“This is a really good opportunity to put someone in office who won’t just listen to us, but who will actually be working with us and fighting for us in the Senate,” he said through a mask. “The Green New Deal, Medicare for All — these are things we really need in our society right now.”

Tuta and a dozen other members of the youth-led and climate-focused Sunrise Movement canvassed the neighborhood on behalf of Andrew Romanoff, who’s competing against former Gov. John Hickenlooper in a closely watched U.S. Senate Democratic primary.

After a campaign season unlike any other, in which part assemblies went virtual and in-person events ground to a halt for months, the final votes are due by 7 p.m. Tuesday. In addition to the Democratic U.S. Senate matchup, the 3rd Congressional District has primaries on both the Democratic and Republican sides, and there are a number of statehouse and district attorney primaries in the Denver metro area.

Romanoff enters Tuesday an underdog even though Hickenlooper had a rocky month that included two ethics violations. The former governor and Denver mayor is the favorite of the Democratic Party establishment both in Colorado and Washington, D.C., who compelled him to run for Senate last summer.

“This will be a campaign with mission,” Hickenlooper told supporters in a virtual pep talk Saturday. “The opportunity is there, if we can get people mobilized and make sure people vote — vote in this primary but then go out, get that muscle exercised, so they’ll vote in November. This could be the election that finally changes the world.”

“It’s going to be a long, hard battle,” Hickenlooper added, looking ahead as he often does to November’s contest against Republican Sen. Cory Gardner. “It’s going to be a brawl. … It’s going to be a long slog.”

Romanoff spent his final two weeks of the campaign distracted by a matter even more important to him than Tuesday’s election: the declining health of his father, who died Sunday after a series of strokes and falls. Hickenlooper sent his condolences, a gentle moment after a tense month in the head-to-head contest.

About 20 Democrats ran for U.S. Senate, but many top challengers bowed out after Hickenlooper entered in August. Eight remained until the spring, when only the moderate Hickenlooper and the progressive Romanoff made their way onto the June 30 ballot. An eleventh-hour court challenge to add other candidates who blamed the coronavirus for signature-gathering difficulties was approved by a Denver judge but later rejected by the Colorado Supreme Court.

And so, the past two months have been a head-to-head bout between the two. In three debates plus forums, television ads, press releases and speeches, Romanoff pulled few punches, laying out stark contrasts on health care, the environment, campaign finance and a slew of other top Democratic priorities.

Hickenlooper, meanwhile, largely avoided talking about Romanoff, keeping the focus on Gardner and President Donald Trump, in accordance with his long history of positive campaigning. When it did come time to criticize Romanoff, for running an accurate but attacking ad June 19, the criticisms came from Hickenlooper’s allies in the Colorado Capitol and in Congress, not from the candidate himself.

The two candidates have prioritized a similar trio of issues — health care, climate, and the economy — but laid out differing plans for dealing with them. Hickenlooper has often cited his past record as governor and Denver’s mayor, while Romanoff has emphasized more aspirational and ambitious plans for the future.

Romanoff has been popular with climate activists, championing a Green New Deal and claiming Hickenlooper is too close to Colorado’s oil and gas industry. He has been endorsed by many of the state and nation’s top climate activists, including former U.S. Senate candidate Diana Bray.

“I don’t necessarily trust the polls,” Bray said. “Everything is up for grabs, as a monumental reset is occurring, and I believe that Andrew will win the primary.”

Hickenlooper has been popular with gun control activists, winning endorsements from most major gun control groups in the country and campaigning alongside prominent activists in the movement, such as and Shannon Watts. The latter spoke at a campaign phone banking event Saturday.

“We have a chance to flip the Senate to a gun sense majority and that happens if (Hickenlooper) gets elected,” said Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action. “We are fired up and ready to go.”

U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff needs as many of these progressives as possible to line up behind his candidacy if he stands any chance of pulling off what his campaign says would be “one of the biggest political upsets of our time” — a defeat of John Hickenlooper in the Democratic primary Tuesday.

Progressives are ascendant in Colorado, and Romanoff brought them aboard his campaign this year and last better than anyone in a crowded Democratic field seeking to challenge Republican incumbent Cory Gardner. But in that time, he has routinely faced questions about his centrist past and heard the animosity of progressives skeptical of his lurch to the left.

