MEXICO CITY — Authorities in Mexico said they were investigating whether the U.S. government had lied about its role in capturing notorious drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, whose secretive transfer to the United States in 2024 remains a source of tension between the two countries.

The Mexican attorney general’s office said Wednesday that it was investigating a recent report by online news site Pie de Nota that connected the FBI to El Mayo’s arrest in Mexico. The report included a statement that it attributed to the FBI claiming that its special agents had “carried out the arrest and transfer of one of the United States government����ap top targets.”

U.S. officials have long maintained that U.S. agents played no role in the transfer and that they took custody of Zambada, a founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, only after he arrived in the United States. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Ken Salazar, a former U.S. senator from Colorado who was the U.S. ambassador to Mexico at the time of El Mayo’s capture but is no longer in government, reiterated comments from 2024 that the arrest was “not our operation.” He also pushed back Wednesday night on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s suggestion that he had misled her country’s government.

At the heart of the disagreement is whether the FBI, or any other U.S. agency, played an operational role inside Mexico during Zambada’s capture, a potential violation of Mexican sovereignty and a red-button issue in the current strained relationship between Mexico and the United States. In a stunning betrayal, Zambada arrived in the United States in July 2024 after one of his partners, Joaquín Guzmán López — a son of the drug lord known as El Chapo — lured him onto a small plane under false pretenses before flying him to an airport outside El Paso, Texas.

The Mexican government has said that it was unaware of the whole operation and has repeatedly petitioned the United States for more information about the role it played. On Wednesday, officials argued that the news report, along with evidence that they had recently gathered, suggested that the FBI had orchestrated or helped execute the capture before Zambada left Mexican territory.

“If the recent information is confirmed,” the attorney general of Mexico, Ernestina Godoy Ramos, said in a news conference Wednesday, it would constitute “a series of violations of Mexican and international law, an agreement made outside the bounds of the law and a lie told by a U.S. diplomat.”

The latest dispute comes as relations between the United States and Mexico have grown increasingly strained. President Donald Trump has pressured Mexico to do more to combat the cartels, including arresting and extraditing politicians accused of aiding criminal organizations and further curbing the flow of drugs into the United States. Trump has also repeatedly vowed to pursue unilateral military action on Mexican soil to dismantle the cartels, a prospect Sheinbaum has firmly rejected, citing Mexican sovereignty.

Salazar has publicly maintained since El Mayo’s capture that no U.S. agency or personnel participated in the bewildering operation. Referring to public statements that he and then-Attorney General Merrick Garland made in July 2024, Salazar wrote on social media Wednesday, “We communicated to the Mexican government that it was not our plane, not our pilot, and not our operation.” He did not rule out the possibility that U.S. agencies had supported the operation in other ways.

The plane on which Zambada and Guzmán López arrived in the United States, a Beechcraft King Air, was recently lent by the FBI to the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, for two years, according to Tomas Peralta, the museum’s interim director. A short text displayed beside the aircraft describes the FBI’s role in the operation that led to the arrests, referring to it by the code name “Operation Air Kings.”

With the names of two agents redacted, the display says that an FBI assistant special agent in charge and a supervisory special agent “successfully executed a highly complex, secretive and daring arrest of two of the world’s most wanted fugitives.” Peralta told The New York Times that the text was based on an account provided by the FBI, without providing further details.

At the news conference Wednesday, Godoy Ramos said that Mexican officials had traveled to FBI offices in El Paso in August 2024 to review evidence and had later inspected the aircraft at the Santa Teresa airport, but that they had not been allowed to carry out “the investigative steps required for such a case” or given the information they requested, including the identity of the pilot. U.S. authorities, she added, had provided “false or inaccurate identifying information regarding the aircraft.”

This article originally appeared in .

Denver Post public affairs editor Jon Murray contributed to this story.

Re: “Harry Potter blitzes Denver with Broadway tour, 1,000-plus drones,” May 27 news story

I recently learned that the Denver Center for the Performing Arts hosted “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” and that a separate Harry Potter Exhibition will be held on South Broadway starting June 26. I cannot express how disappointed I am that a performing arts center is hosting content that directly finances . She has used her proceeds from the franchise to say things that directly harm trans people both in the U.S. and the U.K.

The exhibition is a slap in the face to every trans person in the city and state. I moved to Colorado from Alabama to be able to live my life as a trans woman. For my adopted city to send profits to her, which will be used to fund misery for trans people, is, frankly, disgusting. The DCPA should reconsider its support for the eradication of trans people like me.

Abby Jane Morton, Denver

Obama at the library; Trump at the fight

Here we have former President Barack Obama at the opening of his presidential center, sounding like a true leader with a clear vision of what is going on in this country and where it should be headed.

