What it did not do is bring in big donations.

Boebert¶¶Òőap campaign filed a Thursday that offers the first glimpse into whether her right-wing virality and social media stardom are a boon to her campaign coffers. The report suggests mixed results: Boebert¶¶Òőap campaign received only two donations worth $100 or more in the three days after the Jan. 3 ad, but viral posts in March earned her far more medium and large donations.

Campaigns do not have to list donors and dates for small contributions, so it’s unknown how many small donors gave to Boebert’s campaign. Donations of $200 or more must be itemized with dates and donor information.

released March 8 by her congressional office showed Boebert walking around the Capitol telling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to tear down a security barrier that went up after the Jan. 6 riot. The video, which was not paid for by her campaign and did not solicit donations, has been viewed more than one million times on Twitter. Her campaign received 21 itemized donations that day, valued at $8,275.

On March 9, to donate to her campaign in response to a viral Twitter hashtag that called for her to be imprisoned. Her campaign received 33 itemized donations that day worth $17,531 and 41 the next totaling $15,381.

Boebert ultimately raised $846,156 between New Year’s Day and March 31, a strong fundraising quarter at the beginning of a nearly two-year-long defense of her job representing western and southern Colorado against several Democratic challengers.

In other federal fundraising news:

• The Jan. 6 riot also played into Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse’s campaign spending. The congressman put $10,400 from his campaign account toward security in February, when he was a prosecutor in former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Anlance Protection, the Fort Collins company his campaign hired, specializes in “intelligence gathering, threat assessment, tactical planning and proactive security measures.”
• State Sen. Kerry Donovan led the Democratic field in the 3rd District, challenging Boebert with a $643,596 haul. She received four $5,800 donations – the maximum allowed under law – from members of the Walton family (Walmart), as well as a $2,900 donation from Robin Hickenlooper, wife of U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper. Former U.S. Senate candidates Trish Zornio and Dan Baer donated as well.
• State Rep. Donald Valdez, who is running in the 3rd District for a second time after falling short in 2020, raised $67,150 last quarter, including a $2,800 donation from Boulder author T.A. Barron.
• Sol Sandoval, a Pueblo social worker and activist running in the 3rd, raised $45,526. Much of that, $10,000, came from When Democrats Turn Out, a political action committee. $2,900 came from Merle Chambers, a former oil and gas CEO. Diane Mitsch Bush, who lost to Boebert in 2020, donated $500, as did state Rep. Edie Hooton, D-Boulder.
• Colin Wilhelm, a Glenwood Springs defense attorney and 3rd District candidate, raised $14,369 for his Democratic campaign, including an $8,000 loan.
• U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet raised $1.2 million last quarter and had about the same amount on hand at the end of March. Bennet is up for re-election next year but doesn’t have a Republican challenger yet.

Following Hickenlooper’s failed, almost invisible presidential campaign (if a candidate runs for president and no one noticed or cared did it really happen?), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) in Washington, D.C. flicked aside several respected Colorado Democrats and crowned him as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Former House Majority Leader Alice Madden, State Sen. Angela Williams, former U.S Attorney John Walsh, former Ambassador Dan Baer, and former State Sen. Mike Johnson had been in the race for months and had demonstrated they actually wanted to be a senator while Hickenlooper was running around Iowa and New Hampshire. But they were all pushed out of the race by the New York-Washington axis of Democratic power.

Former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs professor Stephanie Rose Spaulding, climate activist Diana Bray, immigration activist Michelle Ferrigno Warren, and biomedical scientist Trish Zornio stubbornly remain in the Democratic primary race. Don’t they understand the high masters of the national Democratic Party have deemed them unworthy?

The fact that Romanoff and Madden engineered a hard-fought Democratic majority in the Colorado House of Representatives for the first time in thirty years in 2004 apparently is insignificant.

Hickenlooper famously declared during his vanity run for president that he was not cut out to be a senator because senators really don’t do anything. Disparaging an office where so many prominent and respected Coloradans of both parties have previously served such as Gary Hart, Bill Armstrong, Tim Wirth, Hank Brown, Ben Campbell, Wayne Allard, Mark Udall and Ken Salazar, is insulting to their service and their records of accomplishment for Colorado and the nation.

Meanwhile, Hickenlooper has been mired in an ethics investigation that the national Democratic Party did not anticipate. Being investigated for violating Colorado’s ethics laws is one thing but the way Hickenlooper is handling the controversy must be terribly embarrassing to Schumer and the DSCC.

