from the corporate orthodoxy that has plunged our state’s most vulnerable into permanent crisis. Instead, both major candidates have broadly avoided taking clear policy positions on Colorado’s most pressing questions, fearing that they may alienate interest groups whose dollars they crave. 

The ideological and political ambiguity of the Democratic gubernatorial contenders has become a central dynamic in the race, and this dynamic is owed to the hegemony of Colorado’s corporate establishment and, consequently, the perceived marginality of the Colorado left. Because parties in the United States are hollow—bearing little resemblance to the democratic civic bodies found in other parts of the world—political decision-making is seldom the product of mass working-class participation and more often determined by the personal whims of politicians and other party elites. In Colorado, this hollowing has been accentuated by an insular political culture that values elite lobbyists over everyday people, a vacancy process where over a quarter of state lawmakers make it to office before facing an election, a pitifully low statewide union density rate presaged by decades of far-right attacks on organized labor, and a corporate lobby emboldened by their 2024 victories over two incumbent democratic socialists, Elisabeth Epps and Tim Hernandez. These conditions explain why the Colorado left has lacked a clear lane in the gubernatorial primary and why efforts to convince the frontrunners to embrace their left flank have thus far been unsuccessful. As the political ground has shifted beneath Colorado, it is thus no surprise that the left has struggled to find its footing, especially in the governor’s race. 

While speculation on who would succeed Polis began at least as early as his 2022 reelection, the first wave of potential contenders bore little resemblance to the primary field that we’ll see on our ballots this month. The first official moves in the campaign were preceded by a poll released in December 2024 by Magellan Strategies. It predicted that the 2026 governor’s race was likely to coalesce around two clear leading candidates and it predicted those candidates would be Congressman Joe Neguse (with 20% of the vote) and Secretary of State Jena Griswold (with 16% of the vote). 

The first candidate to announce a run in the Democratic primary for governor was incumbent Attorney General, Phil Weiser. Weiser’s launch timeline seemed to have been expedited by the results of the Magellan poll. Not only had Weiser been boxed out of the top two by fellow Democratic incumbents; he’d finished fourth (with a mere 8%), behind Ken Salazar (11%), Colorado’s former Senator and the US’s then-ambassador to Mexico; and the survey also suggested that 37% of Coloradans were entirely unfamiliar with Weiser and another 20% had no opinion of him. To combat this severe name recognition deficit, Weiser officially entered the race on January 2nd, 2025, but this would not be the last time that external circumstances would complicate his strategy. Indeed, in the earliest stage of the primary, conventional wisdom held that while Neguse’s gubernatorial ambitions were half-hearted at best, Griswold’s were anything but.

Facing what seemed to be the impending entrance of the Secretary of State—a national figure in Democratic politics who many grant-funded liberal nonprofits expected to back—Weiser’s initial moves in the primary hinted at the possibility that he may tack to the right in an attempt to best Griswold with more moderate voters. For example, in his announcement interview with 9News anchor Kyle Clark, he repeatedly touted his bipartisan credentials, citing a positive relationship with San Luis Valley Republican State Senator Cleave Simpson, claiming that the “Denver/Boulder liberal” label wouldn’t stick to him due to his rapport with Republican county commissioners and sheriffs, and recalling a moment when the wife of the chair of Montezuma County’s Republican Party told him that he may earn her vote. In the same interview, he stressed the issue of affordability but primarily framed it around the need to increase police funding, arguing that Pagosa Springs, Steamboat Springs, and other communities could not afford to hire more cops. Upon launch, Weiser also announced that former Colorado Governor Roy Romer—a moderate known for a record of compromise with Republican politicians—would serve as honorary chair for the campaign. In his rhetoric, staffing, and early policy positions, Weiser seemed to be laying claim to the right lane of the Democratic primary.

Over a year later, with Weiser now at least tepidly trying to market himself as friendlier to the Democrats’ liberal (not even left) base, the prospect of him being the more rightward candidate may seem strange, but a longer view of his political career reveals Weiser to be no stranger to moderation. Despite cultivating a record as Attorney General centered on fighting Trump, Weiser’s 2018 primary positioned him as a moderate Democrat in comparison with his opponent, progressive Berniecrat and Colorado State House Representative, Joe Salazar. While both Weiser and Salazar embraced policies associated with progressive district attorneys—supporting bail reform, sanctuary cities, and marijuana legalization while opposing the death penalty—only Salazar promised to directly confront local governments that were violating the rights of the homeless or allowing law enforcement to cooperate with ICE. This tendency for Weiser to adopt mainstream liberal positions but stop short of confronting entrenched interests that contravene those positions, especially local governments, is one that would follow him into office after his 1% victory against Salazar.