While over here, we have UFC referee and Iranian chump Donald Trump, who does whatever he wants without regard for the Constitution, Congress, or the American people.

It����ap been said, you don’t know what you have until you lose it.

Craig Marshall Smith, Highlands Ranch

Shutdown Colorado’s coal plants

Re: “Experts: Extensions prolong health hit,” June 18 news story

It����ap a shame that we must keep Colorado’s dirty coal plants burning past their planned retirement dates. I feel sorry for all who will continue to breathe dirtier air, especially for children and people with respiratory problems. Apparently, we for delivering clean energy from new large-scale wind and solar projects. Rooftop solar and community solar do not require expensive transmission upgrades and are relatively fast to deploy. Currently, rooftop solar is too expensive for most people. It suffers from an excess of red tape that slow installations and raises its costs. Our legislature should work on reducing these barriers during its next session.

Bob Walker, Denver

Salazar is right, we need inclusivity

Re: “Longtime Colorado politician promotes unity in book,” June 21 news story

Congratulations to Judith Kohler for her excellent review, and Ken Salazar himself for his forthcoming book “Borderlands – My Fight for an Inclusive America.” Inclusivity in America is always our shared fight and responsibility, especially now. Salazar’s call for a new American, Canadian, and Mexican Alliance is a must.

Just as urgent is the need for radical immigration reform, and also new and clear pathways to citizenship.

First, we need immediate relief for our Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) graduates. These educated, degree-winning young people, who are now adults, have outgrown their childhoods with hard-working, law-abiding, taxpaying undocumented parents to become so themselves. They need protection from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s quasi-legal deportations. We have invested our resources in these dreamers, and they are returning so much more to us.

Second, we need immediate pathways to citizenship for employed, law-abiding, tax-paying folks who were legal immigrants, but have expired Visas. They never illegally crossed our borders.

Borderlands are not a line drawn in the sand; they are a common living zone, and culture exists on both sides of that line. Residents of borderlands are by definition bilingual; their cultures mixed and distinctive. Their schools, churches, and law enforcement tend to be the best on both sides. They should be clarified, and their residents should be allowed short-term easy access to both sides of the border. Here is where asylum seekers can safely await clearance. Even deportees could be held there.

Can’t wait for this excellent forthcoming book.

Mary Estill Buchanan, Boulder

Editor’s note: Buchanan is a former Colorado secretary of state.

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The former Colorado attorney general, U.S. senator, Interior secretary and ambassador to Mexico writes about the plan and the impact of family and growing up in southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley on his career in his book “Borderlands: My Fight for an Inclusive America.”

The book, scheduled for release July 28, is part memoir, charting his journey from a ranching area, home to his family for several generations, to the upper levels of political power in Colorado and the federal government.

“Borderlands” is also Salazar’s proposed map for charting a path out of what he said is the country’s “greatest division in my lifetime.” He blames President Donald Trump for the division and denounces what he calls Trump’s “project of erasure”: the dismantling of diversity, inclusion and norms that constrained his modern-era predecessors.

The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment.

While Salazar criticizes Trump for vilifying immigrants to grab and hold onto power, he doesn’t let his fellow Democrats off the hook. He vents frustration with the Biden administration for not responding sooner to the growing groups of people crossing the border with Mexico and for not appointing a migration “czar” that he advocated for.

Salazar said Trump was right when he called the southern border broken. Thousands of people a day were crossing into the U.S., far beyond what Customers and Border Protection was meant to handle.

“We criticize Donald Trump as unfit for office, which I think is accurate. But you’ve got to move beyond that to really create the vision and the solutions for the future,” Salazar said in an interview with The Denver Post.

He hopes Democrats have learned that people’s concerns about a safe, secure border need to be addressed. “You don’t solve the crisis by simply calling it something else or walking away from it.”

Dick Wadhams, former state Republican chairman and longtime political strategist for GOP candidates, said he couldn’t see Salazar agreeing with the Biden administration’s policies on the border.

“Ken Salazar, I always thought, was a very smart political guy and that he could see that the nation was not in favor of essentially an open border,”  Wadhams said. “And second, that’s just not the right way to have a border. A nation has to have a secure border.”

Immigration reform, long stymied in Congress, was needed, including changes in asylum laws, Salazar wrote in his book. Migrants reaching the border could claim asylum and wait to go to court, which could take months or even years.

“This surge turned an existing crisis into what I can only call an emergency. Eleven months before the US election, it had the potential to be politically devastating for President Biden,” Salazar wrote. “But even more than that, it was a human catastrophe on an industrial scale.”