The charges against Hickenlooper are substantive. He blew off ethics disclosure requirements and failed to accurately report travel expenses paid for by what he calls “friends” but that are really “special interest parties” while he was governor. In one case, he issued an executive order that directly benefited a wealthy supporter after being treated to a private flight to the wedding of the brother of that wealthy donor. Adding some special color to this episode is that Hickenlooper officiated at the wedding.

After these ethical lapses were exposed, the governor is entitled to state legal representation to answer the charges. But rather than using an assistant state attorney general costing the state $112 per hour, he insisted on the state paying one of Colorado’s most prominent and partisan private election law attorneys at $525 an hour.

The money to pay Hickenlooper’s legal expenses comes from a special fund of $146 million set up in 2003 by the federal government to help states in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy and the 2001 recession to cover essential government services or to cover the costs of certain unfunded federal mandates. Hickenlooper’s legal fees are “essential government services”?

Republican legislators called on the Legislative Audit Committee to investigate the possible abuse of this fund but Democrats unanimously killed the idea. The daughter of one of the Democratic members of the committee worked on the Hickenlooper presidential campaign and is now on the Senate campaign staff. Conflict of interest anyone?

But the most revealing moment of this ethics scandal came during an interview with a Denver television reporter who pressed Hickenlooper on the issue. A flustered Hickenlooper told the reporter that journalists should be defending him. “You guys should be protecting me from this stuff,” he said.

Indeed, Hickenlooper led a charmed life as a Denver mayor and Colorado governor over sixteen years, and he apparently expects the same kid-glove treatment in this Senate race. But he is quickly finding out the rules do apply to him and real scrutiny of his candidacy will happen.

This Senate seat is nothing more than a consolation prize he feels entitled to after his futile run for president.

Andrew Romanoff was right when he said this week that Democratic power brokers “recruited into this race a fellow who said he didn’t want the job and wouldn’t be good at it, and they’ve done everything they possibly can to stifle this primary, to anoint the winner, to turn what ought to be a contest into a coronation.”

Perhaps the all-powerful and all-knowing Senate minority leader and the DSCC are starting to regret their decision.

Dick Wadhams is a Republican political consultant and a former Colorado Republican state chairman.

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In the days after President Donald Trump ordered a surprise drone strike in Iraq that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani on Jan. 2, Democrats seeking the Senate seat in Colorado criticized the move, and one, Lorena Garcia, marched with protesters in downtown Denver, demanding peace.

“No War on Iran! U.S. Out of Mid-East,” Garcia’s sign read, as she alongside hundreds of other anti-war Coloradans on Jan. 4.

“He has no authority to continue any sort of engagement in Iran,” of Trump that day. “He is posturing, and the only thing that will come of this is unnecessary blood spill and destruction. This man is the most dangerous human on the planet right now.”

Democratic candidate Andrew Romanoff, asked by The Denver Post what he would do about Iran if he was in the Senate today, had a more moderate response.

“I would demand the same thing that a bipartisan group of senators is demanding: Evidence of the threat and a required consultation with Congress that the president seems indifferent to,” Romanoff said at a Denver fundraiser Thursday night.

“In the last week, we’ve seen Iran abandon any limits on its nuclear program and the American-led coalition halt its efforts to counter ISIS,” he added. “Those developments make the world more dangerous.”

John Hickenlooper, the front-runner to take on Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, said he weighs such matters with a simple test: “Is the world safer because of these decisions?”

“And now it seems more dangerous for us, for our troops, and for our allies than it was last week. Now we have to figure out what comes next. We need congressional oversight, real diplomacy, and global engagement going forward to keep us safe,” Hickenlooper said Friday.

In 2019, it would have been hard to imagine the Democratic Senate primary could be dominated by talk of foreign policy. It was rarely asked about at forums and debates and, when it was discussed, usually garnered only broad answers about Iran, such as the need for reinstating a nuclear agreement.

At campaign stops, candidates would spend an hour or 90 minutes taking questions and never hear one about foreign policy. On campaign literature and websites, foreign relations is well below the domestic topics that have dominated the Democratic race: climate change, health care, immigration, guns, the economy.

Now, as the campaigns ramp up after a holiday slumber, there are new topics: authorization for military force, the need for congressional oversight, and the complexities of a volatile Middle East, though there’s reason to believe domestic issues will still dominate 2020. At the private Romanoff fundraiser Thursday night, there were two questions about mental health, one about guns, one about climate and one about pet euthanasia. Iran was not mentioned.

