When Donna Smith ran against Bill Owens for an Arapahoe County state House seat back in 1986, she put out two mailers, along with distributing signs and flyers. Add in door-to-door canvassing, and her campaign cost $12,000.
Now she lives in a Denver House district that has become a chronic Democratic battleground. Smith and her husband receive more mailers on some days than she put out during her entire campaign, which cost $36,700 in today’s money. The race to represent her, in one of the safest Democratic seats in Colorado, has now surpassed $1.2 million in total spending.
The eye-watering total almost certainly means that, heading into Tuesday’s primary, the fight for House District 6 between Rep. Sean Camacho and challenger Iris Halpern is the most expensive House primary in Colorado history.
“It’s scary, right now, to think that we’re going to waste that money, at this time, on these stupid attacks, when there’s so much work that needs to be done,” said Smith, 71, who lives in Lowry.
She sighed, remembering how much her unsuccessful Democratic challenge against Owens, the incumbent state representative and future governor, had cost. “Think about it. What could we have in this district that we don’t have now,” she asked, if the money were spent elsewhere?
When House District 6 was redrawn in the 2022 redistricting effort, it was for Democrats, or any party for that matter. But the seat has been less a comfortable sinecure than the legislature’s most expensive see-saw: In the three election cycles since redistricting, it has played host to three Democratic primary contests.
The district, which extends east from Capitol Hill all the way to the Aurora border, has become a proxy battlefield in an ongoing war between competing financial and ideological interests in the Democratic Party — one where weary voters catch volleys of mailers in the crossfire. The last three primary races in the district, including this year’s contest, have cost roughly $2.5 million in direct and outside spending, the bulk of it coming from dark-money groups backing more moderate candidates.
That’s enough to buy 7.5 million meals through the or a year’s worth of diapers for 3,425 babies through the charity.
That spending is a sign of the times, political experts say. Colorado Democrats have settled into one-party control in Colorado over the past decade, and that has meant more Democrats in the Capitol, more ideological diversity within the party — and more opportunity for infighting.
It has also meant that business interests, which once spent campaign cash in tossup districts, are looking for new places to spend their money and influence policymaking. District 6 is among the priciest of several legislative districts that have been the focus of outside spending this year. In all, roughly $3 million has been spent, largely in seven Democratic legislative primaries, by groups affiliated with One Main Street, a centrist dark-money organization that doesn’t disclose all its donors.
Colorado Labor Action, funded by the state’s major unions, has dropped more than $900,000 against One Main Street’s favored candidates in a handful of races, and other outside groups have poured in further cash.
“There has been a fundamental shift (away) from spending money in the general elections between Democrats and Republicans,” said Alec Garnett, a District 6 resident and a former Colorado House speaker. “And that money is shifting into Democratic primaries because thatap where these outside interests believe that they can make a difference, in terms of the ideology of the candidates.”
This year in House District 6, Camacho, the incumbent, is a moderate Democrat seeking to fend off a progressive challenger in Halpern, an attorney. Camacho won the seat with nearly 85% of the vote in the 2024 election after beating then-Rep. Elisabeth Epps — one of the most left-wing, and controversial, lawmakers in the House — in the primary.
Epps, in turn, had won the seat two years earlier in an open race after beating a more moderate Democrat.
Why has the district become such a battleground? Part of the answer is circumstantial: The seat was open in 2022, and Epps was a magnet for criticism in 2024. Denver, Garnett said, is also the “headwaters” of the Democratic Party in the state. The voters in District 6 tend to be younger, and it’s home to some of the state’s most prominent politicians, including both U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser, who are now facing off in the Democratic primary for governor. It’s also host to the governor’s mansion and the state Capitol building.
Victory in the primary could provide a springboard for a progressive political leader, as Epps once appeared to be. A win might also help set the tone for a Democratic Party still in search of a defining identity. Epps’ victory in 2022 was part of a wave of progressive wins, and the next legislative session featured debates, with mixed results, about supervised drug-use sites, eviction protections and assault weapons bans.
But Epps’ loss in 2024, after an outburst during a special legislative session that saw her reprimanded by House leadership, came against a backdrop of more moderate victories across Democratic primaries.