Salazar said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, as many call him, grew frustrated with a lack of movement by the U.S. to modernize facilities on its side of the border as Mexico had. Salazar was vexed by a drop in Mexico’s repatriation flights and efforts to relocate migrants from the border.

Vice President Kamala Harris was tasked with getting at the “root causes” of the migration problem by concentrating on poverty and corruption in places such as Guatemala and Honduras. But Salazar wrote the effort “was having no effect on migration flows.”

However, the border wasn’t open as Republicans claimed, Salazar said. Including the COVID-related expulsions, former President Joe Biden had deported about 3.6 million migrants, more than the 2 million Trump deported during his entire first term, Salazar wrote.

Biden issued an executive order on asylum restrictions. The number of crossings began dropping almost immediately and continued to decline, Salazar said.

And a bipartisan immigration reform bill introduced in the Senate looked like it might pass, but failed 50-49 in February 2024 after Trump, then a private citizen, intervened.

“He needed the chaos, the human suffering, the political vulnerability it created for President Biden and congressional Democrats,” Salazar wrote.

in Trump winning a second term. were among Trump’s promises in the 2024 presidential campaign.

“There were a lot of issues. You could point to Biden hanging on too long, inflation,” said Robert Preuhs, a professor and head of the political science department at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

“But immigration was one of those sets of important issues that arose right around that time. It has been a growing concern and it was certainly an impetus for voting for Trump, particularly among Republicans,” Preuhs said.

Slight majorities and in some cases pluralities of Americans support more border security, a legal framework for immigration and see diversity, particularly from immigration, as beneficial to the U.S., Preuhs said.

“The difficulty is that there are slices of each party that reject particular points of those,” Preuhs said. “I think polarization is still the overriding context in the midterms and likely in 2028.”

Salazar: Not identity politics, unity agenda

Salazar wants to defuse the polarization he sees as a threat to the country’s democratic principles. On immigration, he supports pathways to legalization for the “Dreamers,” who were brought to the U.S. as children, and others in the U.S. illegally. He said criteria must be established and the people would have to be “good actors.”

As a Senator, he worked on bipartisan legislation that offered immigrants an opportunity to become citizens. The requirements included background checks, payment of back taxes, learning English and starting the naturalization process at the “back of the line.”

There are 10 million to 12 million people living in the shadows and mass deportations of them don’t make sense, Salazar said.

“You’re going to have an economy that breaks if you deport them. Whether it’s homeowners who have landscaping needs, or contractors, or dairy farms, or slaughterhouses, they’re going to be hurting more than they’re hurting today,” Salazar said.

Families in Colorado and across the country are living in fear of parents being deported and children being left behind, he said.

Under Trump, diversity, what Salazar calls America’s “superpower,” is under siege, Salazar said. As Interior Secretary in the Obama administration, Salazar said the department worked to diversify the ranks of employees and tell the stories of all Americans.

“Some would call this ‘identity politics,’ but I’ve always called it a unity agenda,” Salazar wrote.

He grew up on a ranch in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado on land his family has owned since before Colorado became a state. His family’s roots in the Southwest go back four centuries.

Mexican Americans throughout the region “became U.S. citizens of this country not by choice but by conquest when, in 1848, the United States won a bloody two-year conflict it had waged against Mexico,” Salazar wrote.

The differences in people’s backgrounds and beliefs that the Trump administration deems unimportant are the country’s strengths and protecting them is part of the march toward a more perfect union, Salazar said.

“I can’t stand on the sidelines and just watch everything that I’ve worked for in my life basically be undone by this president and his administration,” Salazar said.

He wrote that he was fortunate to have been raised “with the hallmark values of faith, family, and community, and to have had exceptional mentors throughout my life.”  He said they taught him to fight for a diverse and inclusive society.

“And now is the time to fight,” Salazar added.

He believes his New American Alliance proposal gives Democrats something to fight for. The relationship with Mexico and Canada would focus on such areas as trade; national security; maintaining security along borders; migration; crime; defense; energy; and climate change.

Salazar has talked to national politicians, think tanks and business organizations about his plan. He wants to see the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement be renewed. have strained relations among the neighbors.

“I think what I have posed is something that the Democrats should embrace, as well as Republicans. It’s a good program for America, for security, for the economy,” Salazar said.

Asked if he is considering promotion of the alliance as a lead-up to a run for the White House, Salazar said for now, he’s taking his granddaughter’s advice.

“Mireya, my granddaughter, always tells me, ‘One thing at a time.’ Right now the message is about the borderlands, the platform for the borderlands,” Salazar said.

After his time as ambassador to Mexico ended, Salazar said he thought about running for Colorado governor. But in 2025, he had started work on his book and thought he could accomplish more by pursuing what he refers to as his “borderlands” agenda.