“Progressives are absolutely not a monolith, and I know many who personally are struggling with this primary, as they don’t see either Senate candidate as a progressive,” said Stephany Rose Spaulding, a progressive and former Senate candidate who lost to Romanoff at the Democratic state assembly in April. “I have not endorsed either candidate for this very reason.”

Lorena Garcia, arguably the most progressive candidate to run for Senate in Colorado this year, disagreed often with Romanoff, whom

“I think there are efforts to unify the progressives around Romanoff, but it����ap not working,” Garcia said Wednesday.

“I think it����ap not working because many of these progressive leaders who are now pushing energy his way had originally denounced Romanoff when he entered the race and are now trying to claim he is the progressive champion. This is not only insincere, it����ap inauthentic, and progressives demand authenticity. People may still vote because he says the right things, but the excitement for this race is gone.”

One area where Romanoff has excelled is in uniting climate-focused progressives. National climate leaders have endorsed him, and the youth-led Sunrise Movement has worked the phones and hit the streets for months to help Romanoff. Former Senate candidate Diana Bray, a climate activist, .

“It is very interesting that I am the only former candidate who is now backing Andrew,” Bray says. “Not one other person came out in support of him, but I don’t think this is reflective at all as to how the public sees him.”

She said Romanoff has unified the climate movement and will win Tuesday, defying conventional wisdom.

“Romanoff’s consistent trajectory has been from relatively centrist to progressive to ultra-progressive: Green New Deal, Medicare for All, reparations, systemic change,” Bray added. “The people of Colorado are masked and ready.”

Romanoff also believes progressives are united behind him. In an interview this week, he listed national progressive advocates who have endorsed him — Ady Barkan, Bill McKibben, Wendell Potter — as evidence of that.

“The way Romanoff has been playing this as an ‘outsider’ candidate running against an establishment candidate is pretty much by the playbook,” said Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at Colorado State University. “You try to court anti-establishment groups, you try to court the progressive wing of the party, and he has done that relatively successfully.”

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which helped liberal U.S. Senate candidate Charles Booker turn a Kentucky primary competitive Tuesday, endorsed Romanoff this week and raised $10,000 for him by Wednesday. Its members will work the phones for him through Election Day, in tandem with Sunrise volunteers.

“This is obviously one of the most winnable Senate seats in 2020, a year that Democrats really want to win back the Senate,” said Maria Langholz, a press secretary for the PCCC, “and there’s really no excuse for electing a corporate Democrat who is fighting against progress on a lot of key issues.”

What Romanoff lacks — and what some of his supporters have long awaited — is an endorsement from a nationally known progressive elected official, namely Sen. Bernie Sanders. David Sirota, a Colorado-based Sanders adviser, supports Romanoff and state Rep. Emily Sirota, his wife, says she and all of Colorado’s Sanders delegates to the Democratic National Convention back Romanoff, too. But Sanders does not.

“He’s our best shot to win the Senate seat in November and actually use that representation to do the work that needs to be done,” said Emily Sirota. “That����ap why I support Andrew. I think many progressives feel similarly.”

In a surprising decision Tuesday, District Judge Christopher J. Baumann ruled Ferrigno Warren should be on the ballot, despite turning in 5,383 valid signatures March 17, far fewer than the 10,500 — or 1,500 from each of Colorado’s seven congressional districts — traditionally required for U.S. Senate candidates.

The hardships of collecting signatures during a pandemic and statewide stay-at-home order justified a break from the secretary of state’s requirement, Baumann ruled. The Secretary of State’s Office, represented by Assistant Attorney General Emily Buckley, believes Baumann’s ruling was inequitable and unjust.

“Stretching the substantial compliance standard so far as to allow a candidate who fell so short of the mark to access the primary election ballot is unfair to candidates who earned such access through full compliance with the election code, as well as those who fell short but chose not to pursue litigation to circumvent Colorado’s ballot access requirements,” Buckley wrote to the Colorado Supreme Court.

The Secretary of State’s Office, led by Democrat Jena Griswold, said in a statement to reporters that it recognizes the challenges coronavirus posed on candidates but wants courts to apply a uniform and fair standard to all candidates.

“That����ap why the Secretary of State’s Office is appealing the Ferrigno Warren District Court case. Given the gravity of this decision, the Colorado Supreme Court should have the opportunity to weigh in and we hope it will issue a uniform standard that can be applied to all similar cases,” said Betsy Hart, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State’s Office.