“It¶¶Òőap a shame we haven’t been talking more about foreign policy,” Garcia says. “I think it will become an issue and then it’ll die down, just like every other issue. We start talking more about gun violence when there’s a shooting, and a week later we stop talking about it.”

The Democratic field largely agrees there needs to be a de-escalation of tension with Iran, though they differ on what that should look like.

“Actions have consequences, and while Soleimani is an enemy of the U.S., I fear his assassination — ordered by Trump with no congressional oversight — is reactionary and could serve to escalate tensions in an already fraught region and cost more lives,” said Trish Zornio soon after the Iranian general’s death. “We need strategic plans, not emotions.”

On Twitter, candidate Diana Bray shared a tweet that called Soleimani’s death “an illegal war crime” and predicted “it will begin a world war.” Stephany Rose Spaulding has called on Congress to reclaim its war powers and “repudiate presidential overreaches,” a problem she says did not begin with Trump.

The man every Democrat in the race is hoping to compete against in November, Gardner, has been an outspoken supporter of Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani. The Republican senator from Yuma is a Foreign Relations Committee member and foreign policy is an area of expertise.

“We find ourselves here because the Obama administration failed to deter the Iranian threat,” Gardner said Jan. 3 — a point of disagreement with every Democratic challenger. “The flawed 2015 nuclear deal not only provided a pathway to a nuclear bomb, it emboldened Tehran’s bloody ambitions.”

“I do not want war with Iran, but the president did not take this action in a vacuum,” Gardner said on the Senate floor Thursday, referring to Soleimani’s death. “Contrary to claims by some of my colleagues in this very chamber, it is Iran that has escalated tensions, not the United States.”

Gardner is seeking a second Senate term, five years after narrowly beating incumbent Mark Udall in a race that centered on domestic concerns but touched on foreign policy in its final months. , who voted against the Iraq War in 2003, of being weak on ISIS after it beheaded two Americans. of playing politics with national security and criticized his reticence on Syria.

“Running for a seat like U.S. Senate, you have to be ready to understand foreign policy and take a position on it,” Garcia said, “especially when it comes to war and especially when it comes to a president who is already not trusted to make a decision that would be in the best interest of Americans.”

One foreign policy expert in the Senate race dropped out Sept. 12 and endorsed Hickenlooper. Dan Baer was a U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and a deputy assistant secretary of state under Obama. When he entered the race, he said he looked forward to going “toe to toe” with Gardner on foreign policy.

“One of the interesting things this week was how Gardner decided to hug the president close on a foreign policy issue that was controversial,” Baer said in an interview Friday. “In the past, he’s hugged the president close in a lot of ways but he has, at times, tried to find an independent voice on foreign policy. He’s had strong statements on North Korea, on Russia.”

Baer said the Democratic primary winner should link Gardner to Trump, who is unpopular in Colorado, when discussing foreign policy.

“You’ll notice that today is not a debate,” she said. “It is a forum on purpose. The candidates will not be responding directly to each other or attacking or criticizing one another. Instead, they’ll be telling you about themselves.”

Candidates were warned before the event: Do not respond or even talk directly to another candidate. Attack an opponent by name, and you will forfeit your time. Talk only about yourself and your vision. No livestreaming or recording of any kind is allowed.

“We don’t have eight candidates running against each other,” Carroll told the Pueblo crowd Sunday. “We have eight candidates running for a better state and for a better country, to defeat Cory Gardner.”

Colorado Democrats may not acknowledge it, but, literally, they do have eight candidates running against each other. (A ninth, Christopher Milton, has filed to run but has launched no public campaign nor spoken at candidate events.) A majority of those in the race are crying foul on the state party’s anti-competitive forum rules.

In interviews this week, six of the eight candidates who attended the Pueblo forum criticized those rules. Michelle Ferrigno Warren defended them. John Hickenlooper sent a brief statement through a spokesperson and declined to be interviewed.

“It¶¶Òőap a very pleasant fiction to suggest we’re not running against each other. Clearly one of us will emerge from this contest and take on Cory Gardner,” said Andrew Romanoff, adding, “The rules are silly and largely unenforceable.”

“I strongly prefer debates!” Trish Zornio emailed.