After Biden struggled in his debate with Trump in July 2024 and sentiment grew that he should drop out of the race, Salazar wrote that he considered running for president on a “Make America United Again” campaign.

Salazar’s plans ended when Biden halted his campaign and endorsed Vice President Harris.

“If there were no primaries and he was the candidate, I think a Ken Salazar campaign would have a lot of potential,” Preuhs, the MSU-Denver professor said. “I do think it’s important to have a senior statesman, particularly a moderate, but also a Latino, making these arguments for the importance of diversity.”

But there are already up to a dozen viable Democratic presidential candidates, some well-known, Preuhs said. And it’s unclear whether the party will rally behind a moderate or back a more progressive candidate.

“I think a lot of it depends on how well moderates do in some of these swing districts this year,” he added.

Political consultant Wadhams said if Biden had not sought a second term and if a competitive nomination process had been held, Salazar could have played an interesting role in the election.

“Now, would he have won the nomination? I don’t know, because I think maybe he is in some ways too, interestingly enough, conservative for today’s Democratic Party,” Wadhams said.

The two political parties are operating from the extremes, he added. The Democratic Party is heavily influenced by the Democratic Socialists, while the “MAGA, stolen-election conspiracists run the Republican Party,” Wadhams said.

Part of what makes Salazar different from other Democrats is his rural background, Wadhams said. When Republican Bill Owens was elected governor in 1998, Salazar, who was elected as attorney general, was the only Democrat to win statewide office. Salazar invited Wadhams, Owens’ press secretary, to breakfast to get to know him.

“What it really drove home for me that day was that our backgrounds were so similar,” said Wadhams, who grew up in the Arkansas Valley, east of the San Luis Valley.

“We were kind of chuckling that we both had to feed livestock before we went to school every day,” Wadhams said. “We both grew up on irrigated farms. We talked about spending our summers stacking hay and irrigating crops.

“I don’t think you can underestimate his family background, where he grew up and how he grew up and how that����ap affected his political persona,” Wadhams said.

For the time being, the politics Salazar is focused on is his idea for a North American alliance. He also splits time between being with his family in Denver and working on the family ranch near Manassa in the San Luis Valley, which sits between the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountains.

He also intends to stay engaged in public affairs no matter what. “I have more public purpose left in me.”

Bennet, 60, made his formal announcement Friday morning in Denver’s City Park — becoming, one political analyst said, “immediately the frontrunner” in the race. He confirmed his candidacy to The Denver Post beforehand, saying in an interview that he hoped to bring his federal legislative experience to his home state’s executive branch and help Colorado navigate potential cuts and other uncertainty during President Donald Trump’s second administration.

“I am deeply, deeply, profoundly worried about Donald Trump and the wrecking ball he has aimed at our democracy and our economy,” Bennet said in the interview, noting potential cuts to Medicaid and other federal programs. He argued that economic uncertainty has fueled modern politics.

Michael Bennet: I’m running for governor because Washington D.C. is too broken to answer Colorado’s needs

But, he added, "as we're dealing with that -- as we're fighting everything that's wrong with the current administration -- it's important for us to create better solutions for our shared challenges in Colorado. We can forge a better politics than we see in D.C. right now."

He was joined Friday morning by a slew of Colorado elected officials -- including U.S. Reps. Jason Crow and Joe Neguse, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and former Mayor Wellington Webb -- and dozens of supporters.

Bennet has served in the Senate since 2009, when he was appointed to fill the seat vacated by Ken Salazar when Salazar joined the Obama administration. He's since won election to the seat three times -- and by a larger margin in each election, most recently garnering nearly 56% of the vote in 2022. He would be up for reelection next in 2028.

But now, Bennet said, he feels he'd be "better situated as the governor to help us provide a view of what this future is going to look like, from the state of Colorado, than I would be able to do from (Washington)."

During his speech Friday morning, Bennet highlighted the need to drive down costs and increase affordability in health care and housing in particular.

Economic hopelessness -- people worrying about affording to stay in their homes and raise their kids in Colorado -- drove some voters to cast ballots for the "chaos" of Trump, Bennet said. Bettering Colorado will make it "an example to the rest of the country on how to fight Trump and how to drive a stake through Trumpism," he said.

Bennet joins Weiser in Democratic primary

Bennet's name recognition and long history in Colorado politics -- and the political reshuffling that an open Senate seat would set in motion, should he win next year -- could help clear the field of other major potential Democratic candidates. Bennet plans to remain in the Senate through the gubernatorial campaign.

If he wins, he said, he'd "fulfill my responsibility" under state law and the constitution and appoint his successor, rather than resigning earlier so Gov. Jared Polis could fill the vacancy.

