She still has the advantage in direct fundraising, according to new preprimary reports on Thursday night. In other key Democratic races, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper also led his primary challenger, Julie Gonzales, and Manny Rutinel led the money race against Shannon Bird in the 8th Congressional District primary.

In DeGette’s race, three political groups that haven’t yet reported their donors reported spending a combined $1.2 million this month to support her or oppose Melat Kiros, an attorney who identifies as a democratic socialist, in the June 30 primary. Also running is University of Colorado Regent Wanda James.

Most of the reported outside money — $860,000 — was spent just since Tuesday on digital and TV ads.

Another outside committee called Justice Democrats, which supports progressive candidates and is mostly funded by small-dollar donations, has spent nearly $178,000 on mailers and digital ads to support Kiros or oppose DeGette. Kiros now also has the backing of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who announced his endorsement on Friday morning.

DeGette has represented the district, which primarily covers Denver, for nearly 30 years.

The largest outside contribution in the race has come from a political action committee called Pro-Choice Majority Action, which spent nearly $460,000 this week on TV ads supporting DeGette. The committee is affiliated with EDW Action Fund, which supports Democratic women running for Congress.

Another group that hasn’t reported its donors, named “Mile High Accountability Project,” spent $350,000 earlier this month on digital advertising to support DeGette.

And Project 218, a super PAC that supports Democratic candidates and hasn’t reported its donors since April, spent $400,000 this week on digital and TV ads opposing Kiros. The group by InfluenceWatch as a Democratic Party-aligned super PAC affiliated with . The PACs aim to help Democrats win back the House majority, including by defending incumbents in primaries.

A fourth group, the National Association of Realtors PAC, spent $11,041 this month in support of DeGette.

Colorado voter guide: Stories and explainers for the 2026 primary election

In the candidates' own fundraising, DeGette continued to outperform Kiros.

Since June 10, DeGette has filed 48-hour notices reporting $40,000 in additional contributions, required for donations of $1,000 or more close to an election.

Kiros raised $280,000 during the reporting period through June 10 and ended with $88,421 in her campaign account going into the final weeks. That was an improvement on her first-quarter report, which showed nearly $175,000 in contributions. Since June 10, she's filed 48-hour notices for $53,900 in additional contributions.

James, the third Democrat in the race, continued her last-place fundraising. She brought in just under $39,000 over the past two months. She ended the period with $25,800 in the bank. Since June 10, she's reported $2,500 in additional contributions.

The presumptive Republican nominee in the race, Christy Peterson, has not reported any fundraising.

Gonzales gains ground on Hickenlooper

In the U.S. Senate primary, Gonzales, a state senator, gained some ground on Hickenlooper but overall continued to lag behind his fundraising.

Hickenlooper reported raising nearly $900,000 between April 1 and June 10, including donations from individuals and PACs and transfers from joint fundraising committees. He spent nearly $2 million during that period as pro-Hickenlooper ads blanketed TV and social media, leaving him with about $3 million in cash on hand. Since June 10, he's disclosed another $52,200 in contributions in 48-hour reports.

Gonzales improved upon her contributions from the first quarter, raising $424,000 in the new report, up from $264,000 in the previous one. Her spending paled in comparison to Hickenlooper's, with $313,000 in expenditures during the 10-week period.

As of June 10, she had $226,000 in cash remaining. She's since reported $3,100 in additional contributions.

The winner of the primary will run against Republican state Sen. Mark Baisley.

Rutinel leads fundraising among CD8 Democrats

In Colorado’s most competitive congressional district, Rutinel continued his lead in fundraising in the Democratic primary against his Bird, his former colleague in the Colorado House. A third candidate in that race, Evan Munsing, dropped out of the race in May.

The 8th District primary has been the focus of the most intense outside spending in Colorado this year, with recent independent expenditures aimed at helping Rutinel bringing the primary total to nearly $7 million. The district includes north metro Denver suburbs and Greeley.

In direct fundraising, Rutinel raised $643,146 between April 1 and June 10. He entered the final weeks of the primary with $909,500 and has filed 48-hour reports for another $43,500 in donations.

Bird raised $421,000 in contributions in the most recent period, ending it with about $290,667 in the bank. She's since reported $25,500 in contributions through 48-hour notices.

Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, who currently holds the seat, has been amassing a multimillion-dollar war chest to take on whoever wins the primary.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our dear sister, Lynn Bartels,” her family . “We are heartbroken. We have been overwhelmed by the love that all of you have shared. It will lift us through the coming days and will stay with us forever.”

Bartels became known for her tenaciousness as a political reporter at the Rocky Mountain News, then went to work for The Denver Post after the News closed in 2009. She had undergone surgery to remove a large brain tumor, her family in late April, and her sister Kitty DiMartino said it was diagnosed as glioblastoma. She was 69.

Plans for a memorial service were pending, the family wrote.