For Halpern’s outside–spending supporters, beating Camacho this week would mean putting a more progressive lawmaker back into what they see as a progressive district. It would also knock out one of the leaders of the legislature’s moderate — and much-criticized — Opportunity Caucus, which Camacho co-chairs.
For the groups opposing Halpern, backing Camacho is partially a matter of defending a candidate they’d helped elect two years ago. His voting record, they’d argue, has been in line with Democrats across the Capitol and doesn’t warrant booting him from office.
Their support of Camacho is also part of their ongoing effort to keep pragmatic Democrats in office.
‘Campaign has just become about the money’
But that higher-level reasoning that’s crystallized into an avalanche of campaign literature has not been celebrated by the House District 6 residents who spoke to The Denver Post.
“I’m a pretty engaged person; I’m probably going to vote no matter what,” said Zach Robertson, who lives in Denver’s Uptown neighborhood. He said he had not voted yet but was leaning toward Camacho. “But (the spending) has me more cynical. This campaign has just become about the money — versus about the issues or campaigning on the ground.”
He’d looked at Camacho’s legislative history and his voting record, and they seemed fine for a Democrat. He didn’t buy the attack ads against Halpern, which falsely accused her of being a secret lobbyist.
And he knew there had been a split between different factions in the party, though he said he didn’t understand why it seemed to keep coming to a head in District 6.
It was much the same for William Thompson, a 37-year resident of the district who was once involved in Democratic organizing. He’s also supporting Camacho, and he questioned the integrity of the independent groups putting out mailers — which he felt were coming from interests based outside District 6.
“I can see where some people would be disgusted by the whole process and say, ‘To hell with it, I’m not going to vote,’ ” he said. ” … And I think it hurts the party, too.”
Amid all the noise, Smith, the onetime Owens opponent, said she wanted to hear about policies that would help her and her husband stay in Denver, even as they age and rely on a fixed income.
She said she’d heard both candidates speak in person and that she was supporting Halpern. She didn’t like feeling like she was the intended audience for attack ads from outside groups, especially when she wanted substance.
“Do (they) think we’re stupid?” Smith said. “There’s a part of you that wants to say, ‘OK, alright — now tell me what you’re going to do for us. What is it you’re going to do so that Colorado and HD6, the people here, can afford to live here in a great state, in a beautiful city? What are we going to do to protect that for future generations?’ ”
Drowning in negativity
The primary has been contentious. The biennial conflict’s reignition this year has sparked a mailer and advertising bonanza, most of it focused on critical messages.
Five dollars out of every $6 spent in House District 6 has come from outside groups, not from Camacho’s or Halpern’s campaigns. By law, the campaigns cannot coordinate with the outside groups that spend money in support of them.
In six days, a Post reporter who lives in District 6 received 10 mailers for or against Camacho and Halpern. Garnett said he received four mailers in one day last week.
Most of them have been attack ads: “Every mailer I get is negative,” he said.
As in 2024, Camacho is backed largely by dark-money groups tied to One Main Street, which generally supports “pragmatic” and pro-business Democrats. Halpern has received support from the PAC funded by the Colorado AFL-CIO and the Colorado Education Association.
In an interview, Camacho said he tries to run positive campaigns, including this go-round. But “one of the most frustrating parts” of the deluge of outside money, he said, is that those groups go so negative and threaten to drown out the message the candidates want to share.
He described himself as a “strong labor (and) anti-TABOR guy,” referring to the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which restricts taxes and spending in Colorado. He touted bills he’d run that sought to protect older people from financial fraud and to regulate artificial intelligence-powered chatbots.
“I’m trying to get out my message, but I can’t control what outside groups say or do,” he said. “That’s really concerning, frankly.”
Halpern told The Post that she knew the history of dark money in the district when she announced her candidacy in January. She also knew it’d be hard to outraise an incumbent.
But still, the amount of money — and how vicious the attacks have become — has shocked her.
Her , for example, launched with a video blasting Opportunity Caucus members for attending a private fundraising retreat in the mountains in October. But now it also features a banner at the bottom declaring “False accusations DISMISSED” — a reference to a complaint filed with the secretary of state’s office alleging that she’d illegally worked as a lobbyist.
