Jena Griswold has spent more than seven years in in Colorado. Her perch as secretary of state gives her a natural launchpad to vie for and capture a new statewide post.
But winning the attorney general’s race won’t come easy if her Democratic primary opponents have anything to say about it.
Ask them, and they’ll say Griswold is guilty of false advertising, is under-credentialed for the job, has skipped multiple campaign debates and forums, or is simply on a laddered quest for higher and higher office — with ultimate aspirations to land in the governor’s mansion.
For months, the best-known candidate in the race, who’s a lawyer but hasn’t done as much litigating as her competitors, has been a magnet for attacks.
“(Attorney general) is one of the most important offices to fight for the future of our country,” said David Seligman, 43, who heads up the nonprofit public interest law firm Towards Justice and is one of three Democrats taking on Griswold in the June 30 primary. “It’s too important to be a stepping stone.”
Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, another primary candidate, attacking Griswold for falsely claiming that she argued the lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court that aimed to keep Donald Trump off Colorado’s 2024 presidential ballot. The court later ruled against that lawsuit, which was brought by Republican and unaffiliated voters. Griswold was a named defendant due to her position and filed a brief in support of the ballot challenge, and an attorney representing her was allotted time in arguments.
“The woman who argued the case at the Supreme Court was not Jena Griswold,” Dougherty told The Denver Post. “I would expect someone to call me out if I said I handled a case when I didn’t.”
Griswold, 41, called it “unfortunate” that her Democratic opponents had gone negative, saying the field should be “laser-focused on the problem ahead of us — it’s the Trump illegality.”
“As secretary of state, I helped lead the fight to defend democracy against (President) Donald Trump, and as attorney general, I’ll stand up to Trump and MAGA extremists to protect our democracy and fundamental rights,” she said.
Griswold cited her record of holding former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters accountable for her criminal role in an election equipment security breach following the 2020 election. Peters was released from prison earlier this week after Gov. Jared Polis granted her clemency in May.
She also pointed to her efforts to keep Trump off the Colorado ballot following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, “despite facing death threats,” as well as her refusal to “hand over Coloradans’ sensitive voter data to the federal government” after Trump retook the White House last year.
“The most burning issue is protecting Coloradans, our state and doing our part to protect the nation from Trump’s lawlessness,” Griswold said. “I’m going to do everything in my power to stop this administration from breaking the law and hurting our state.”
Griswold has a sizable target on her back because she is the candidate holding the most prominent position in the Democratic pack. The only statewide officeholder in the contest, she’s raised nearly twice as much money as her nearest competitor — $1.9 million as of Monday, the most recent filing deadline.
Two Republicans — El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen and attorney David Willson — are facing off in their own primary at the end of the month for their party’s nomination for the November general election.
‘She’s a politician’
While Griswold has more name recognition than her Democratic opponents, a distinct advantage in a down-ballot race, University of Colorado at Boulder law professor Douglas Spencer said that doesn’t mean she has the contest wrapped up.
Griswold, he said, has cast herself in a political light — in large part by intensely focusing on Trump. (Griswold mentioned Trump or his administration 20 times during a 15-minute interview with The Denver Post for this story.)
It’s a focus she has been criticized for in her current role as chief overseer of elections in Colorado. While potentially strategic in a battle for a strictly political post like governor, such outspokenness may rub voters the wrong way if they’re looking for a more law-and-order approach from their attorney general, Spencer said.
“It is the chief law enforcement office, and the office gives you discretion over which cases to bring or not bring,” he said. “Some voters may say, ‘Let the political people go after Trump on the political front.’ Griswold’s biggest strength is probably her biggest weakness — she’s a politician.”
How much that will be a liability is uncertain in a state like Colorado, where the dislike for the president runs particularly deep and is borne out in Trump’s repeated losses in the state over the last three presidential election cycles.
The current attorney general, Phil Weiser, has aggressively gone after the Trump administration since he returned to office early last year. Weiser, who is term-limited from running again, has either brought directly or joined other states in filing 65 lawsuits against the White House over a multitude of issues, including immigration, federal funding cuts and tariffs.
In nearly half of those actions, the plaintiffs have won a preliminary injunction against the administration or a favorable ruling, said Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for Weiser’s office.