Polis, like the rest of Colorado's constitutional officers, is term-limited and cannot seek reelection in 2026.

So far, Attorney General Phil Weiser is the only other prominent Democrat to launch an official bid for governor, entering the race in January. His campaign announced he raised more than $1.9 million through the end of March, a sum that includes a transfer of nearly $158,000 from his attorney general campaign.

Salazar also has publicly mulled a bid; on Friday morning, he put out a statement praising both Weiser and Bennet without shedding light on his own intentions.

Coloradans haven't elected a Republican to lead the state since 2002, and the state has only trended bluer over the last decade.

In a statement Thursday, shortly after several media outlets reported Bennet would seek the office, Weiser said he'd spent the past six years serving "Colorado as the People's Lawyer," while Bennet was working in Washington. But he also softened any jabs at Bennet, adding: "Now more than ever, we need experienced Democratic leaders in Washington."

"We must protect Colorado and oppose Trump’s illegal actions, not appease him," Weiser said. "I am the fighter Colorado needs as our next governor. Two years ago, the voters sent Sen. Bennet back to D.C. because we believed he would be there for us no matter what -- especially in historically dangerous moments like the one we currently face."

Bennet, in return, said Weiser "has been a great attorney general, and has been a great public servant" and a "great friend."

But Bennet highlighted his own "fairly unique set of experiences" in the Senate, Denver Public Schools and the Denver mayor's office as higher qualifications. Before entering politics, he worked as a lawyer and then in business for Colorado billionaire Phil Anschutz.

Among other long-rumored candidates for governor, Neguse has instead endorsed Bennet, while Secretary of State Jena Griswold launched a bid for attorney general this week.

Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at Colorado State University, said Bennet is "immediately the frontrunner" in the race -- but may not completely clear the field.

Saunders called Weiser a good candidate in a typical gubernatorial race, but in his view, it changes the odds when a sitting senator makes the highly unusual move of seeking a governor's office. In addition to Bennet's personal qualifications, he also brings decades of campaign infrastructure to bear.

"Bennet is going to be ahead in campaign finance, he's going to be ahead in campaign organization and staff, he's going to be ahead in name recognition," Saunders said. "All those things are essential for anyone trying to secure the Democratic nomination for the governor's job."

On the Republican side, state Sen. Mark Baisley, state Rep. Scott Bottoms and Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell have launched gubernatorial campaigns.

The primary elections for the office will be in summer 2026 and the general election will be held that November.

Bennet says he's open to TABOR reform

Bennet's bid highlights the circular nature of Colorado politics.

He served as John Hickenlooper's chief of staff when Hickenlooper was Denver mayor in the early 2000s. Not long after Gov. Bill Ritter appointed Bennet to the Senate seat, Hickenlooper won the 2010 gubernatorial election. Hickenlooper, after two terms as governor, joined Bennet in the Senate after winning election in 2020.

Both men ran unsuccessful campaigns for the presidency in 2020. Now, they could flip-flop the roles they held for much of the 2010s.

Bennet praised Polis in an interview, particularly his signature free full-day kindergarten program, but added that "no governor can do it all."

Housing, health care and mental health care remain challenges for the state, Bennet said. He also acknowledged the state's ongoing budget constraints. Lawmakers this week moved closer to closing a budget with $1.2 billion in cuts as costs collided with the spending cap set by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, or TABOR.

State lawmakers have floated some ideas to adjust TABOR, such as another reset of the formula used to set the cap or an exemption of certain spending, like Medicaid, from it. Bennet did not endorse a specific change but said, "I'm sure (TABOR) will be part of any campaign," including his.

"We are facing enormous budget challenges as a state, and TABOR is clearly part of that problem," Bennet said. "We've got to have a comprehensive discussion about what we should do and how TABOR should be reformed."

In addition to electoral politics, Bennet has served as the superintendent of Denver Public Schools -- a job that proved formative for one of his marquee congressional victories. As part of the 2021 stimulus bill, Bennet won inclusion of a massive expansion of the federal child tax credit, in the form of $300 monthly checks to parents.

Those only persisted for a year -- but the policy became something of a white whale for him after it cut child poverty in half, yet wasn't renewed by Congress. He introduced a new version of it earlier this week, joined by nearly all of the Democratic caucus.

Recent approach to Trump

When President Donald Trump took office for a second term in January, Bennet struck a more collaborative tone than some of his Democratic colleagues. He's tied for eighth among Democrats in terms of the most votes cast in favor of Trump's nominees, according to by The New York Times.

But he's also spoken out against Trump and Elon Musk -- the world's richest man and chief financier of Trump's successful reelection bid -- including by accusing them of "wanton destruction" of the government in with Colorado Public Radio.

