Democratic primaries in Colorado mark latest fight over party's direction amid push by insurgents
Washington — One week after Democratic insurgent victories in New York, the focus is now moving to Colorado, where challenges in a trio of races are threatening candidates backed by the party establishment — Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper and Rep. Diana DeGette.
Bennet, who's represented Colorado in the upper chamber since 2009, had long been expected to sail to the nomination after he announced a bid for the governor's mansion last year. But state Attorney General Phil Weiser has appeared to cut into Bennet's lead, casting himself as a fighter who's been willing to take on the Trump administration with dozens of lawsuits.
Bennet, a moderate who also ran for president in 2020, has emphasized affordability issues in his campaign, as well as his achievements in Washington like the expanded Child Tax Credit. When he announced his campaign for governor, he claimed that the "best solutions to our challenges will not come from Washington's broken politics," but from within Colorado.
But Weiser has attempted to label Bennet as a Washington insider out of touch with Coloradans, and railed against him for supporting a handful of President Trump's Cabinet picks.
Then there's Colorado's 1st Congressional District, where a 29-year-old lawyer is mounting a serious challenge against 15-term DeGette, proving to be the most formidable primary opponent the incumbent has faced since she was first elected in 1996. Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist whose family immigrated from Ethiopia when she was a baby, outperformed DeGette, a longtime progressive, at the Democratic Party assembly in March to qualify for the primary. DeGette only narrowly cleared the threshold of 30% support of party activists to secure a spot on the ballot.
Kiros has cast DeGette as beholden to corporate donors, saying at a candidate forum earlier this month that "in order for the Democratic Party to actually fulfill its progressive agenda, we need to have members that are unbought and unafraid to stand up to the billionaires and corporations."
In the same forum, DeGette criticized the political newcomer's lack of experience.
"Now is not the time to gamble and send somebody with no experience to Washington," DeGette said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said Monday that DeGette is "forcefully making her case" for reelection and "we'll see what happens."
"The reality is we have an unsettled electoral environment, which is going to be the case when Donald Trump is president," he said at a news conference. "It's not a surprise that there are highly competitive primaries in deep blue parts of the country that are also unfolding this cycle."
In the Senate primary, Hickenlooper, who's represented the state since 2021, after serving as governor and Denver mayor, is facing a challenge from state Sen. Julie Gonzales. Gonzales, once a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has likewise billed herself as a fighter opposing the establishment, while arguing that Coloradans need a new generation of leadership.
The winners of the Democratic primaries are expected to have a significant edge in the general election in November. Colorado hasn't elected a Republican to the governor's mansion in more than two decades, and the state hasn't sent a Republican to the Senate since 2014. In 2024, DeGette won Colorado's 1st Congressional District with more than 75% of the vote.
The fight in Colorado's primaries is the latest example of a trend cropping up elsewhere, with progressives and democratic socialists seeking to shake up or fundamentally change the Democratic Party, in a dynamic that could define the cycle.
Already, a number of Democratic candidates backed by national Democrats have fallen to anti-establishment candidates this year, like with Graham Platner's rise over Gov. Janet Mills in the party's Maine Senate primary, along with the defeat of Reps. Adriano Espaillat and Dan Goldman in New York.
Espaillat and Goldman lost to challengers backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who also played kingmaker in the open race for retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez's seat, endorsing a democratic socialist candidate against one backed by Velazquez.
Mamdani said after the victories last week that it showed "New Yorkers are hungry for a new kind of politics."