In office, Weiser has cultivated a “fighting” persona, most notably through filing or joining a number of lawsuits against the first and, especially, the second Trump administration. In addition to the Trump administration, Weiser has also sued to block the Kroger-Alberstons merger and to hold Live Nation and Ticketmaster accountable for violating state antitrust laws. As an exchange with Kyle Clark demonstrated, Weiser’s office was rarely the first state AG’s office to file these lawsuits, but he has nonetheless gained favor amongst liberal parts of the Democratic coalition as a result of them. Weiser has also overseen the consent decree on the Aurora Police and Fire Departments after the murder of Elijah McClain, and his insistence on criminal accountability for the paramedics who were responsible has drawn him the ire of the state firefighter’s union.

Nevertheless, a closer examination of his record complicates Weiser’s reputation as a “fighter.” While Weiser has demonstrated eagerness to go toe-to-toe with Trump in the courtroom, he’s been far more cautious when considering the prosecution of corporations—preferring to join lawsuits filed by other states—and local governments—often pursuing only the most egregious misconduct. For instance, after the Marshall Fire, Weiser sent letters to Airbnb, Zillow, Vrbo, and REColorado warning them not to enable price gouging by landlords during the declared state of emergency, but months later, despite receiving 95 price gouging complaints, his office neglected to prosecute any landlords suspected of unfairly raising prices, appearing to back down in the face of the Colorado Apartment Association’s claims that price increases were a “natural outcome.” In another context, in early 2025, when Colorado hospitals preemptively complied with the Trump administration’s trans-antagonistic medical guidance, Weiser sidelined demands from trans community members to pressure the hospitals to abide by state law and resume care. Instead, he signed onto a Washington state-based lawsuit against the Trump administration, causing Denver Health and Children’s Hospital Colorado to resume gender-affirming care. By opting for a path that deflected blame away from hospitals and solely towards the White House, Weiser may have enabled short-term relief for some families, but without compelling hospitals to comply with state law, Denver Health maintained its pause on gender-affirming surgery and UCHealth resumed neither surgeries nor medications. Weiser’s cautious liberal record likely set him up well for a potential confrontation with Griswold, perhaps outflanking her from the right as he did 8 years earlier against Salazar. But as fate would have it, Weiser would soon be facing a new opponent.

On April 11, 2025, incumbent US Senator for Colorado, Michael Bennet announced his campaign for governor. His announcement, teased a month and a half previously, pushed Griswold to change plans and run for Attorney General, fearing that she would be unable to compete with Bennet’s fundraising capacity. In the wake of Bennet’s entrance and Griswold’s exit, Weiser found himself amidst a scrambled political field with the right lane suddenly occupied by the 3rd most recognizable Democrat in the state, and the left lane he presumed Griswold would occupy suddenly empty.