As her website notes, that complaint . But an anonymous PAC continued to make the accusation in ads to voters. Earlier this month, Halpern sent the group behind it, Denver Progressives United, a cease-and-desist letter.
“It’s getting very dirty,” Halpern said. “There’s no accountability. And voters, and even I, don’t know who is donating to these dark-money groups.”
She and Camacho are both Democrats, and they would likely vote the same on bills that reach the floor of the House. But which bills reach the floor — and in what shape — is the key difference, she argued.
She criticized Camacho for the AI chatbot bill that, she argued, was “a giveaway to the richest companies in the world” because it limited monetary damages. She also knocked him for a vote he cast in committee that helped in mountain communities.
Other money-soaked races this year
If it’s any consolation to House District 6 residents, they’re not alone in being targets of so much spending.
A similar fight is spilling out of mailboxes in nearby Senate District 34, which covers the northwest corner of Denver, including part of downtown. Also considered one of the safest seats anywhere in Colorado, the District 34 Democratic primary has pulled in a whopping $1.5 million in total spending in the race between Andrés Carrera, who worked for the city of Denver, and Chela Garcia Irlando, who leads an environmental nonprofit.
The majority has come from outside dark-money groups, and most of that from One Main Street-aligned committees backing Carrera. Irlando has received substantial support from the labor PAC that’s supporting Halpern, as well as from Conservation Colorado and others.
Between the two Denver legislative districts, candidates’ campaigns and the outside groups backing them have spent roughly $3 million — enough for 9 million meals or diapers for 4,100 babies — for two seats that will almost certainly elect whichever Democrat emerges from Tuesday’s primary.
The Denver races have been by far the costliest of this primary cycle. But the labor PAC and One Main Street network have also squared off in races in Broomfield and Aurora. One Main Street has also been active in primaries for seats based in Thornton and Summit County.
While Denver’s Senate District 34 won’t have another primary election for four years, House District 6 could host another expensive primary in 2028.
In conversations with The Post, campaign operatives involved in the outside spending who declined to speak on the record expressed a hope — if not quite an expectation — that the tug-of-war over House District 6 might end after this race, regardless of who wins.
Paul Teske, a political scientist at the University of Colorado Denver, said the fighting in the primaries, in that House district and elsewhere, may change only if the money and attention are needed elsewhere.
“I think with such a weak Republican Party statewide — we’ve maybe moved from purple to solidly blue — then the fights that are left are within the blue,” Teske said of Democratic races. “So the money and the attention is going to get funneled there.”
But that might change if Republicans “put together a more competitive set of candidates across the state” that gives them a shot at winning the legislature or the governor’s office, he said.
House District 6 is full of engaged Democrats, said Rep. Steven Woodrow, who represented the seat before the boundaries were redrawn in 2022. He now represents House District 2, which includes Washington Park, and is not running for reelection. He described the primary as a microcosm of the broader moderate-vs.-progressive fight within the party.
“That rift is somewhat based on policy differences, no doubt, but it’s also largely based in approach and philosophy regarding change and operating within the system that we have,” he said.
Woodrow, who has not endorsed either Camacho or Halpern, said it made sense that outside groups who’d backed Camacho before would defend him now. They fought hard to land Camacho in the seat back in 2024. Why would they pull back the next cycle?
“I don’t begrudge folks for trying to protect the gains they feel they’ve made,” he said.
But the cost has been staggering, and voters have noticed. Two who spoke to The Post pointed out how physically large this year’s mailers have been. Others criticized their mysterious origins.
“What is wrong with us?” lamented Elizabeth Pace, a longtime District 6 resident and Democratic voter. “We have lost (our way), even in this small, liberal, progressive area of town. Itap very discouraging.”
She supports Halpern but earlier backed Camacho and gave money to Epps’ 2022 opponent, Katie March. She said she resented the crush of attack ads, and she got a knot in her stomach even when she saw negative ads against Camacho.
“It’s negative to the point of, I want to put this down — I don’t want to see this anymore. I will reject the premise on its face,” she said. “That is bad. That is bad for us in this little haven that we call democracy.”