“Lynn was a born reporter. Long after she’d left newspapering, she was sniffing out news and passing on tips,” said Lee Ann Colacioppo, The Post’s editor, on Friday. “It was part of her DNA. The Rocky, The Denver Post and Colorado journalism were lucky to have her.”

Bartels spent 22 years working at Denver’s two metro dailies — first at the News for 16 years, then at The Post for a half-dozen more until she took a buyout from the paper’s parent company during a round of staff cuts in 2015.

“She was a delightful human being, and her loss will leave a hole in the universe,” said former Mesa County Commissioner Rick Enstrom, who met Bartels nearly 30 years ago when he served on the Colorado Wildlife Commission under Gov. Bill Owens. “If anyone deserves to lie in state at the Colorado Capitol, it is Lynn Bartels.”

Gov. Jared Polis issued a statement Friday afternoon, saying he had known Bartels for more than a quarter of a century.

“Lynn’s infectious personality and ongoing quest for selfies made her someone that everyone wanted to know, and her sharp wit kept readers coming back for more,” he said. “I know that her passing will impact so many across Colorado, but we’ve all learned something from Lynn that we can carry forward in our lives.”

Bartels regularly spent time with — and wrote about — the luminaries of Colorado politics, including governors, U.S. senators, members of Congress and state lawmakers of all stripes — often holding them to account in blunt and unforgiving ways, but never dismissing their humanity.

“She might grill them on the latest turn of the news wheel, or even openly point out their hypocrisy — citing a month, year and issue when they took the position they were now opposing,” said Todd Hartman, a former colleague of Bartels’ at the Rocky Mountain News. “But in the very same conversation, she would ask about their kids.”

Bartels, he said, “knew their family members, kids, pets and hobbies, and she was sincere in seeing them as just people, flawed and mostly trying their best like all of us.”

Bartels’ influence on political reporting went beyond Colorado. In 2015, she was named a “longtime stalwart” by The Washington Post blog The Fix in its annual list of best state political reporters, according to . MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow, then a broadcaster on MSNBC, relied on Bartels as “her political attache for the inside scoop on the Colorado midterm elections” in 2014, the story said.

‘She didn’t play favorites’

Kevin Vaughan, an investigative reporter for 9News who sat just feet from Bartels at both The Post and the Rocky for 15 years, said his colleague was fiercely fair in her coverage.

“She didn’t play favorites. It didn’t matter what party you were in, or what issues were important to you — you were fair game,” Vaughan said. “It might mean she’d write a glowing piece about you. It might also mean she’d write a tough one — one you wouldn’t like.”

But she was always willing to face her subject the next day and hear out what they thought of her story, he said.

“It����ap a big reason why she was universally beloved by people across the political spectrum,” Vaughan said. “Some of those people had been punched in the mouth by her in print, and they came to respect and love her anyway.”

Former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican, that Bartels covered him when he was a state lawmaker and later a senator in Washington, D.C. Her work, he wrote, “defined Colorado politics, its leadership and the intrigue of power.”

“And Lynn was there every bit of the way — knowing where the ball was bouncing before any of us had even figured out there was a ball at all,” Gardner wrote. “She was the Grand Dame of Colorado politics and political reporting.”

Bartels, a native of Vermillion, South Dakota, grew up with two brothers and six sisters. She attended Cottey College in Missouri in the mid-1970s before moving on to Northern Arizona University to study journalism.

Her first newspaper job was with the Gallup Independent in New Mexico. She then moved two hours east to work for the Albuquerque Tribune, where she met John Temple, the eventual editor and publisher of the Rocky.

The year was 1984.

“I made her a columnist at The Tribune and she was incredibly popular,” Temple said. “People could relate to Lynn, which was one thing that made her such a great reporter and columnist.”

When Temple moved north, he hired Bartels as the night cops reporter at the Rocky, where she was charged with covering the shenanigans and hijinks of metro Denver’s after-hours dwellers.

“Nobody could believe it at the time that someone would give up being a columnist to become a night cops reporter, but Lynn loved covering cops, and I loved working with her,” he said.

Temple remembers the uniquely human touch Bartels employed in uncovering the details of a story.

“People trusted her. They would talk to her,” he said. “She was a people reporter. She wasn’t a documents reporter. Nor did she like to write think pieces. Lynn was a true news reporter.”

While she eventually made her name covering state politics, Bartels wanted nothing to do with it at first, Temple said.

“One funny thing, given how much Lynn became part of Colorado political life, was that when we first asked her to go to the Capitol to cover the legislature, she cried,” he said. “She didn’t want to go.”

Remembrances from across the spectrum

Mary Alice Mandarich, a longtime political operative who served as chief of staff for the Colorado Senate Democrats, had known Bartels for 30 years and had her over to her home for backyard pig roasts and Thanksgiving meals over the years.

She remembers Bartels making the trek to Kansas City to watch Mandarich’s son get married, talking easily with people she had never met.