The office is asking the Colorado Supreme Court to approve what it calls “a discount-rate formula” it created for determining signature sufficiency. The mathematical formula would cut candidates some slack for lost days during the stay-at-home order, but not lower the threshold as dramatically as Baumann did. Warren would not qualify for the June 30 ballot under this proposed formula.

Warren’s campaign contends that Baumann created a fair, uniform standard when he wrote that “a 50% threshold is a reasonable line to draw in this particular case.” Warren collected slightly more than 50% of the 10,500 signatures she needed.

Warren criticized Griswold’s decision to appeal the ruling, calling it “undemocratic,” but said she’s confident the Colorado Supreme Court will agree with Baumann.

“It����ap very telling the Colorado secretary of state waited until the late hours of Friday night to release this appeal,” Warren said in a news release. “This reeks of D.C-style politics and everything wrong with our government. The role of the Colorado secretary of state is to oversee fair and just elections and empower voters at the voting booth, not cherry pick who makes the ballot in the midst of a pandemic.”

What the Colorado Supreme Court does in this case will shape June 30 primary ballots. Before Baumann’s ruling, only two Democratic U.S. Senate candidates qualified to be on the ballot: John Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff.

A ruling in Warren’s favor would not only place her on the Democratic ballot but likely allow two other candidates, Lorena Garcia and Diana Bray, to be on the ballot as well. Garcia and Bray also fell short of the 10,500-signature threshold and have taken or plan to take similar legal actions in Denver District Court.

“Ms. Ferrigno Warren has substantially complied with the Election Code’s signature threshold, distribution and validity requirements,” District Judge Christopher J. Baumann wrote at the end of a 28-page decision.

The Secretary of State’s Office has not decided whether to appeal the decision, according to a spokesman. The office has three days to decide.

Warren, a Democrat, turned in 5,383 valid signatures March 17, far fewer than the 10,500 — 1,500 from each of Colorado’s seven congressional districts — traditionally required for U.S. Senate candidates. She filed a lawsuit that same day, alleging the coronavirus pandemic unfairly stunted signature-gathering.

Baumann’s ruling explains, in detail, the hardships Warren, her paid signature-gatherers and her unpaid volunteers encountered while filling petition pages. Two dozen signature-gatherers quit after a possible coronavirus exposure, he wrote.

“This case shows the political process is not immune from the virus. Candidates, voters and government officials have encountered a primary election season unlike any other in our history,” Baumann wrote in his ruling.

“It is within these circumstances, and in light of the arguments presented by Ms. Ferrigno Warren and the Secretary (of State), that the Court concludes strict adherence to the signature requirement for primary petitions must yield to this unprecedented public health emergency,” the judge added.

If Baumann’s ruling stands, Ferrigno Warren will become the third candidate on the June 30 Democratic ballot, joining John Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff. It’s unclear if the ruling could also open the door to two other candidates, Diana Bray and Lorena Garcia, who fell short of the 10,500-signature requirement.

“Today’s ruling ensured that we are one step closer to giving Coloradans voting choices that are not just between the establishment and a career politician,” Warren said in a statement after the judge’s decision.

Lorena Garcia turned in more than the necessary 10,500 signatures, but the secretary of state’s office must see whether she has enough valid ones to join John Hickenlooper and, in all likelihood, Andrew Romanoff on the Democratic primary ballot. Two other candidates turned in fewer than the required number of signatures.

“We didn’t make it, and we would have if it was not for coronavirus,” said Michelle Ferrigno Warren, who said she collected about 9,000 signatures.

She intends to ask a Denver District Court judge to either place her on the ballot or delay the deadline by a week. The coronavirus outbreak made voters reluctant to open doors or pick up pens and left some campaign volunteers electing to self-quarantine rather than canvass.

Candidates for U.S. Senate, the most closely watched race in Colorado this year, have two routes to the June 30 ballot. They can either turn in 1,500 valid signatures from each of the state’s seven congressional districts, or earn 30% of support at a mid-April state assembly following a weeks-long caucusing process.

Five candidates — four Democrats and one Republican — have taken the signature-gathering route. The Democrats are Garcia, Hickenlooper, Ferrigno Warren and Diana Bray. The Republican is Margot Dupre, a long-shot primary challenger to incumbent Sen. Cory Gardner who did not turn in signatures by Tuesday’s deadline.

“We turned in 13,824 signatures,” Garcia said Tuesday. “I’m feeling pretty good about it. We’re just going to have to see, but I feel pretty good about it.”