Bennet is the 9th most conservative Democrat in the Senate. He’s earned that ranking by voting, year after year, to purchase bombs, guns, and tanks for Israel while denying the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza; confirming a significant number of Trump’s cabinet nominees; and siding with Republicans in votes to extend warrantless surveillance, force through ecologically devastating fossil fuel projects, and arm Saudi Arabia as it massacred Yemeni civilians. He wasn’t much better before joining the Senate either. After moving to Colorado, one of the first ways that Bennet attained local influence was by working as a corporate raider underneath right-wing billionaire Philip Anschutz. Beginning by inheriting an oil fortune, Anschutz is now Colorado’s wealthiest resident (he owns, among other things, Coachella) and has used that wealth to: fund the Federalist Society; spread his conservative Christian views through donations to homophobic and transphobic organizations; build a right-wing media network and persuasion machine to push conservative ballot measures in Colorado; install Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court justice; and, most recently, block DSA-endorsed congressional candidate Melat Kiros from speaking at two venues in Denver. In his role as managing director of investments for Anschutz Corp., Bennet oversaw the consolidation of Regal Cinemas, United Artists Theatres, and Edwards Theatres into the Regal Entertainment Group, encouraging the newly merged corporation to pay a $710-million dividend, around half of which went to Anschutz. After a stint as then-Denver mayor John Hickenlooper’s chief of staff, in 2005, Bennet was named as superintendent of Denver Public Schools (DPS) by the Denver Board of Education. There, he garnered a reputation as an education “reformer,” pushing an agenda of school consolidation and privatization. Bennet’s 3-year tenure as superintendent was marked by unpredictable disruptions across the district, exemplified by his role in convincing the Board to adopt their Pension Certificates of Participation plan which made teachers’ pension plans uniquely vulnerable to the 2008 financial crisis and eventually forced DPS to pay over $200-million to a group of Wall Street banks to cancel these interest-rate swaps. It was because of his record as DPS superintendent that Bennet was appointed by then-governor Bill Ritter as a dark-horse pick for US Senate, following Ken Salazar’s appointment as US Secretary of the Interior. Despite Bennet having never competed in an election before, Ritter had been impressed by his ability to defend his decision to close Manual High School, and so in a moment when school privatizers were approaching the apex of their influence, it seemed appropriate to Ritter that Bennet’s first position in elected office would be US Senator. 

Though Bennet was technically a political “outsider,” by the time of his appointment, he had amassed over a decade of experience in Denver’s political and corporate worlds, and this background presaged the factional role that he would play in the Senate and within the Democratic Party. A year after his appointment, in 2010, Bennet’s reelection was challenged in a primary bid by former Colorado Speaker of the House, Andrew Romanoff. Romanoff criticized Bennet for his record under Anschutz and ran an economic populist campaign to the incumbent Senator’s left, but ultimately lost to Bennet by a 46-54 margin. After reelection, Bennet became a member of the “Gang of Eight” who unsuccessfully tried to pass a bipartisan immigration reform bill that paired a path to citizenship with English speaking requirements, a 700-mile border fence, and tens of thousands more Border Patrol agents. Despite being branded a “conservadem,” Bennet would not face another primary challenge for his Senate seat after 2010. In 2019, he would embark on a run for President that, while brief, was supported by over 30 billionaires. In that race, Forbes identified Bennet as the third-richest Democrat running in 2020 with an estimated $15-million net worth. After receiving 0 delegates in Iowa and 0.3% of the vote in New Hampshire, Bennet dropped out of the Presidential race, bemoaning the lack of moderates on the debate stage. In the years since, Bennet has maintained his streak as a moderate and institutionalist, even apologizing to Mitch McConnell in 2020 for a vote he’d taken 7 years earlier to remove the filibuster from judicial appointments. While this corporate Democratic record in the Senate flew largely under the radar during Joe Biden’s presidency, with Trump’s reelection, Bennet’s penchant towards bipartisan compromise has begun to appear more to his electorate like capitulation. In a primary election cycle like 2026—where the electorate will be motivated by mass outrage against Trump’s despotic governance and potentially more critical of establishment politicians—Bennet’s record could create an opportunity for a more progressive challenger in the gubernatorial race.

Unfortunately, Weiser has not taken advantage of the flaws in Bennet’s record, seemingly because he does not view them to be flaws. In a January 2026 forum, Weiser said that a “core campaign commitment” of his could be summarized by the bumper sticker “Phil Weiser for Governor, Michael Bennet for Senate.” While Weiser is partly trying to strategically appeal to voters who approve of Bennet, his comment also reflects a real lack of political distance between these two candidates and an uneasiness with making appeals to Bennet’s left flank. Apart from decrying some of Bennet’s approvals of Trump’s cabinet nominees—specifically, Brooke Rollins as Secretary of Agriculture—Weiser has scarcely offered any critique of Bennet’s Senate voting record. While some seem to have wishcasted Weiser into the progressive lane of this race, his campaign infrastructure, policy platform, and governance style each cast doubt on this perspective. 