In the new interview with The Post, Bennet highlighted his fights against some of Trump's more controversial appointments, like Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as fights for the expanded child tax credit.

"We all have a shared battle," Bennet said. "This is one of those really important moments in American history, where it really matters how we come out on the other side. And I think Colorado is in a position to lead all 50 states, and I look forward to being able to help guide that as the next governor of the state of Colorado."

He’s writing a book. He’s spending time with his family in Denver and helping out on the Salazar family ranch in the San Luis Valley.

And the former U.S. senator and interior secretary is thinking through his next move.

“I know what the options are. I could run for governor, and I might. I could run for national office and there’s only one and I might do that: the presidency,” Salazar said. “I want to listen to the people and see what their feelings are, what went wrong. How could we have gotten to this point in American history where we’re turning back the clock on 70 years of civil rights?”

Salazar is also concerned that the 25% percent tariffs imposed on Mexico and Canada will unravel the integrated economy in North America that has benefitted all the countries. The potential for trade wars ignited by the tariffs will endanger one of the world’s most important trading blocs, he said.

While in the U.S. Senate, Salazar was part of a bipartisan group that steered through the chamber in 2007. The bill, which included beefing up security at the border and a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally, died in the House and legislation the following year didn’t even make it out of the Senate.

Salazar believes making the U.S.-Mexico border secure is important and he favors deporting criminals, but said the Trump administration’s “weaponization” of the issue and the deportations are hurting people and will hinder efforts to find common sense solutions.

Salazar, 70, headed Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources; served as state attorney general; U.S. senator; interior secretary in the Obama administration; and as ambassador to Mexico.

“I’m looking forward to being on the playing field,” Salazar said. “It may be that I’m just an adviser in helping correct the direction that we’re in.”

But first, he wants to finish his book. The working title is “Borderland: Making America Great, a United and Inclusive America.” Although part of that might have a familiar ring, Salazar pointed out that there’s no “again” in the title.

“It’s a march toward a more perfect union. We’ve made a lot of progress in the last 70 years,” Salazar said.

However, that progress is at risk given the policies of the Trump administration, Salazar said. He believes the executive orders eliminating government programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI, are wrong.

“That’s an America I have worked for all of my life,” Salazar said. “Whenever I talk about an inclusive America, it means you have to have everybody at the table, not just the billionaires.”

Salazar recalled a speech by former Gov. Roy Romer, whose administration he served in. Romer gave a speech in the late 1980s in Lamar where the crowd was mostly white and conservative.

“Romer said we should not just tolerate our diversity, we should celebrate our diversity. He was ahead of his time,” Salazar said.

A photo of Romer and his wife with Salazar and his family hangs on the wall of an office in Salazar’s northwest Denver home. Pictures of Salazar with former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden are mixed with family photos and portraits of his mother and father. His chairs from his Senate and Department of the Interior offices ring his desk.

Salazar’s cowboy hat, which along with boots and bolo tie is a signature part of his wardrobe, has its own place in the large book shelf behind his desk. Salazar’s wife, Hope, dropped by the office to greet visitors while one of three granddaughters played downstairs.

An official homecoming for Salazar is set for Sunday at the Denver Art Museum. Colorado Senators and fellow Democrats Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper organized the event.

“Ken’s contributions to our community — and our nation — run just as deep as his roots here in Colorado. He sets a high bar for what it means to be a public servant,” Hickenlooper said in a statement. “We couldn’t be more excited to have him back home after his time representing the U.S. in Mexico.”

“A true son of the San Luis Valley, Ambassador Salazar served our state and country with honor. No one has fought harder to protect our iconic Western landscapes, or been a greater champion for Colorado’s farmers and ranchers,” Bennet said in an email.

Salazar, a moderate who sometimes went against the grain of his own party, agreed with some of the criticism of the Democrats’ response to Trump pushing the boundaries of executive power. unleashed outrage from people who wanted Democrats to defy the administration’s cutting of federal agencies and employees.

“I think Democrats have to do what (House minority leader) Hakeem Jeffries and John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet did and that’s fight and resist what Donald Trump is doing,” Salazar said.

He said he’s proud of all the Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation. Still, he believes Democrats have to address Americans’ fears about secure borders. Salazar said the Biden administration finally took steps that slowed illegal border crossings to numbers lower than the last months of the first Trump administration.

Salazar supports a border-security agreement with Canada and Mexico that would be similar to the negotiated by Trump in his first term as president.

The Democratic party also needs to take seriously the feeling that a lot of rural America has been left behind, Salazar said. He sees the evidence every time he drives to the family ranch near Manassa in the San Luis Valley. “Almost everything is shut down.”