“While being an iconic newspaper reporter, Lynn had an ability to lay that aside and be just small-town Lynn from Vermillion, South Dakota,” Mandarich said. “And I believe that background gave her the ability to engage effortlessly with people in many different walks of life.”

She remembers the two strengths that Bartels had that made her the reporter she was.

“First, she strongly guarded her sources, never betraying a confidence given on background,” Mandarich said. “Second, she immersed herself in the maelstrom of political and government events. She was not one to report off of press releases and press conferences.”

Dick Wadhams, a former Colorado Republican Party chair who managed U.S. Senate campaigns and Owens’ run for governor, said Bartels “knew something was going to happen even before the candidates and campaigns did.”

He recalled a moment in 2004 when he was considering whether to run the senatorial campaign of John Thune of South Dakota, who is now Senate Majority Leader. He kept putting Bartels off when she asked if he would be heading up the effort, not knowing if Thune was even running.

“When my plane landed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on a frigid January evening where I would start Thune’s campaign, I turned my phone on and sure enough, there was a voicemail from Lynn saying, ‘I know you’re in South Dakota. Call me.’

“Of course she knew,” he said.

He said Bartels always wanted to be in the middle of the action.

“Her idea of a good time was going on a bus tour of rural Colorado with a candidate. And because of that, she knew every county, town and wide spot in the road,” Wadhams said.

In a statement Friday, former Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat who served from 2007 to 2011, said: “Lynn was one of the best reporters I’ve ever worked with. I came into public service when she came to Denver. She was hard-working and she had great, top-notch integrity as a journalist. She will be missed terribly.”

Marianne Goodland, the chief legislative reporter with Colorado Politics, regularly crossed paths with Bartels at the state Capitol.

“Lynn was the consummate reporter, and I learned a lot from her — mostly her ability to stand up to the folks in power without hesitation,” Goodland said.

Bartels, she said, would head from the Capitol office to “check the traps.”

“That was code for talking to anyone — lobbyists, partisan and nonpartisan staff, and of course lawmakers — to see what was hot, what was coming,” Goodland said. “I started doing that when I joined Colorado Politics, and it has served me extraordinarily well over the past decade.”

Post-newspaper career

Bartels’ value continued after she left The Post in 2015, Goodland said, when she was a source for Goodland as spokeswoman for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

She worked several years for Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican, after her newspaper career came to an end. She also worked more recently as an aide to state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican.

“I am heartbroken by the loss of Lynn Bartels. I loved that lady,” Kirkmeyer, who’s now running for governor, wrote in a statement Friday. “Lynn was a dear friend, trusted colleague and a buddy who worked alongside me at the Colorado Capitol after an extraordinary career covering Colorado politics.”

Bartels, she said, “brought intelligence, humor and an unmatched passion for public service to everything she did.”

At the secretary of state’s office, Williams said Bartels “transformed government communications, changing it from reactive to proactive and even publishing a blog about Colorado elections and election officials that became famous and revered.”

“She chronicled everything from conferences to elections to the day-to-day grist of the job,” he said.

DiMartino, Bartels’ younger sister by 13 years, called her big sister the “absolute ringleader of the family.” Bartels never married nor had children but she loved her nieces and nephews, she said.

“Lynn was everyone’s favorite sister,” DiMartino said. “She was there for every single birth of her nieces or nephews.”

DiMartino remembers feeling crushed, at age 5, as her sister headed off to college in Missouri. After Bartels’ freshman year came to an end, DiMartino recalled visiting her at her dorm and “running as hard as I could to jump into her arms because I loved her so much.”

Journalism for her sister, she said, became bigger than just a collection of facts to pass along to others.

“It allowed for her to be forever curious, to get to know people and to really know them,” DiMartino said. “And to use those relationships not for personal purposes but to provide information to people on issues that were important in their lives.”

“We have lost an outrageous sister, friend, colleague and human,” she said of her older sister. “Lynn was outrageously funny, outrageously loyal and outrageously talented.”

DP Media Network LLC has agreed to pay that settlement to terminate the company’s master lease for its namesake building, which it no longer occupies, three and a half years early. That is the legal name for the newspaper, whose parent company is ����ap, owned by Alden Global Capital.

The company and the city, which now owns the building, have been negotiating how to end the lease since DP Media Network stopped paying its $650,000-per-month rent last August, saying it wanted to end the lease.

That settlement is less than 40% of what the company would have paid the city under its original lease, which was set to end in 2029. If the company had continued paying that rent through the remainder of the lease, it would have paid the city $34.5 million, including the missed rent since 2025. That count doesn’t include any late fees incurred during the missed rent payments.

But the city says it will still be made whole by the arrangement because of the transfer of control over building parking revenue and existing leases.

Under the agreement, the newspaper’s name will also be removed from the building.

Mayor Mike Johnston called the agreement “a great deal for Denver” in a news release.

“When we said we would recover every cent owed, we meant it,” he said. “We look forward to forging a new future for the property that serves the city and preserves this building’s iconic place downtown.”