Both Weiser and Bennet are running campaigns that are beholden to wealthy special interests. Weiser’s campaign has made their closing message about the “out-of-state billionaires backing Michael Bennet,” while Bennet’s campaign has accused Weiser of hypocritically taking billionaire money, including in past elections. In a sense, both campaigns are right and wrong. Both Bennet and Weiser have associated independent expenditure committees (super PACs) supporting their respective campaigns that each have taken billionaire dollars. The pro-Bennet PAC—Rocky Mountain Way—has received $3,360,000 from New York City billionaire Michael Bloomberg (and likely more by the time you read this), $200,000 from hedge fund billionaire Jeremy Mindich, $75,000 from other hedge fund billionaire Mark Heising (Weiser’s campaign committee took money from Heising in his 2022 Attorney General reelection campaign), $50,000 from other hedge fund billionaire Steve Mandel, $50,000 from Nvidia billionaire Tench Coxe, $25,937.50 from cable magnate billionaire Bob Fanch, $25,000 from billionaire shopping mall nepo baby Deborah Simon, $25,000 from yet another hedge fund billionaire Eric Mindich, and a mere $3000 from art-collecting billionaire Edythe Broad. Rocky Mountain Way has also received support from the Colorado League of Charter Schools and other education privatizers. The pro-Weiser PAC—Fighting for Colorado—has received $100,000 from telecom magnate billionaire Jay Monroe III and $28,825 from Hot Pocket billionaire David Merage (who also donated to $22,825 Bennet). Outside of official billionaire support, Fighting for Colorado has also taken $100,000 from venture capitalist Jason Mendelson, $100,000 from venture capitalist Jim Kelley, $50,000 from oil and gas tycoon Merle Chambers, $12,500 from Co-CEO of AIR Communities Lisa Cohn, and $10,000 from real estate magnate Pat Hamill. Several other billionaires and ultramillionaires split their donations between the two candidates and their PACs: Ron Davis, the creator of perrier luxury water, donated $25,000 to Fighting for Colorado and $20,000 to Rocky Mountain Way; Robert Kenney, the president of Xcel Energy, gave the maximum of $1,450 to each candidate’s campaign committees; and conservative Colorado lobbyist R.D. Sewald also gave the maximum to both campaign committees. Ultimately, both sides of the Democratic primary for the governor’s race are campaigns being run by and for the ultra-wealthy. As Logan Davis recently wrote in the Colorado Times Recorder, 

“Both Bennet and Weiser are receiving support from outside PACs funded by corporate interests. Bennet’s PAC, which has raised about $8 million, is being funded by folks like Michael Bloomberg, real estate developers, and hedge funders. Weiser’s PAC, which has raised $1.26 million, is being funded by donors from the oil & gas and private equity industries. Bennet being supported by more dark or corporate money does not make him less progressive than Weiser, it just makes him the winner of a game both men decided to play.”

Each campaign is relying substantially on the fundraising capacity of billionaires and ultramillionaires to win the race on June 30th. With regards to fundraising and communications infrastructure, there is no clear progressive campaign in the Democratic primary for Colorado governor.

When it comes to some of the most important political questions facing our state, Weiser and Bennet remain barely distinguishable from one another and often significantly fall short of what Colorado needs. Take immigration, for instance—an issue where Weiser has sought to highlight his ability to “fight.” Last year, shortly after Bennet’s announcement, Weiser sued Mesa County Deputy Alexander Zwinck for sharing arrest information with ICE agents, in violation of state law. However, when pressed by Kyle Clark on why he pursued that case but had not signed onto the lawsuit brought against Polis for cooperating with ICE and violating that same law, Weiser dodged the question. Rather than criticizing Bennet’s moderate record on immigration, Weiser publicly praised those efforts with the Gang of Eight as a reason why it would be “a waste” for Colorado to lose Bennet’s leadership in the Senate. Both candidates have indicated their intent to use the governor’s powers to crack down on ICE’s abuses—Bennet wants to exhaust options to block new immigration detention centers and Weiser wants to utilize the state’s health inspection authority to monitor the centers that already exist—neither offers a vision that matches the scale of the brutality inflicted by immigration agents under Trump. Behind the scenes, Weiser has also hampered efforts to hold federal agents legally accountable, while publicly proclaiming his support for those efforts. This was most visible through his opposition to the No Kings Act (SB26-176) where, alongside district attorneys from across the state, Weiser peddled misinformation that the bill would open up new lawsuits against local governments. In this fight, Weiser found himself to Polis’s right, with the governor far less cautious about applying state-level civil liability to federal authorities. On the day that the No Kings Act was set to be killed in committee, Weiser publicly announced his support for the narrower Senate Bill 5, which only applied to civil immigration enforcement. This bill was considered by legal experts more vulnerable to intergovernmental immunity challenges, but Weiser supported it—knowing that Polis would likely veto the constitutionally uncertain bill—so that he could stoke the perception that he’s fighting ICE without having to risk displeasing local governments. Weiser’s opposition to Senate Bill 176 was used as a justification for voting it down by Frisco State Senator Dylan Roberts. The public and private debate over the No Kings Act exemplified the way that Weiser’s “fighting” persona is a simulacrum of resistance that often conceals out-of-view efforts that concede to the status quo.