“We kept telling people, don’t feel like you have to and if you don’t want to collect anymore, we completely understand,” she said of her campaign volunteers, two of whom stopped petitioning in order to self-quarantine. “But people were just so committed and took the necessary precautions.”

Hickenlooper turned in signatures Feb. 19 and received word Monday that he’d qualified for the ballot. Garcia likely won’t know until April.

Bray, who stopped most of her signature-gathering two weeks ago, dropped off signatures Monday but acknowledged she did not have the 10,500 needed. She believes the state should switch to ranked-choice voting with a ballot of nine Democratic candidates June 30.

“When you only have seven or eight weeks to collect, two weeks’ time at the very end is significant,” Bray said.

Romanoff, who came out on top in the caucuses, said Tuesday that courts and legislators should change existing laws to help his signature-gathering primary opponents due to the unprecedented coronavirus.

Hickenlooper, a former governor and Denver mayor, is running for U.S. Senate. He is the first candidate to qualify for the Democratic primary, but at least one other candidate is likely to join him on the ballot.

Hickenlooper’s campaign said he will no longer compete in the assembly process, the other way candidates can achieve June 30 ballot access. Andrew Romanoff won the March 7 caucuses, the first step in the process, and is expected to land on June ballots as a result. Hickenlooper’s delegates are no longer bound to him.

“This will allow us to focus completely on winning the nomination in June,” Hickenlooper said in a video Monday, “and defeating Cory Gardner in the fall.”

Hickenlooper turned in nearly 15,000 valid signatures last month, before the spread of coronavirus and a state of emergency drastically hampered signature-gathering efforts. The not to extend a March 17 deadline for U.S. Senate candidates to hand in the required 10,500 signatures — 1,500 from each of Colorado’s seven congressional districts.

“Colorado has a chance to replace Cory Gardner with a progressive champion,” Romanoff said in a statement Monday. “That’s why we’re asking everyone who caucused for Hick to join us instead.”

This is politics during a public health emergency.

“Part of the bread and butter of campaigns is canvassing, and door-to-door contact has been virtually shut down,” said Diana Bray, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate who has until Tuesday to amass 10,500 signatures from across the state. If she can’t, her candidacy comes to an end.

“Many people are refusing to hold the pen that others have held to sign petitions. Many ask if they can sign my petition online, which they cannot,” she added.

Gov. Jared Polis declared a state of emergency Tuesday, making the already-difficult job of collecting 10,500 valid signatures — 1,500 from each of Colorado’s seven congressional districts — even harder, some Democratic Senate candidates say. And they can only speculate about what comes next, as a coronavirus outbreak threatens to upend politics across the country in this pivotal election year.

Senate candidate Michelle Ferrigno Warren, a Denver Democrat, met a couple with an infant who were willing to sign her petition but fearful of exposing their young child to the virus. So, the three made some adjustments.

“I have a volunteer who’s collecting signatures going to their house tonight. They said, we’re using our own pens and we’re doing it on the front porch and we’re not letting her in the house. I said, no problem, why don’t you call a bunch of your friends and neighbors and we’ll do a front porch, bring-your-own-pen signing,” Ferrigno Warren said Wednesday, adding that she still expects to turn in enough signatures next week.

One problem for candidates is that retirees, who are among the most politically engaged part of the population, are believed most vulnerable to the virus. Campaigns that had come to count on older volunteers are now operating with fewer of them in many cases.

“My senior volunteers are literally putting their health at risk if they circulate petitions for me, which I cannot, in good conscience, ask of them,” Bray said.

Senate candidate Lorena Garcia, a Denver Democrat, says a few of her volunteers with compromised immune systems have been replaced by other volunteers, but she still anticipates turning in the requisite amount of signatures Tuesday.

“Part of what we’re doing with our volunteers is making sure they all carry around hand sanitizer and wipes and that they’re constantly wiping down their hands, just to make sure we’re not spreading any kind of illness that might exist,” Garcia said.

Colorado Democratic Party officials say coronavirus lowered turnout at Saturday’s caucuses and many who did attend bumped elbows rather than shaking hands. Signature gathering and the caucuses, both of which have been affected by coronavirus, are the two pathways for Democratic candidates to get on the June 30 primary ballot. John Hickenlooper has already turned in signatures and Andrew Romanoff won last Saturday’s precinct caucuses.

Four small counties are scheduled to hold their next level of Democratic caucuses this Saturday afternoon. Those are still expected to occur, county party officials say.