An attempt to reach Marshall Anstandig, general counsel for ����ap, for comment was not successful.

While the building has continued to bear The Post����ap name, the newspaper hasn’t used the space at 101 W. Colfax Ave. in more than eight years. In 2018, The Post moved its employees, including the newsroom, to offices at the paper’s Adams County printing facility. ����ap moved its final corporate employees out of the building in early 2020.

The Post has remained responsible for the master lease payments for several floors. It subleased space to other tenants, including some city agencies that had moved into the building.

The city purchased the building from owner Kayan LLC in 2024 for $88.5 million with plans to convert the building into a courthouse. The city pursued the deal with the understanding that the lease would last through 2029, making it financially feasible, a city spokesperson said in October.

The 11-story, roughly 306,000-square-foot building opened in 2006 as the base of operations for both The Post and the Rocky Mountain News — though neither newspaper ever owned it. The Rocky closed in 2009.

The new rules mandate that anyone paid at least $1,000 to engage in lobbying must report details of their work every two months, including when they meet with elected or appointed officials, how much they are paid, which proposals they are supporting or opposing, and who their client is.

Previously, they only had to report their names and clients.

worked with Councilwomen Jamie Torres, Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Shontel Lewis on the legislation. The council approved the measure in a block vote without any comments.

“The residents of Denver, media and public in general deserve a clear and easy way to understand how decisions are made and who is influencing them at City Hall,” López said in a news release after the vote. “These newly passed regulations will bring our lobbying laws into the modern (era) and greatly expand easy-to-understand information.”

Any “grassroots lobbying” — or activity by organizations that instruct residents to email council members to ask them to vote a certain way — will now fall under the new lobbying requirements as well.

The measure also creates a new “cooling-off period” for former elected officials and appointees who want to become lobbyists. Council members, the mayor, and anyone appointed by the mayor, the auditor or the clerk and recorder must wait at least one year after leaving their positions to begin lobbying the city.

The waiting period is intended to prevent elected officials from using their positions and relationships they form in office to improve their future earnings. It also is intended to prevent council members from casting favorable votes for a certain interested party with the promise of working for that company or organization after they leave office.

The new rules will take effect in January.

The case, filed in U.S. District Court in 2022, alleged that when police officers used less-lethal weapons like rubber bullets, pepper balls and tear gas to break up demonstrations, they violated the plaintiffs’ First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Councilwoman Shontel Lewis routinely makes comments on the liability claims that the council approves, saying she wants to make the public aware of the tax dollars going toward the cases.

“In order to pay the claims tonight, we have had to make a $3 million rescission that comes from the city’s general fund contingency and does not come from agency-specific budgets,” she said.

The payouts, ranging from $140,000 to $300,000 each, will go to Marquis Dominick, Brett Rios, Alex Hickman, Tashari Sayers, Raymond Schwab, Jesse Friedman, Susan McKillips, Ryan Kehoe, Adam Bentch, Patricia Koo, Isis Usborne, Kristen Klotzner and Joe Szuswalak.

A federal court ordered Denver to pay $14 million to another group of protestors in April.

The city has paid a total of $21.4 million for settlements related to the George Floyd protests, according to the City Attorney’s Office. That count doesn’t include the $14 million a judge ordered the city to pay in April or the $2.8 million that the council approved Monday.

Protests sprang up nationwide in 2020 after George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. In Denver, large-scale protests began two days after a video showing the minutes leading up to Floyd’s death became public. The protests continued every night for more than a week.

And for that to happen, they need to reach agreements with landowners and finalize the purchase of all the property in the planned stadium’s footprint.

But one of the most critical and complex negotiations, with Denver Water, has hit a potential snag over whether a hotly contested 5-acre parking lot in Sun Valley — which now serves as supplemental parking for season ticket holders at Empower Field, the Broncos’ current home — should be part of the deal.

The plot of land, called Lot M, is in the middle of a key corridor that neighbors want to see changed from an industrial hotspot to a cozier, more pedestrian-friendly community.

Denver Water officials hope to move part of the utility’s operations there as they make room for the new stadium on its campus next to Burnham Yard. They have identified Lot M as a prime location for Denver Water’s central emergency response facility if the Broncos’ plans for Burnham Yard come to fruition.

But residents of the surrounding area have complained for years that the nearby cloverleaf interchange for Colfax Avenue and Federal Boulevard divides the community and creates unsafe conditions for pedestrians and drivers.

In recent weeks, opponents and supporters of the Lot M plans have kicked off a series of back-and-forth letters to the city over whether Denver Water should be able to take over the property.

The complication is symbolic of a larger theme: While the Burnham Yard deal may seem to some like it����ap all but finalized, there are still dozens of steps before the Broncos can put shovels in the ground.

Everything that����ap happened so far has been like the setup of a — an overly complicated system that incorporates things like domino cascades, marbles rolling on a track and rubberband-powered levers to complete a task.