Other topics also highlight this political ambiguity. On healthcare, Bennet has come out in favor of a Colorado public option; Weiser, meanwhile, expressed his belief that a public option is unrealistic, while paradoxically calling for attention to the results of an upcoming analysis of state-level single-payer healthcare (a proposal that he has not indicated he’d support). On climate, Bennet has pushed a “cap and invest” program, while Weiser cautioned that the plan was too vague. Both candidates pushed to delay the implementation of the state’s AI consumer protections and both lamented Palantir’s decision to leave Colorado. Weiser went even further by responding approvingly to a letter from business leaders catastrophizing about the AI consumer protection measure. Neither support the Worker Protection Act, favoring the same watered-down compromises Polis demanded. On the issue of housing, Bennet favors the state doing more to build more housing across the board, while Weiser supports a local government opt-out favored by more conservative municipal political players. While the Colorado governor does not control foreign policy, the extent to which Weiser and Bennet support the state of Israel has become relevant to this race both because support for Palestinian human rights has started to become a litmus test within intra-Democratic politics and because HB16-1284 mandates that Colorado’s public pension program (PERA) divest from companies that boycott Israel. On this issue, Bennet has taken the largest amount of public flack due to his repeated votes to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza and his decision to back-out of a gubernatorial forum hosted by Colorado Muslims. But Weiser’s attendance of that forum is an insufficient reason to trust him on this issue, especially when his answers there indicated his opposition to repealing the PERA divestment requirement and his reticence to use the term “genocide” when describing the massacres in Gaza. Weiser has publicly amplified attacks on Detroit DSA member and lone Palestinian American congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, arguing that the phrase “from the river to the sea” is a “Hamas rallying cry.” He has never criticized any of Bennet’s votes to fund weapons transfers, and there’s no evidence that there is much daylight between the two candidates on this question.

Ultimately, the primary question for this election is: Which candidate will leave behind Polis’s legacy of corporate deference, behind-the-scenes meddling, and conservative dark money? The answer is neither. Weiser already has a record in the Colorado legislature of threatening to mobilize DAs against bills he disapproves of. He’s also privately endorsed candidates in the Opportunity Caucus that are backed by One Main Street. Bennet’s conservative record is well-known but by Weiser’s own admission, voting for him is in no way a referendum on Bennet’s record (in fact, he’s said that it’s a vote that Bennet should remain in the Senate). Voting for Bennet won’t result in him appointing Polis to fill his Senate seat, contrary to rumors, but it will give him unilateral authority to appoint his replacement, just like Bill Ritter had at the start of Bennet’s senatorial career. For the Colorado left, both Weiser and Bennet will likely be more subject to pressure than Polis ever was, but neither will reliably represent the left’s values. One of these two men will be governor come January, but socialists should not expect Weiser nor Bennet to confront the billionaire class responsible for Colorado’s woes.

David Seligman has been the Executive Director of Towards Justice, a law firm representing workers and consumers in Colorado with the goal to build worker power, since 2018. Under his leadership, Towards Justice has represented Uber and Lyft drivers against the companies’ price fixing, represented Amazon warehouse workers in a suit over wage theft, represented tenants at Greystar-owned apartments in a suit over junk fees, and advocated for a wide range of legal protections for workers. He is running on commitments to take on Donald Trump, prosecute corrupt officials and ICE officers, go after AI and big tech companies, make corporate polluters pay, and pursue a ban on private equity ownership of basic necessities. Seligman has stated that it is possible to do the aforementioned by utilizing the office of the Attorney General to enforce the laws and regulations as they exist, and that it is possible to make the law work for ordinary people. 