“I think (the rules) are a bit stringent,” said state Sen. Angela Williams, “because we don’t have the opportunity to compare and contrast our views and our policies so that the audience and the people of Colorado can get to know the candidates.”

The party has held three candidate forums so far for this race and has another planned for Oct. 20 in Montrose. The ground rules reflect long-standing party policies and were not tailored to this specific contest. Party staffers declined to be interviewed for this story, and instead emailed a statement defending their approach.

“Our ongoing and consistent goal has been to provide local, in-person forums for communities around the state to meet each of our candidates and learn about their vision to better represent Colorado in the United States Senate,” part of the statement read.

Several candidates said they have talked to party officials about the rules, pushing back on the livestream ban and other restrictions.

Diana Bray said she spoke in June with the party chair, Carroll, who explained the rationale behind the rules.

“What they’re concerned about is that the Republicans will use our voice and use video to manipulate, to have a misrepresentation about what we said. They’re worried about Republican malarkey and interference. That’s how she explained it to me,” Bray said.

Ferrigno Warren appreciates that concern.

“We must remove the cancer of personal attacks and name-calling from our public discourse,” she emailed. “These forums provide that very space.”

Indeed, Republican operatives have been opportunistic in trashing Gardner’s prospective opponents. When the candidates gathered in Denver for a June forum that was filmed — it was organized by Indivisible groups, not by the party — the National Republican Senatorial Committee cut the video and posted highlights set to circus music.

Joanna Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the NRSC, laughed when asked whether the Colorado Democrats’ rules will do anything to mitigate the GOP’s offensive.

“Regardless of who the candidate is,” she said, “we’re going to be attacking that candidate.”

Colorado Democratic Party spokespeople would not comment on whether the party might change its rules. At the Pueblo forum, Romanoff used his closing remarks to call for a change.

“The way we win this race is to engage more voters,” he told the crowd, as he stood directly in front of Carroll. “I’m glad you came tonight, but I suggest, respectfully, that the party reconsider its ban on broadcasting this event.”

Romanoff was among several candidates who drew a distinction between the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s direct interference in this primary — Sen. Chuck Schumer recruited Hickenlooper, and the DSCC has taken steps to promote Hickenlooper at Romanoff’s expense — and the actions of Carroll and the state party.

But were the floodgates opened at the Colorado Democrats’ events, it is a near-certainty that candidates would challenge Hickenlooper — whose name recognition and fundraising are unmatched in the primary — on climate change, among other issues. Romanoff, Bray, Zornio and others have consistently criticized the former governor for his coziness with the fossil fuel industry.

They all, of course, have many ways to get their messages out besides at party forums, as the party noted in its statement. And they’ve gone after Hickenlooper when they’ve had the chance.

“I’ve spent years and years and years protesting Hickenlooper‘s promotion of oil and gas,” Tuesday morning. “No way will I sit by and now watch him pitch himself as (a) climate champion. Nope.”

She and others are hoping the party, at its events, will permit such challenges moving forward.

“This is the only way we can hold each other accountable on the record to our policy plans, our backgrounds and our histories,” Lorena Garcia said. “It’s time to stop censoring candidates.”

Madden, a former Colorado House majority leader and Obama-era Energy Department official, said she must have surgery soon and was preparing to take two weeks off to recover, so “the timing felt right.”

Her exit from the race was first reported by The Colorado Independent.

“I had done an analysis that I had a path to victory if I could get progressive women and environmental groups to endorse, but after John (Hickenlooper) got in, those avenues to victory seemed like they were closing,” Madden said in an interview.

Madden’s exit from the Democratic contest to take on Republican Sen. Cory Gardner decreases the already-slim odds that Colorado will elect its first woman senator this cycle. While six of the nine remaining Democratic candidates are women, the race’s two leading candidates are men: Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff.

“I definitely did think it was the year that we had a great shot for that,” Madden said of electing a woman.

“In John’s case, for whatever reason, people think he’s a surer bet than anyone else in the race. … I think that anyone beats (Gardner),” she added.

Madden is the fifth Democrat to leave the 2020 Senate race in the past five weeks, following Mike Johnston, John Walsh, Dan Baer and Denise Burgess. Walsh and Baer have endorsed Hickenlooper, but Madden is not endorsing anyone else in the race at this time.

“I assume you’re here to support me this time,” she told him before they broke into hearty laughs.