“That’s what we’re planning on, anyway,” said Louise Peterson, chair of the Park County Democratic Party, which has a 1 p.m. assembly that day. “Weather or new recommendations could change that, but fingers crossed it won’t.”

On Thursday, state legislators from both parties introduced a bill to allow for remote participation in party assemblies and conventions, including votes by email, mail, telephone and the internet. The bill, which they’re trying to pass by Saturday, would also allow for minor rescheduling and expand the use of proxies.

“What this bill is doing is really taking into consideration the large groups of delegates that are going to be coming together, much of which is an at-risk population that could be very vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus and susceptible to COVID-19,” said House Majority Leader Alec Garnett, D-Denver.

It only applies to the 2020 assemblies and conventions, not future years, and would not change the signature-gathering requirements or deadline.

Many aren’t waiting for new rules to change their behavior. Interest groups have canceled their Capitol lobbying days; lawmakers are canceling large gatherings, including news conferences; and senators are encouraging people to contact them through electronic means if possible.

The governor’s office has also informed lawmakers that Polis will stop holding public events to mark his signing bills into law. Those signings will take place in private for now.

On Thursday, three statehouse candidates announced they would immediately suspend all in-person campaign events of 10 people or more. The three — James Coleman, Iman Jodeh and John Ronquillo — will instead focus on digital outreach, along with small gatherings that follow strict sanitation protocols.

“I want to reassure the public, this decision should not be a cause of panic,” said Coleman, a state representative running for a state Senate seat in northeast Denver. “Rather, it should be a sign of the need to take action and that taking action is valuable. The more decisively we address the coronavirus upfront, the more likely we are to stave off a full medical crisis and save lives.”

The Yuma Republican faces the fight of his political career, an eight-month campaign for re-election in an increasingly Democratic Colorado. So far, he has leaned heavily on an anti-socialism message that is lining up neatly with Sanders’ success in early Democratic contests.

“In 2018, Cory said ‘the most dangerous thing to happen in America in the 2016 presidential election was Bernie Sanders’ normalization of socialism,’” said Gardner’s campaign spokesman, Jerrod Dobkin. “Two years later, Cory’s been proven right — (John) Hickenlooper and the rest of Cory’s far-left Senate challengers will support Bernie as their party’s nominee and his radical socialist agenda.”

In speeches dating back years, Gardner has singled out Sanders for criticism and claimed he was the face of the Democratic Party before that was true. If Sanders is the Democratic nominee, he will be the face of the party this year and the most liberal presidential nominee in at least a generation. What that means for Democrats down the November ballot is a source of great speculation within Colorado politics.

“Republicans know firsthand the power of a populist president, and they observe the excitement that Bernie generates,” said Diana Bray, a Democratic challenger to Gardner and a Sanders supporter, who believes Republicans are fearful of a Sanders nomination and engaging in reverse psychology.

“The Republicans eat distress, hysteria and division for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and this strategy feeds straight into their messaging that Trump can beat Sanders,” she added. “I don’t believe he can, and I don’t believe he would have (in 2016), and I don’t believe he will.”

The Sanders campaign, pointing to large Colorado rallies Sanders hosted in 2018, 2019 and 2020, says he spurs unparalleled enthusiasm and brings new voters into the Democratic Party, which will help all Democrats on the November ballot. Gov. Jared Polis, during his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, would not have done so if it would have hurt his chances, the Sanders campaign said.

Just as Gardner has faced years of tough questions about tweets, quotes and actions by President Donald Trump, he and his allies expect the Democrat facing Gardner this fall will face questions about Sanders.

“A Sanders candidacy turns the national race away from a referendum election on Trump to a factional candidate in Sanders persuading the electorate of his viability and vision, which is a dynamic that Gardner can exploit,” said Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at Colorado State University.

Ten Democrats are campaigning with the hope of facing Gardner in November and many support at least a portion of Sanders’ progressive platform. But the field is led by Hickenlooper, the most moderate candidate and one who spent much of his presidential run as Marxist and damaging for Democrats. He has vowed to support whomever the nominee is, however.

Hickenlooper, asked by reporters Feb. 19 whether a Sanders victory in the Democratic primary would harm his chances of beating Gardner, said: “I don’t worry about that, and I don’t think so.”

Saunders believes Hickenlooper’s high name recognition and popularity still give him the edge over Gardner, at least for now.

“However, a lot can change in eight months, which is an eternity in politics,” the professor added.