Seligman’s most prominent opponent, Jena Griswold, has run on similar promises of taking on Donald Trump and prosecuting ICE officers. However, she does not have the same degree of courtroom experience as Seligman; she is not a practicing lawyer, and though she often falsely claims to have argued before the Supreme Court that Trump should not have been on the ballot in 2024, in reality she was merely named in a case argued by Colorado Solicitor-General Shannon Stevenson with briefs written by Attorney General Phil Weiser. More concerningly, Reese Edwards, a former staffer of Griswold’s Office of the Secretary of State, alleges that Griswold created a “hostile and volatile workplace environment” at the office with a “climate of fear and retaliation”, and that she showed more concern for her personal reputation than for the responsibilities of governance. Griswold is also a pernicious ladder-climber, as just six months into her tenure as secretary of state she explored an opportunity to run against Cory Gardner in the senate. In short, she is an opportunistic boss who takes credit for her employees’ work and retaliates against them for exercising their rights, and that bodes poorly for her ability to defend the rights of workers in Colorado, should she become Attorney General. 

Also in the race is Boulder County District Attorney and career prosecutor, Michael Doughterty, who centers the issues of gun violence, affordability, criminal justice reform, and prosecuting hate crimes targeting minority communities in Colorado. He is known for his track record combatting gun violence, from leading the King Soopers mass-shootinging case to distributing free gun safes statewide. He has been actively fighting the cost of living epidemic, passing laws against wage theft while supporting the worker protection act. However, there are also holes in this platform when presented with the reality of his lobbying record as DA, spending taxpayer money to kill reforms in the Capital. Dougherty joined the coalition of district attorneys across Colorado in opposing the No Kings act, which would have given Coloradans the right to sue federal law enforcement for cases of misconduct. Despite his centering of criminal justice, he opposed a Senate bill which would have put forward reforms to deal with the overcrowding crisis in our prison system. These reasons, alongside his advocacy for ‘private-public’ partnerships with the tech companies seeking to destroy our natural environments, lead us to conclude that he likely will not use the position to its full extent, and will be unlikely to challenge the unjust structures that make up our legal system. 

The final contestant in this crowded primary is former head of the DOJ’s anti-trust division Hetal Doshi. In a candidate interview with the Colorado Sun, Doshi said her top priority would be: “defending Colorado and protecting the rule of law — anything that touches on our constitutional rights, our right to vote, our right to make decisions about our bodies.” Doshi also stated she supports any efforts to hold federal immigration agents (ICE) to the same standards as CO law enforcement, and supports increasing mental health support and economic opportunities as a solution to crime as opposed to just prosecuting them. In this same interview Doshi also stated she thinks it’s too early to say if Colorado’s latest attempts to regulate AI go too far and stifle innovation or not. She also supports TABOR allowing voters to effect tax changes and she is not comfortable saying she would not defend it in court. While Doshi is a somewhat progressive candidate, it does not seem she has gotten her campaign off the ground in terms of voter outreach and online support.

Secretary of State is one of the races with less of a clear distinction. Amanda Gonzalez is an attorney who has been the Jefferson County Clerk since 2022. Before that, she was Executive Director at Colorado Common Cause and an adjunct professor in Chicano Studies. During her time in office, Gonzalez has supported SB24-072 Voting for Confined Eligible Electors which ensures that incarcerated people have an option for in-person voting. Her platform includes improving transparency by modernizing TRACER (something the writers of this voter guide had to use extensively and can attest needs updating) and expanding voting accessibility. Amanda’s opponent Jessie Danielson is the Colorado State Senator from District 22. Before that, she was a State Representative, Colorado Director of America Votes, and Political Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado. Danielson’s track record in the state House and Senate has been for the most part very progressive, and she has done work before being elected to support HB13-1303 Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act. On top of this Danielson has amassed an extraordinary amount of endorsements from Colorado labor unions. 