The Salazar family’s roots in northern New Mexico and the San Luis Valley in southwest Colorado stretch to four centuries, about 250 years before the land was part of the U.S.

“As rural America dies on the vine, those places become redder and redder,” Salazar said. “The Republican Party, in my view, doesn’t really care. They talk a good game.”

But the Democratic Party “has not been very effective at showing its presences or concerns about rural America.”

Updated March 21, 2025, at 7 p.m. to add comment from Sen. Michael Bennet.

“There’s critical work ahead. I want to help do it — I want to help Colorado, I believe in Colorado, I want to serve the people of Colorado,” Weiser told The Denver Post shortly after announcing his candidacy in a morning news release.

Weiser’s early jump allows him to begin raising money immediately, even though the June 2026 Democratic primary is still nearly 18 months away. It also gives him an early chance for voters “to get to know me,” he said — before several other candidates enter the fray.

Weiser, 56, said his campaign will focus on affordability and housing — two issues that are consistently top of mind for Colorado voters — as well as curbing climate change’s impact on the environment and addressing the youth mental health crisis, which he referenced repeatedly during the interview.

His announcement serves as a starting pistol for what will be an extensive 2026 campaign season, and it ends the yearslong shadow campaign that’s been waged quietly by would-be successors to Gov. Jared Polis: Weiser has long been expected to pursue the governor’s mansion after Polis, as has Secretary of State Jena Griswold, U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse and Ken Salazar, a longtime Colorado political figure who’s now U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

Several lesser-known Republican, unaffiliated and third-party candidates , but Weiser is the first major candidate of any affiliation to declare his campaign.

A recent early poll of four potential 2026 Democratic gubernatorial candidates showed Weiser in last in terms of support by likely primary voters, behind Neguse, Griswold and Salazar, though the highest share of respondents — 37% — said they were undecided. More voters said they had never heard of Neguse or Weiser than the other candidates.

Of the differences between Weiser and his potential opponents, he said he was proud of his record and said he would run a positive campaign.

Weiser is starting the final two years of his second term as Colorado’s attorney general. He previously worked as the dean of the University of Colorado Law School and as a policy adviser in the Obama administration. He first moved to the state to clerk for a federal judge after graduating from New York University’s law school. He also clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court justices, Byron R. White and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

According to , Weiser’s campaign is chaired by former Gov. Roy Romer and co-chaired by former U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter and Fort Collins Mayor Jeni Arndt. His supporters also include several current and former elected officials, including former House Speaker Terrance Carroll and former Senate President Brandon Shaffer.

Weiser, whose mother was born in a Nazi concentration camp one day before it was liberated in 1945, has said he came to Colorado because he looked for clerkships in states that had a baseball team and a Jewish community.

His six years as attorney general have seen his office oversee the distribution of tens of millions of dollars in settlement payments from companies involved in the opioid crisis. He has also joined several prominent national lawsuits and legal efforts, including to block the merger of the Kroger and Albertsons grocery chains, and he’s backed consumer protection litigation against companies including Wyatts Towing and, more recently, controversial companies in the housing market like RealPage and CBZ Management.

Weiser said Thursday that he would support the type of land-use reforms pursued by Polis in recent years that seek to boost development along the Front Range to increase the housing supply. He also would continue his work targeting junk fees and alleged price fixing in the rental market.

When he ran for AG in the 2018 election, Weiser prominently described his plans to combat then-President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and generally to serve as a legal bulwark against the Trump administration.

His pitch for the governor’s mansion will likely turn on those same pledges, as Trump prepares to enter the White House again later this month on a platform of mass deportations and promises of regulatory rollbacks. Indeed, in a call with state House Democrats in early December, Weiser said his office had already begun researching when the military or National Guard could be called out — .

On Thursday, Weiser told The Post that he would “work with anybody” in Washington, D.C., who was willing to collaborate.

But “if there are people who are going to hurt us in Colorado, who are going to undermine our values or threaten people here … I’m ready for those battles ahead,” he said.

The early December survey of 630 registered voters was released Monday. In the results, 20% of respondents told pollster Magellan Strategies that they probably or definitely would vote for Neguse, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House, if the June 2026 Democratic primary was held now. That was ahead of 16% support for Secretary of State Jena Griswold; 11% for Ken Salazar, a longtime Colorado politico who now serves as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico; and 8% for Attorney General Phil Weiser.

Thirty-seven percent of polls respondents said they were undecided, and 8% said they planned to support a candidate other than the four specifically posed.

None of the four named candidates the gubernatorial race. Griswold and Weiser are term-limited from running again for their current offices. All four have long been rumored to be eying a run to succeed Democratic Gov. Jared Polis when he is term-limited out of office after 2026.