Before Sanders’ success in the first Democratic contests propelled him to front-runner status, Gardner claimed the Vermont senator was a standard-bearer of the Democratic Party. At the Western Conservative Summit last July, Gardner said Sanders had completed a “successful, hostile takeover of the Democratic Party.”

The 19-minute speech, which contained two dozen mentions of socialism, singled out only one person for criticism: Sanders. When Gardner in Colorado Springs last week, he again criticized only one person by name: Sanders. One of Gardner’s few ads this election cycle focused on the Green New Deal, Sanders’ signature environmental policy.

Michael Fields, director of Colorado Rising Action, a conservative group that tracks Democratic challengers to Gardner, anticipates that Democrats will have to constantly answer for Sanders’ ideas if he’s the nominee.

“It just changes the discussion more than it changes our tactics,” Fields said.

Across the country, Senate Republicans in tough re-election races are as the 51st votes for Sanders’ socialist ideas. Kick us out of office, GOP incumbents warn, and you will dramatically reshape America’s economy, its health care system and its society for the worse.

And it����ap not only Republicans. This week, Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign handed surrogates, including those in Colorado, an internal polling memo that claims Sanders will hurt Democrats in tight congressional races, as . Thirty-nine percent of respondents in the poll said they will be less likely to vote for a Democratic congressional candidate if Sanders is the nominee “and his socialist ideas are in the Democratic Party platform.”

Floyd Ciruli, a longtime Colorado pollster and political consultant, that if Sanders is successful, the Democratic challenger to Gardner will “have to run with the most vulnerable Democratic nominee since George McGovern in 1972,” to Gardner’s benefit.

Such predictions are far from foolproof, however. Democrats routinely believed Trump was the weakest possible Republican candidate in 2016, until he won. In October of that year, Democrats but gained only six seats in the House and two in the Senate.

“I’m reminded of when the Democrats back in 1980 were all pulling for Ronald Reagan to be the nominee because they thought he’d be the easiest to beat,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Tuesday, saying it “may be a bit foolish” to assume Sanders is the easiest Democrat to defeat.

Democrats in the Colorado congressional delegation are not running away from Sanders. Rep. Jason Crow, a moderate Democrat from Aurora who represents the only competitive Democratic district in the state, told reporters Monday that he will support the Democratic nominee for president, regardless of who it is, and he doesn’t worry that Sanders will hurt Democrats.

“I have policy differences with all of them in one way or another,” Crow said after a town hall in Aurora. “Nobody has a perfect candidate that you agree with all of the time. But what I can say is, none of those candidates pose the threats to our democracy that President Trump poses, by any stretch.”

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.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

At XL Dissent, thousands marched to protest the Keystone Pipeline and more than 400 people were arrested, having locked themselves to the iron fencing in front of the White House with zip ties. Protesters were arrested for blocking passage to the White House and were released that same night.

Peaceful civil disobedience is one of the few options that people who live in Democratic societies have to enact systemic change. If justice departments continue to limit First Amendment rights, it will be difficult to maintain that we are largely different from other countries that limit free speech.

State governments have the power to do what those in our federal government are now making it more difficult to do with the recent restrictions on protest. The U.S. Constitution allows for peaceful civil disobedience through its rights to assembly and free speech, and it is one of the very few actions that everyday people can take to make transformative change. To be successful, however, it must be allowed to happen over and over again.

During Gov. Jared Polis State of the State address last week, 38 protesters were arrested after interrupting the governor’s speech on suspicion of charges including trespassing, disrupting a lawful assembly and obstruction of a peace officer. They were there to protest the lack of action on climate change and also calling for oil and gas operations near Bella Romero Elementary School in Greeley to be stopped.

Surely the offense at the Colorado Capitol cannot be considered more egregious than the actions taken by youth in D.C. at the White House. Let Colorado permit protected freedoms. Many of the protestors have already spent 30 hours in jail. They have already served their time. Drop the charges against people who are fighting peacefully, for change. The precedent has been established by an Obama Department of Justice, and can surely be maintained in the service of our democracy.

A short video that I put together 6 years ago shows a little of what the beginning of this phase of the Climate Justice movement looked like. Looking back at it now, the alarming part is not the protest itself, but the imperceptible difference that all the protesting has made on the climate emergency.

That dynamic might be true of all protests. The thing that is being protested is much more devastating than the protest action itself.

Diana Bray is a clinical psychologist, mom and climate activist who is running for U.S. Senate in Colorado.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.