So between these two similarly progressive candidates, one might wonder why we recommend Amanda Gonzalez over Jessie Danielson. The answer to that is two red flags have been raised over Danielson’s connections to One Main Street (see our analysis on Colorado Congressional District 8 for more details on OMS). The first red flag is from her endorsement in 2024 of Ethnie Treick for State House District 52. Ethnie was the One Main Street backed candidate who was a former oil and gas lobbyist and ran in the primary against DSA endorsed candidate Yara Zokaie. This could just be a sign of poor political instincts, but it is also indicative of the kinds of political circles Danielson runs in. This leads us to our second red flag, which is Danielson’s links to One Main Street. Danielson’s husband Andy Kabza, is enmeshed in a very confusing web of dark money moving around Colorado politics. In 2023 he was listed as the Secretary/Treasurer for Brighter Colorado Futures 501c4 990EZ. This organization’s 2024 tax form showed them paying $70,000 to One Main Street and $315,000 to Good Leadership Action. One Main Street has already made an appearance multiple times in this voter guide, but it is notable that Good Leadership Action is another arm of this corporate dark money apparatus that spent its money that year attempting to oust progressive State Senator Mike Weissman. The tax form also reveals that Brighter Colorado Futures 501c4 990EZ transferred $25,000 to Brighter Colorado Futures 527. A 2025 filing from Brighter Lakewood Futures shows they received $4,800 from Brighter Colorado Futures 527 and then transferred $4,800 to Kabza Media LLC, a consultancy firm that has Andy Kabza listed as its principal. The extent to which Jessie Danielson’s husband’s name appears in the many transfers of One Main Street money along with her previous endorsement of a One Main Street candidate in Fort Collins, is enough to give us pause and recommend a vote for Amanda Gonzalez.

Conor Duffy has been on the Poudre School District school board since 2023. While on the board he has discussed policy candidly, worked with PEA, the teacher’s union, and was a part of preventing school consolidations with his work on the passage of the mil levy override in 2024.

Conor has also served on the County Planning Commission for the last four years where his record is more of a mixed bag. In 2025 Duffy voted and argued in favor of additional gas turbines for the Poudre River Power Authority that passed the planning commission on a vote of 5-4. The close split reflects the fact that several members of the board recognized that the additional fossil fuel infrastructure did not meet the county’s standards of permit approval. Duffy repeated hyperbolic arguments that a no vote could mean loss of power for critical infrastructure such as hospitals, significantly underestimating renewable capacity and ignoring that most hospitals have backup generation that can last several hours. 

Conor’s opponent, Joann Ginal, is a former state legislator who represented Colorado’s 52nd House District and 14th Senate District. Ginal has been a reliably conservative Democrat opposing progressive legislation throughout her career. In her last year in the Senate, Ginal sided with Republicans on the Senate Health and Human Services Committee to be the deciding vote that would kill HB24-1028 Overdose Prevention Centers, a bill brought forward by Denver DSA endorsed Representative Elisabeth Epps and would have legalized safe-use sites, saving the lives of countless victims of overdoses. 

In 2024, at a town hall in Fort Collins, Ginal was asked a question pertaining to housing, where she corrected the audience member that the correct term for landlord was “housing provider.” Ginal then proceeded to argue with a DSA member in the audience who pointed out that housing providers are the people who actually build the houses.

Later that year while Northern Colorado DSA was running Yara Zokaie for House District 52 and after she had won her primary for the Democratic nomination, Ginal was spotted attending a fundraising party for Yara’s opponent, Steve Yurash. Yurash is a perennial candidate with the Center Party, a small group of neoconservatives that run unsuccessful campaigns in deep blue districts. Steve Yurash gained notoriety in Northern Colorado DSA when he made racist comments at a forum, gesturing to Iranian-American Yara Zokaie, and stating “in Islamic society… their rights are vested in the ayatollah and the individual is subservient to that.”

Between her dismissal of legislation that would prevent avoidable deaths and her preference for a crypto-republican over a socialist candidate, Ginal is emblematic of the conservative establishment in the Democratic Party. Our chapter recommends a vote against her.

Regents at CU determine the policy and budget for CU, elect the president of CU, and determine the extent to which CU employees can bargain collectively. They determine the direction for all four of CU’s campuses, which collectively are the state’s third biggest employer, and choose how to react to student protests. Three candidates are running for CU regent; Edie Hooton, Kubs Lalchandani, and Murray Smith. Many of the policies between the candidates are similar, as seen when looking at their campaign sites – they each support ending the contract with Key Lime Air, who work with ICE, and protecting academic freedom, for instance, as well as less impressive policies like an AI-inclusive curriculum. However, Smith and Lalchandani have shown support for collective bargaining since the beginning of their campaigns, while Hooton hedged at first before adding her support as well. Both Smith and Lalchandani are also more likely to support student protests than Hooton, in particular those surrounding protesting the genocide in Gaza, based both on their own claims and Hooton’s zionist viewpoints. Though neither Lalchandani nor Smith is a perfect candidate, the recommendation is to vote for one of them over Edie Hooton. Please note that while claims will be sourced when possible, much of the information for Lalchandani and Smith came from direct communication with them and therefore will not have a source (Hooton did not respond when reached out to).