Weiser, a Democrat, is running for Colorado governor against U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in the primary. Griswold said she would keep up his robust pace of resistance to Trump if she succeeds him in his current office.
“I will absolutely continue to keep this administration at bay,” she said.
Her Democratic opponents share Griswold’s revulsion toward the man in the White House, but they say it matters how litigation is pursued. And that’s where courtroom experience comes in, they say.
Dougherty, who worked as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office before moving to Colorado to head up the DNA Justice Review Project of then-Attorney General John Suthers, a Republican, said Griswold lacks courtroom experience.
“As a leader, you should be willing to do the work you’re asking others to do,” he said.
Dougherty, 54, was the lead prosecutor in the 2021 Boulder King Soopers mass shooting and the 2025 Pearl Street Mall antisemitic firebombing cases. Both resulted in convictions.
It’s not just a matter of bringing cases, Dougherty said, but of figuring out which will most likely result in successful outcomes.
“Do we have enough evidence to take Donald Trump to court? That’s a decision that requires legal experience and leadership,” he said. “I believe the next AG has to have legal experience and integrity.”
Hetal Doshi, a former federal prosecutor in Colorado, said on-the-ground experience is crucial. Her pursuit of cartels, fraudsters and scammers as an assistant U.S. attorney wouldn’t have been as effective without courtroom experience in front of a jury, she said.
“We just can’t risk having that type of figurehead leader instead of a real leader,” said Doshi, 47, who later served as deputy assistant attorney general overseeing the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division.
And candidates have to show up for the voters — Doshi said Griswold has missed a number of recent debates.
“The failure to show up and not answer people is a failure of accountability,” she said. “You, as the voter, are entitled to know what I think.”
Griswold makes her case
As secretary of state, a mom and an attorney general candidate, Griswold said she’s had a full schedule.
Still, she said she’d attended nine forums as of late May and held 10 town halls. Two of her opponents, she said, “bought their way on to the ballot” — a reference to through the petition process rather than the caucus system. Griswold and Seligman secured their spots through the party’s state assembly.
Griswold, who is a 2011 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, acknowledges that she is not a career litigator but says the job of attorney general doesn’t require that.
“We are fortunate that Colorado has an attorney general’s office that is full of literally hundreds of legal experts on all aspects of Colorado law,” she said. “The AG is not the lead trial attorney — it’s the person setting the legal direction and managing a very large organization.”
The Colorado Attorney General’s Office has just over 700 lawyers and staff.
Her lists Griswold as having been a litigation associate for two years at the law firm in Washington, D.C., more than a decade ago, where she “practiced general litigation with a focus on Latin America and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.” She has also worked in the offices of then-Gov. John Hickenlooper — as a liaison between his administration and the federal government — and U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette.
Griswold said voters want someone to stand up to Trump and appreciate the perspective she brings from growing up in a working-class family and living through many of the challenges Coloradans face.
“I’m the candidate best-equipped to deliver for Colorado voters,” she said.
Griswold’s biggest stumble as secretary of state came days before the November 2024 election, when it was revealed that partial voting system passwords had inadvertently been leaked online months earlier. An investigation found that her office violated two state information security policies that contributed to the release of the passwords, but it absolved her and her staff of wrongdoing.
In March, on the day of the Democratic state assembly, Griswold faced allegations from a former employee who publicly accused her of creating “a hostile and volatile workplace” and a “climate of fear of retaliation” as secretary of state. That employee, Reese Edwards, served as the office’s director of government and public affairs in 2019 and 2020.
He wrote in a statement that he was speaking on behalf of six other “former executive and senior level staff” at Griswold’s office who “fear retaliation and retribution for their jobs and their careers.” They were not identified in the statement.
“They fear what she might try to do to them if she gets her hands on the most powerful judicial position in Colorado,” Edwards wrote.
Griswold declined to address the situation during her interview with The Post. She said she oversees an office of more than 150 employees with a $50 million budget and is “really proud of everything that the staff has accomplished.”
Spencer, the law school professor and an election law scholar, said voters will have to cut through the campaign noise and decide a fundamental question when it comes to who will become their next attorney general.
“Are we choosing somebody we trust to wield discretion in a way that will benefit our state and protect the rule of law?” he said.