The Broncos, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s office, Denver Water and community groups have all begun placing the figurative dominoes, toy race cars and pulley system that will make up the process to build the stadium.

But no one has tipped the “start trigger” yet by making key final decisions.

While there’s some disagreement among close observers of the project about when exactly that chain reaction must begin to meet the 2031 deadline, the consensus is that major decisions need to be made in roughly the next two months.

“The timing of everything is constantly on my mind,” said Denver City Councilwoman Jamie Torres, whose district includes both Empower Field and Burnham Yard. “The complexity of this is just hitting everybody in the face.”

The Broncos must relocate several components of Denver Water’s sprawling campus, much of which sits on the site of the future stadium; begin negotiating with the surrounding residents for a community benefits agreement; win various approvals from the often-skeptical council; finalize the purchase of the bulk of Burnham Yard from CDOT; and still acquire another critical plot of .

Before construction can start, a crew will also have to clean up the area through environmental remediation. Team officials will likely seek tax-increment financing for the project, too.

While the overall task isn’t impossible, it becomes more difficult with each passing week, sources familiar with the negotiations say. The team announced Burnham Yard as its “preferred site” for the future stadium in September.

Dispute over parking lot

Resolving the fight over Lot M is just one of the challenges ahead.

In a May 11 letter to Johnston, the council and Denver planning director Brad Buchanan, dozens of advocacy and community groups urged the city to reject plans to use the site for Denver Water infrastructure.

The group called the Colfax and Federal interchange a “physical and symbolic barrier” that must be addressed.

“Introducing a new industrial use on Lot M at this critical moment would be a significant step backward. It would preempt ongoing planning, constrain future redevelopment options, and jeopardize a once-in-a-generation opportunity to realize the community’s vision for this area,” according to the letter.

The group cited several city planning documents, including the and the for the area around Empower Field. Those plans suggest that the interchange should be removed or redesigned. The federal government provided a $2.4 million grant to begin developing a plan to do just that.

But after over a year of analyzing possible sites, Denver Water identified Lot M as its best option for relocating its emergency response facility. The building must be centrally located with easy access to Interstate 25, Interstate 70 and the Sixth Avenue Freeway so that emergency services can be deployed quickly, Denver Water CEO Alan Salazar wrote in a May 26 letter to Torres.

Salazar added that Denver Water never wanted to leave its campus of over 100 years, but that its leaders were working to help make the Burnham Yard stadium a reality “to support the economic prosperity of the largest community we serve.”

“At the same time, we must scrupulously protect all Denver Water ratepayers by avoiding any public subsidy for private development consistent with the Denver Charter,” he wrote in the letter.

The Broncos, which have an agreement to cover Denver Water’s relocation costs, agreed to provide most of the acreage necessary to replace the parts of its campus that the utility will move to the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, on a property near East 40th Avenue and Clayton Street.

That construction, which hasn’t begun yet, is behind schedule after originally being set to start in May. Denver Water’s Administration Building will remain in place on the northern part of its current campus.

In a statement provided to The Denver Post, Broncos spokesman Patrick Smyth said the team is working to ensure a “smooth transition” for Denver Water and the broader community.

“We continue to have productive conversations with Denver Water about its plans to relocate part of its operation to Lot M,” he said.

CDOT says Denver Water plan won’t interfere

In its own letter on Thursday, CDOT weighed in on the Lot M controversy, saying that its officials believe the goals of improving the area could still be met even if Denver Water builds a new emergency response facility on the property.

“We want to make clear that the Lot M property would not interfere with possible changes further to the west at the interchange itself,” says the letter from Jessica Myklebust, the transportation director for the region.

CDOT will also refocus the study funded by the $2.4 million federal grant to consider the area without Empower Field, assuming that the Broncos build their stadium in Burnham Yard and the city tears down the old one.

“While we understand the urgency many feel to address the longstanding frustrations with the cloverleaf interchange, we cannot ignore the strong possibility of changes to the Stadium District in the near future, and we look forward to complementary study processes that avoid the inefficiencies of duplicative taxpayer expense,” the letter says.

The council would likely have to approve any deal to give Denver Water the Lot M property. The Metropolitan Football Stadium District owns the current stadium’s land but the city has the right to acquire it before any other developers.

A recent meeting between city officials and the community groups ended with a shared agreement that no one wants the disagreement over Lot M to result in the Broncos rescinding their plans to build a new stadium at Burnham Yard, said Dan Shah, the executive director of the West Colfax Business Improvement District and the signatory of the community letter.

“It����ap hard for me to believe that the entirety of that (Broncos) development — of that relocation to Burnham Yard — is contingent on this particular site being accommodating of the lay-down. That����ap a little bit hard to believe,” he said.

Shah said he hoped officials would find an alternative site for the facility.

“We’re looking forward to exploring other locations and their pros and cons in Denver,” he said. “In the next weeks, I expect those things to happen.”

Staff writer Luca Evans contributed to this story.