It was an unusually warm welcome for Derrick, the most consistent fixture on Colorado’s Senate campaign trail. He drives to all corners of the state and everywhere in between with one duty: keep a hand-held camera trained on the many Democrats challenging U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner.

“I have nothing to hide,” Garcia said of his presence. “I’m authentic. If I ever get to a point where I’m afraid that something I say could be used against me, then I should just give up.”

Derrick is a tracker with , a political action committee and opposition research firm for Republicans. He and his employer wouldn’t provide his full name, but the La Plata County sheriff believes it to be Derrick Pitts.

His job, as he once told another Senate hopeful, is to catch Democratic candidates saying something they will later regret. It’s a job that will continue through next November and will increasingly involve trailing John Hickenlooper.

Derrick has put thousands of miles on his car and listened to countless speeches by the Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate, sometimes driving for hours across the state, only to be kicked out of an event or blocked from entering. Trackers are common in major races in Colorado and elsewhere, although Democrats say Derrick’s style is unusually aggressive. That style has garnered significant attention on the campaign trail.

Most of the Democratic candidates — including some who later dropped out — have developed their own ways of dealing with him. On a Wednesday afternoon in Winchester this summer, a campaign aide brought Andrew Romanoff a maroon coffee mug during a question-and-answer session.

“It¶¶Òőap just water,” Romanoff said into his microphone, lifting the mug and turning toward Derrick and the camera that had been fixed on him for the past 45 minutes. “Nothing stronger than that,” said the Democrat, a teetotaler who also doesn’t drink coffee.

Turning back to the crowd of about 40 people who had gathered to hear him speak, Romanoff said, “I don’t know what they’re going to do with this video.”

Derrick was at the latest Senate candidate forum in Durango this month and the first candidate forum, in Denver on June 9. He was blocked from entering the Durango event, but a host at the June forum told attendees to “treat him with respect and let him be, let him do his job.”

“Now we are in a debate about whether or not to include a question around citizenship,” candidate Stephany Rose Spaulding said later in the forum, during a question about the 2020 census, “and it really is a problem that is as deep as the roots of the tree behind our tracker.” Derrick, standing under a large tree to Spaulding’s right, nearly doubled over from laughter.

Other interactions have been less pleasant. When Derrick tried to record a Spaulding speech at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, where she is a professor, he was told he couldn’t. “This is a public institution and a university event,” Spaulding said to him. He remained and recorded anyway. A university spokesman told The Denver Post that professors can prohibit recordings of their lectures and remarks on campus to preserve their intellectual property.

Outside the Sept. 7 forum in Durango, La Plata County Sheriff Sean Smith asked Derrick to stop recording through a door that had been opened to allow air into a stuffy conference room. Smith, a Democrat, was so surprised by the conversation that followed, he detailed it in a lengthy email to America Rising, Derrick’s employer. America Rising did not respond to a request for comment.

“No, I will not leave,” Derrick said, after being told his actions were legal but a nuisance, according to Smith’s recollection.

“I was just trying to appeal to your humanity,” Smith then told him, referring to the forum’s elderly attendees and their discomfort in the hot room.

“I’m a Republican; I don’t have any,” Derrick sarcastically responded, according to the sheriff.

Outside a Democratic event in Castle Rock over the summer, a man repeatedly bumped into Derrick and got in his way on a sidewalk in front of Dan Baer’s vehicle, where the tracker was waiting to record the then-candidate leaving.

“Please stop touching me! Please stop touching me,” Derrick told the bystander at one point.

No one politely engages with the tracker more than Romanoff, the leading liberal candidate in the Democratic race. He has mentioned him in fundraising emails dating to mid-June. He brings up Derrick in speeches, while answering questions from voters, in conversations with reporters.

“The Republican Party has decided to hire somebody to follow me all across the state and record every word that I say with you, and the words that you choose to share with me,” Romanoff told the Winchester crowd July 31, motioning to the tracker. “I take it as a compliment. I figure if they weren’t worried about our campaign, they wouldn’t be spending so much money.”

Outside an event in Golden, Romanoff even half jokingly attempted to earn Derrick’s vote.

“Have you picked a candidate yet?” he asked.

“I have,” Derrick said.

“Is it — don’t tell me — Cory?” Romanoff said with a grin, referring to Gardner.

“Of course,” Derrick told him.

Colorado’s Republican tracker has been booed, kicked out, bumped into, insulted, questioned and yelled at. But he’s also been welcomed, hugged and thanked. And there are still 14 months to go.