Edie Hooton is a former State Representative for HD-10 running for Regent on policies including, in addition to those previously mentioned, tuition affordability and graduation rates. It is recommended to vote for someone other than her as she spoke out against a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, incorrectly stating that the resolution “[made] no mention of the loss of civilian lives due primarily to Hamas’ use of Palestinians as human shields”, and was directly thanked by StandWithUs, a pro-Israel organization. These viewpoints may lead Hooton to work to prevent students protesting Israel’s actions, or to passing policies meant to police them. Moreover, her policies on AI involve teaching students to use AI as a tool, and she supports CU’s system wide integration of ChatGPT, policies which could increase CU’s energy requirements and encourage more data centers within Colorado, both of which would have deleterious effects on the environment. Hooton is also connected to One Main Street Colorado (OMSC), a Colorado coalition that supports the election of moderate democrats and whose legislative members have voted against progressive bills, via her endorsement of Ethnie Treick (also endorsed by OMSC) in 2024. Ideals she shares with OMSC might carry over into her policy decisions as Regent if she is elected. Given the information shared here, we recommend voting for either of the other candidates over Edie Hooton.

Lalchandani is a lawyer whose policies include improving student graduation and ensuring representation and safety for diverse students. Lalchandani has asserted himself as the strongest advocate for immigrant and minority students, and is likely open to divestments from other companies associated with ICE. He has called himself “unequivocally pro-union and pro-worker” and supports the rights of CU employees to bargain collectively. Lalchandani has also declared an interest in being on campus regularly and speaking directly to students, staff, and faculty so as to better connect the Board of Regents to the people they serve, and has said of protests that “a university is the center of free speech in this country”, and that “students have every right to make themselves heard, and the institution has an obligation to protect that right”. This indicates a higher willingness to allow and listen to student protests than Hooton.  As a member of the South Asian Bar Association, he has run fundraisers for Palestinian relief, written very vocal letters to the legal community to not fire any associates for their speech, and helped organize lawyers for Palestine Protesters.  In comparison to Smith, Lalchandani has raised more money, which is indicative of a higher likelihood of winning – but as of June 15th, Smith has spent more money, balancing these odds. Despite Lalchandani’s pro-union and pro-Palestine positions, his background is highly tied to the tech industry and he has spoken in favor of cryptocurrencies; there is a possibility his policies would be biased towards usage of technology that ultimately serves him. This combined with his policy on AI holding the same issues as Hooton’s means that we cannot recommend him over Smith.

Smith is a geospatial data scientist running for University of Colorado Regent whose platform centers on affordability, accountability, and improving graduation rates. He has emphasized the importance of preparing students for a rapidly changing economy, including the impacts of AI on future work, while maintaining a focus on access for students from non-elite backgrounds. Apart from ending the contract with Key Lime Air, Smith says that he wants “…to push for reevaluating [divestment] on the board level”, which may indicate an openness to divesting from businesses outside of the scope of those working with ICE. Smith has supported collective bargaining for all CU employees, including non-classified employees, stating that he “[supports] a CU where every worker has meaningful input into decisions that affect their work and the university’s future”. Like Lalchandani, Smith has also expressed views towards engaging on a personal level with students, staff, and faculty regularly, and fully supports the students’ right to protest, including changing CU’s current structure around protesting. This would include pro-Palestine protests, as he states he’s “100% for free speech and protesting on campus without fear of consequences/political reprisal, no matter the issue”. In addition, Smith has an expanded view on increasing affordable housing beyond the master plan currently being considered by the Board of Regents. Smith does not share the same level of emphasis on tech hype as Lalchandani, but his AI policy similarly does not account for the negative effects of AI usage. This, in combination with his employment at a business that works to improve drone accuracy for the US military, means that we cannot recommend him over Lalchandani.