The board placed Vega on administrative leave two weeks ago “while working toward a mutually acceptable resolution,” board chair Charles Gilford III said in a statement provided to The Denver Post.

When that didn’t happen, the board fired Cintrón Vega on May 28. Denverite his termination on Thursday.

The quasi-municipal corporation to lead the organization. The provides housing and vouchers to low-income residents in the city. On its website, the DHA says it has more than 13,000 housing units in its portfolio.

Joshua Crawley, formerly the organization’s chief legal officer, will serve as the interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent replacement. He has worked with the DHA for more than 20 years.

“DHA’s focus remains the same: supporting our residents and participants, keeping our properties running well, and advancing our strategic priorities,” according to the statement from Gilford. “Our mission, programs, and services will continue as usual, supported by our capable leadership team and our dedicated team.”

Before coming to Colorado, Cintrón Vega worked as a housing leader in Toledo, Ohio, and Miami-Dade County, Florida.

The decision comes after Denver Urban Renewal Authority found that the site was “blighted,” meaning there are unsafe living or working conditions and environmental contamination.

the city allow “tax increment financing,” or TIF, to remediate those problems and get the project off the ground.

“This tax increment financing is one of the final pieces that makes the Rossonian possible. Without it, this project does not happen,” said Paul Books, one of the owners of the building. “But with it, we are working through the last remaining steps to break ground this summer.”

The project, in the Five Points neighborhood, is part of the . The six-parcel property is in the namesake intersection of Welton, 27th and Washington streets.

The building, once called the Baxter Hotel, was a popular event space for jazz performances between the 1930s and 1950s. Performers such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday took the stage there. It is on the National Register of Historic Buildings. The building has been vacant since the 1990s.

Palisade Partners, who purchased the property in 2017, plan to build 126 hotel rooms, a restaurant and an event space. They will also construct a new 8-story building between the Rossonian and the Hooper building as part of the redevelopment.

“We’ve concluded that the project does require assistance in order for it to be delivered as it has been contemplated,” said Bill Pruter, executive director of DURA.

Tax-increment financing, which is essentially a tax break or subsidy, allows developers to freeze how much is paid in property or sales taxes at a base level for up to 25 years, and then reinvest what would be paid above that back into certain elements of their projects.

For this project, the developers will be able to reinvest up to $15.5 million — which would otherwise go to the city’s bank account — into their project.

The city will reimburse the tax dollars for specific project costs mostly related to rehabilitation of the building. That includes up to $6.7 million on the plumbing and HVAC work in the new building and up to $2.3 million on the visible structure of the Rossonian Hotel.

The city will also reimburse up to $155,000 for “project art,” according to a presentation from DURA. DURA requires that 1% of the project����ap costs be spent on art.

The tax freeze will last until the $15.5 million is reimbursed or in 25 years, whichever comes first.

“This project will bring new life to one of the most important corners in our neighborhood while preserving one of Denver’s most iconic cultural landmarks,” said Norman Harris, executive director of the Five Points Business Improvement District.

The total project is expected to cost $101 million and to be completed in 2028.

Parady, who voters elected in 2023, serves as one of the council’s at-large members, meaning she represents the entire city rather than a specific district. She announced her decision through tears during a council meeting Monday.

“I do not want to stop. This is where I want to be,” she said. “But it is not in the cards.”

Parady, one of the council’s progressive members, said she doesn’t know exactly why her health has taken a turn, but that going up stairs is “more exhausting than it used to be to go up a 14er” and that she is experiencing spinning spells and pain everywhere.

She said she doesn’t believe her illness is a progressive, undiagnosed disease but rather a chronic one that’s “medically not well understood.”

“I can’t meaningfully do this job and be a parent and try to be a medical mystery in the good hours that I have every day,” she said.

She added that she will wait to resign until Aug. 5 so that the city doesn’t have to pay for a special election to replace her. Her successor will be chosen on the November ballot. That person will serve out the rest of Parady’s term through July 19, 2027. All 13 council seats will be up for election in April 2027.

Parady will continue to serve on the City Council until that time, but will no longer be chair of the council’s Community Planning and Housing Committee.

Throughout her time on council, Parady, who is also an attorney, has often asked detailed, critical questions of the initiatives before the elected body.

She has frequently challenged Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration. Parady was one of the most vocal opponents of the city’s Flock license plate reader system, which the council ultimately voted to replace. She also questioned Johnston’s plan to purchase land to build a women’s soccer stadium in the Baker neighborhood.

Johnston called Parady a “tireless advocate for Denverites” in a statement following her announcement and said he has enjoyed working with her to create and preserve affordable housing and to protect immigrants.

“Public service requires dedication, resilience and a willingness to stand up for your beliefs and the beliefs of your constituents,” he said. “Councilwoman Parady has consistently demonstrated those qualities. And though we have sometimes viewed issues differently, I have never questioned her values or her deep desire to improve the lives of Denverites.”