“We are in this together. The fight for progress goes on,” Baer said in a video released by the campaign. In a statement, he described Hickenlooper as “the candidate who will beat (Republican U.S. Sen.) Cory Gardner next November.”

Baer is a former diplomat and was appointed by Hickenlooper to be executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education in 2018. Openly gay, he was one of the most prolific fundraisers in the Democratic primary field, collecting $1.35 million during his first fundraising quarter.

Candidate John Walsh dropped out of the race Wednesday, and Mike Johnston did so last week. Their exits show the ripple effects of the entrance of one of the state’s most recognized political names to the race.

“… This campaign has been a joyful expression of values,” Baer said in his video. “Our country is ready for a new, diverse generation of leaders … and I commit to help elect new voices in 2020.”

The primary still has a large field, including several candidates who said they would remain in the race despite Hickenlooper.

All of the rumor and speculation about the 2020 U.S. Senate race in Colorado boils down to one simple fact: there is not a single Democratic candidate who has filed to run in 2020 who isn’t a wildly better choice for our state than Sen. Cory Gardner. Gardner’s approval rating is in the garbage in every survey out there. According to a poll released just this week by Global Strategy Group, a well respected national Democratic polling firm, a generic Democrat wipes the floor with Gardner, 48%-38%.

Cory Gardner is overwhelmingly considered the weakest Republican incumbent Senator in 2020. There are currently 16 candidates running in the Democratic primary for the chance to dethrone him. There are accomplished women of color like Prof. Stephany Rose Spaulding, Lorena Garcia and Sen. Angela Williams; strong, experienced lawmakers who have dedicated much of their lives and careers to improving Colorado like former Colorado House Majority Leader Alice Madden, former Speaker Andrew Romanoff, and Sen. Mike Johnston; smart academics like climate activist Diana Bray and CU Prof. Ellen Burnes; candidates the Democratic Party traditionally hasn’t run for big seats like this such as former U.S. Attorney John Walsh, openly gay diplomat Dan Baer and young scientist Trish Zornio — and just this week former Gov. John Hickenlooper threw his hat in the ring to challenge Gardner himself after ending his bid for president.

Primaries can be good. They force parties to engage meaningfully with their coalitions. Candidates must contend with opposing views, refine their positions, and fully explain their record to voters. And though many people I admire and greatly respect are already running for the Democratic nomination, getting in first isn’t a qualification for office. When Gardner entered the U.S. Senate race late in February of 2014 (after first declining to run), Rep. Ken Buck, state Rep. Amy Stephens, and (eventually) state Sen. Owen Hill all dropped out, avoiding a primary and uniting the right behind the only candidate who could have possibly taken down an iconic Coloradan like Sen. Mark Udall.

No matter who wins the nomination to take on Cory Gardner, the conversations we need to be having, the questions we need to be asking, and the clear positions we need to be demanding from these candidates are the same. Are you going to take on the NRA and address the gun violence epidemic?  Are you going to stand up for unions and working people, or are you going to kowtow to the Koch Brothers and the big businesses that pocketed the largest share of the Trump tax cuts? Are you going to fight every minute to stop the looming climate change catastrophe from permanently upending human civilization? How are you going to ensure universal health care coverage, affordable prescription drugs, and put an end to the profiteering stranglehold on our healthcare system that has made us sicker and poorer while politicians have worked to undermine the law and deprive people of coverage?  And this is far from the end of the list.

The best part about democracy is that you get to vote for whomever you want. Dividing and conquering is the only way Gardner wins. If we turn on each other and put either electability tests or purity tests ahead of our mission next November, it¶¶Òőap a recipe for six more years of Cory Gardner in office.

Gardner has already had nearly six years to live up to the words he put into his own 2014 campaign ads: to “say so” when his party is wrong, and to “fix it” when something is broken. He has utterly failed. Instead, Gardner has repeatedly shown that when the needs of Colorado conflict with the demands of Mitch McConnell or Donald Trump, then his party in Washington always gets his vote. What good is access if you have no influence?

I honestly believe any one of these candidates could carry the party’s banner against  Gardner in 2020. But he will not go down easily. Selling Colorado out in Washington certainly accomplished one thing, it bolstered Gardner’s war chest for the 2020 elections. What Gardner wants most of all is a battered opponent and a divided progressive electorate. Let¶¶Òőap not help him.

Conquering progressives once they’ve done all of the dividing themselves is the only way Cory Gardner can win. So let¶¶Òőap have a vigorous primary, on the issues, and unite to win once it¶¶Òőap done.

Ian Silverii is the executive director of ProgressNow Colorado, the state’s largest progressive advocacy group.

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For Sen. Cory Gardner, his $2 million haul in the second quarter of 2019 – he had nearly $5 million on hand at the end of June – provides him with an expansive and expanding war chest with which to begin batting back his Democratic challengers.

For those Democratic challengers – there are 10 now – the latest fundraising figures revealed clear front-runners, showing who among them is on track to keep their campaigns afloat and raise the large amount of money most will need to place their names on a ballot next year.

Gardner continues to pull in large donations, typical of a Senate incumbent. came from small-dollar donors, those who give $200 or less, according to a ProPublica analysis. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife allowed, $2,800. So, too, did executives at Xcel Energy, Merck, Visa and FedEx, among others.

Gardner received $626,097 from political action committees, including PACs for ExxonMobil, Alliance Coal, Arch Coal, Chevron, Murray Energy, the Western Energy Alliance, Eli Lilly, Facebook, Raytheon, the private prison company CoreCivic, Walmart, Goldman Sachs and the commissioner of Major League Baseball, according to .

Casey Contres, Gardner’s campaign manager, said in a statement last week that Gardner’s strong fundraising quarter “allows him to continue to build the necessary resources to defeat whichever far-left candidate the Democrats nominate next June.”

Mike Johnston, a former state senator, continues to be a prolific fundraiser. He topped the Democratic field last quarter, and leaving his campaign with more than $2.6 million on hand at the end of June, more than other Democratic candidates combined.

Donations to the Johnston campaign came from executives at Disney, Microsoft, AT&T, Warner Bros., Yelp, the Denver pork company Tender Belly, Etsy, United Way, Square and many more. Like other Democrats in the race, he isn’t accepting PAC money. Five percent of Johnston’s donations came from small donors, according to .

J.J. Abrams, the filmmaker, . So, too, did former NFL quarterback Brian Griese and Detroit Red Wings defenseman Mike Green. Jane Hartley, a former U.S. ambassador to France, sent $2,800, as did a consultant for the controversial consulting firm McKinsey & Co. John Thompson III, a former Georgetown basketball coach, wrote a check for $500.

Dan Baer, a former diplomat and executive director of Colorado’s Department of Higher Education, raised $1.35 million during his first fundraising quarter since entering the Senate race and had more than $1 million to spend on his Democratic campaign at the end of June.

Executives at Netflix, Google, Lockheed Martin, Starz and Spotify chipped in. So, too, did former , with a $2,800 donation. TV writer and producer Peter Nowalk (“Greys Anatomy,” “Scandal”) donated $2,800 to Baer, as did producer Nick Pepper (“Quantico,” “Designated Survivor”) and writer Dave Hill, who worked on “Game of Thrones.”

Former U.S. Attorney John Walsh’s $777,000 came largely from attorneys and former prosecutors, including maximum donations from former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and checks from a half-dozen former U.S. attorneys. Frank Azar, the high-profile Colorado attorney, donated to Walsh’s campaign as well.

Andrew Romanoff, a former Colorado House speaker, brought in just over $500,000 between April and June, leaving him with $730,000 to start July. Donors included former state Rep. Randy Fischer, former state Sen. John Kefalas and the CEO of Craig Hospital in Englewood.

“Andrew’s strong track record and message of fighting for universal health care, combating the climate crisis, fixing our broken immigration system, and investing in our public schools is clearly resonating with Coloradans,” said Tara Trujillo, his campaign chair.

Alice Madden, a former Colorado House majority leader, since entering the race May 9. That includes a $40,000 donation from Madden to her campaign, and a $50,000 loan to her campaign. Aaron Bly, her campaign manager, said Madden can “build the strongest coalition of any candidate in this primary.”

, but told supporters in an email last Friday she was dropping out “to pursue other community-focused leadership.” Stephany Spaulding, a pastor and professor, has , some of which was transferred from another committee. Environmentalist Diana Bray raised $72,514, including $9,140 from her and .

Trish Zornio, a scientist from Superior, at the end of June. Denver activist Lorena Garcia raised about $12,000 and was nearly out of money by the end of June. The latest candidate to enter, state Sen. Angela Williams, joined after the fundraising quarter and therefore has not yet filed a report with the Federal Election Commission.