Parady’s fellow council members, along with everyone in attendance in the chamber, gave Parady a standing ovation after she announced her decision.

“Councilwoman Parady has been a thoughtful leader, a principled voice and a champion for the issues she cares deeply about,” Council President Amanda Sandoval said.

Parady said she decided to announce her resignation early in part to give people more time to consider whether they would like to run for the position.

“Thank you for the chance to represent you,” she said. “It is the best thing I have ever done, or will ever do.”

If Democrats regain control of the House this fall, DeGette could lead . She says she would have the chance to bring a “Medicare For All” bill — one of the Democrats’ white whale policies — to a vote. She also vows to use that position to make strides toward banning government restrictions on abortion access.

But her opponents in the June 30 primary, lawyer Melat Kiros and University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, say it����ap too little, too late.

“She’s not really done anything effectively in the last 10 years,” said Kiros, also a barista who’s pursuing a doctorate in public policy.

“We don’t have leadership in Congressional District 1,” said James, who is also a marijuana entrepreneur. “Seniority, when you have done nothing and not been effective, is not good.”

But DeGette is fiercely defending her record, saying her opponents don’t understand what the job actually takes and that she’s accomplished plenty in her three decades in Congress.

“I’ve never seen anybody pass a piece of legislation to lower costs through ‘disruption,’ ” she said in an interview with The Denver Post, referring to her opponents’ strategies.

The Democratic primary in dark-blue Denver for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District. The three-way race heated up earlier this year when Kiros soundly defeated DeGette in the Democrats’ Denver County assembly. Though the party assembly process isn’t typically representative of the people voting in the full primary election — in which Democrats as well as unaffiliated voters can participate — the event raised eyebrows among political observers.

It was the first time DeGette, 68, had lost a county assembly vote since she was initially elected in 1996.

“I think she has lost some contact with her constituents based on what you saw at the county assembly,” said former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, who has endorsed James. “It����ap just time for a change.”

DeGette went on to narrowly earn her place on the ballot in late March at the 1st Congressional District party assembly, just clearing the eligibility threshold while Kiros, 29, won top billing. James, 62, landed on the ballot through a petition process.

Whoever wins the nomination will become the favorite in the November midterm against other general election candidates, including presumptive Republican nominee Christy Peterson.

If DeGette loses, the new representative would enter Congress as a freshman lawmaker. Karen Middleton, the president of the Cobalt Abortion Fund, an abortion-rights advocacy group based in Colorado, said that could be a problem during a critical moment in healthcare policy.

“Every time you turn over a member of Congress, you lose seniority, you lose committee assignments, you lose leadership,” she said. Cobalt hasn’t endorsed any of the three primary candidates.

A look at DeGette’s accomplishments

One of the main criticisms lobbed at DeGette in the primary campaign so far has focused on the .

During her time in Congress, DeGette has been the primary sponsor of 205 bills. Seven of them either became law or were incorporated into other bills that later became law, according to .

But focusing on that figure alone shows a fundamental misunderstanding of civics, said James Owens, a spokesman for DeGette’s campaign. Members of Congress do far more work than just introducing bills, he pointed out. They secure funding for projects in their districts, serve on committees, provide services to constituents, bring amendments, and work behind the scenes to build coalitions and shape policies.

Lawmakers can also find ways to weave their policies into other bills that may not bear their names.

“The effectiveness of a legislator is in their ability to get policy passed. And she’s been able to do that through all these different mechanisms, and those various avenues aren’t captured by a simple Google search,” Owens said. “Folks in Denver don’t care if your name is on the bill or if you were pushing to get it included in another bill, they just want the legislation to pass.”

Owens said by his count, DeGette has had a major role in passing more than 40 pieces of legislation for things like , tightening , allowing the Food and Drug Administration to , and funding for projects in the district. Her team says she also played a role in shaping parts of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.

DeGette was an architect of the 21st Century Cures Act, . That’s another bill that doesn’t include her name because a Senate version of the legislation, which was designed to accelerate biomedical research, is what eventually passed, Owens said.

DeGette says she’s also been instrumental in educating fellow members of Congress and building coalitions on complex issues like abortion access. She’s been one of two chairs of the Reproductive Freedom Caucus since 2005.

“The next day after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, I called (then-Speaker) Nancy Pelosi on her cell phone … and I said, ‘Nancy, we need to put the Women’s Health Protection Act on the floor next week — and I will guarantee you I have the votes.’ ”

The House later passed that bill, but ultimately it failed in the Senate. DeGette said she has begun working on a plan to bring that legislation back if Democrats regain the House majority.

“I’m sure both of my primary opponents are pro-choice,” she said. “… But if you have a brand new person coming in saying, ‘Put my bill on a very important topic on the floor next week,’ they’re not going to have any ability to do that.”

DeGette is one of 45 members of the Democratic caucus on the litigation task force, which files legal motions and amicus briefs to support and challenge certain efforts in the courts. Earlier this month, to the U.S. Supreme Court that encouraged the justices to protect access to the abortion medication mifepristone.

DeGette has been the prime sponsor on eight unsuccessful bills related to stem cell research but was able to work with Obama on his executive order to .

Despite those actions, the a joint project from Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia that analyzes items moving through Congress, ranked DeGette as below average in effectiveness in eight of 14 terms analyzed.

The center rated five of her terms as average. Only one term, her first, was rated as above average.

The group considers how skilled members of Congress are at moving their agenda items forward. It has ranked U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, who represents Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District, as one of the most effective lawmakers in the House. Neguse, a Lafayette resident, is the House’s assistant Democratic leader.

But DeGette’s team says rankings like that lack context and don’t take into account all legislative accomplishments.

For instance, DeGette  in 2019. to be one of the nine impeachment managers for Trump’s 2021 impeachment trial in the Senate.

Promises for her next two years

If her fellow Democrats regain the majority, DeGette believes that, as the current ranking Democratic member of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s , she would become chair of that subcommittee.

Then, she would be able to decide which bills come before it. She would set the agenda, which would allow her to bring legislation implementing Medicare for All to the committee. For it to be successful from there, she said, she would lean on her connections to build a support group.

“It����ap having the vision and the ability to write the legislation, and then to push the legislation through and having the contacts to make that happen,” she said. “Legislative politics is a team sport, so you have to be able to be the captain of the team.”

Both James and Kiros are also supporters of Medicare For All, a proposal that can vary in details but typically means single-payer health insurance coverage for all Americans in a program run by the government.

DeGette said her hope is for Democrats to use the next two years to regain power on the national stage.

If the party wins a majority in the House or Senate in the midterms, she said that will allow Democrats to begin developing major policies that they can enact if they then win the presidency in 2028.

“I actually see the next two years as a huge opportunity,” she said.

DeGette has defeated primary challengers before, but this time her opponents have lined up long endorsement rosters. Kiros and local elected officials, including Reps. Javier Mabrey and Denver City Councilwoman Sarah Parady. James counts Webb and his wife, Wilma, as well as Ken Salazar, a former U.S. senator and Interior secretary, along with .

Both challengers also have fundraising in the six figures, with Kiros reporting about $375,000 in contributions through March 31 and James reporting about $234,000.

But DeGette has more than held her own, reporting contributions approaching $1 million, including heavy support from political action committees. And she from a litany of labor unions, abortion-rights groups and other organizations on her website.

Kiros and James offer something new

If Kiros is able to continue her momentum from the assembly process and win the primary, she would join a wave of young Democrats nationwide who are seeking to oust longstanding political figures.

Kiros, a Democratic socialist, sees herself aligning with members of Congress like U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania.

She said that after Democrats lost the 2024 presidential and many congressional elections, she believes the party needs more competitive primaries.

“We need to make sure that we’re sending the best of the best to the general. And particularly looking at Democrats that have been there for decades — and so I looked at the congresswoman,” she said, referring to DeGette. “There’s nothing in her record to point to that shows that she’s fighting for working people right now in a way that����ap meaningful and tangible.”

DeGette responded to criticism that she has been in office for too long during her interview with The Post.

“I think there are people in Congress who’ve been there too long. But I think the voters of the 1st Congressional District know me, and they know that I’m a fighter for their values, and you need both,” she said. “You need people who have the experience and the leadership roles to know when the time is right to get these things done, and that����ap where I’m at.”

While Kiros is aligned with some of DeGette’s values, she has distinguished herself with her views on the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. While DeGette has focused her comments on the need for humanitarian aid, Kiros has more directly criticized Israel and questioned its legitimacy as a state.

She said in a recent interview that she wouldn’t support providing offensive or defensive weapons to the country.

James, a Navy veteran and the owner of the cannabis company Simply Pure, said that if she was elected, she would do a better job of using the bully pulpit than DeGette does.

“I’ve lived here now for 20 years, and I don’t think that I have ever seen my congresswoman being interviewed on any television show,” she said. “I don’t believe I have ever seen my congresswoman stepping out and holding Congress or the other party to task anywhere.”

DeGette has taken a somewhat lower-profile approach to her position than some of her colleagues. She is less active on social media and appears at public events less often than some of her colleagues in Colorado’s congressional delegation.

She was absent, for instance, during a recent news conference in Denver with Mayor Mike Johnston and Democratic National Committee leaders as the group considers hosting its 2028 presidential nominating convention in her district. U.S. Rep. Jason Crow was present, but DeGette said she had a conflict. She said she did meet with the DNC delegation during its visit.

“Diana DeGette is nonexistent and has been nonexistent as long as I’ve been a resident of CD1,” James said. “That����ap why I’m running. … In Colorado’s capital city, CD1 should be leading the conversation.”

Mail ballots for the Democratic primary are set to go out starting June 8. The 1st District generally follows Denver city boundaries and includes Glendale and Holly Hills.

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