The survey was conducted Dec. 4-9 by Magellan, a Broomfield-based pollster, and it was released by the nonprofit policy advocacy group . Magellan surveyed 630 registered voters, 62% of them Democrats and 38% unaffiliated voters; the sample was weighted to reflect typical turnout in a midterm Democratic primary in Colorado.

The results had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points, and more than 40% of respondents were 60 or older.

Griswold and Weiser were both elected to statewide office alongside Polis in 2018 and 2022. Salazar previously served as the interior secretary under then-President Barack Obama, and he was Colorado’s attorney general and then a U.S. senator before he joined the Obama administration. President Joe Biden nominated him as ambassador to Mexico in 2021.

In a statement, Weiser said he was focused on “defeating” the Albertson’s-Kroger merger and on “preparing to defend Colorado from challenges we expect in the coming year,” as former President Donald Trump returns to office.

Griswold, in a statement, said she was focused on her current office and being a new mother, as well as “standing up” to Trump through her public service in coming years. “I have not decided how that service will look beyond 2026,” she wrote.

A representative of Neguse, who represents the 2nd Congressional District, did not provide comment Monday. An email directed to Salazar via the U.S. State Department was not returned.

Eighteen months before the primary, the poll results showed voters had overall favorable views of all four candidates, though Griswold had both the highest shares of favorable and unfavorable results. Eighty percent of respondents had heard of Salazar, the highest share of the four, with Griswold second with 77%.

Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they had never heard of either Neguse or Weiser, though Neguse still had the largest share of respondents who viewed him very favorably.

As President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador resume the tradition of the North America Leaders’ Summit on Thursday, the three allies face deep differences on migration, climate and trade.

There’s “not that much in common between them, at least in their vision for what they want for their countries,” said Kenneth Frankel, president of the Canadian Council for the Americas. “Not just what they want for their countries, but what they can deliver for their countries.”

Thursday’s meetings at the White House will be the first trilateral get-together for North American leaders since a June 2016 gathering of Trudeau, Barack Obama and Enrique Peña Nieto in Ottawa. The gatherings took a hiatus under President Donald Trump, who feuded with Trudeau and Nieto during his tenure.

Biden has made some progress in repairing relations with U.S. neighbors after the turbulent Trump years. But many significant strains remain — and some new ones have emerged.

Trudeau arrived in Washington with concerns about buy-American provisions in the president����ap proposed $1.85 trillion social services plan. Mexico’s priorities heading into the summit were to obtain concrete advances on immigration and more equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

The tradition of three-way meetings started when George W. Bush played host to Mexico’s Vicente Fox and Canada’s Paul Martin in 2005 for talks at his ranch in Waco, Texas.

Biden has already held separate virtual meetings with Trudeau in February and López Obrador in March.

Biden will meet separately with Trudeau and López Obrador again on Thursday before the leaders hold a trilateral session in the midst of what is a big week for the U.S. president. Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law Monday, held a virtual summit with China’s Xi Jinping that night, and traveled over the next two days to promote provisions in the big spending deal. He’s also trying to push through his social services and climate spending plan.

There are growing concerns in Canada about a provision in the spending plan that would offer U.S. consumers a $7,500 tax credit if they buy electric vehicles through 2026. The following year, only purchases of electric vehicles made in the U.S. would qualify for the credit. The base credit would go up by $4,500 if the vehicle was made at a U.S. plant that operates under a union-negotiated collective bargaining agreement.

Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland called the incentive a clear violation of an updated trade agreement among the three countries that aimed to protect U.S. jobs and products made in North America. Trudeau, Freeland and other Canadian ministers met with U.S. officials on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. And Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said she raised concerns about the electric vehicle provision with Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week.

Freeland said that for Canada, “Job one here in the U.S. this week is to really make our American counterparts aware of the extent to which their current approach to this issue is a problem for Canada and to really explain to them that the way they have formulated this incentive really, really has the potential to become the dominant issue in our bilateral relationship.”

White House spokesman Chris Meagher said the electric vehicle tax incentives are an essential part of Biden’s push to link efforts to curb climate emissions with job creation in the U.S.

The U.S. and Canada, meanwhile, have expressed frustration that López Obrador has failed to get on board with global efforts to curb climate emissions. The Mexican president skipped this month’s U.N. climate summit in Glasgow.

López Obrador’s government, for its part, wants promised U.S. development funds for the Northern Triangle countries of Central America to be firmed up. The Mexican leader continues to press the U.S. to fund an expansion of his tree planting program to Central America.

Mexico has worked with the United States — under both Trump and Biden — to control migrant flows and assist in returning migrants to Central America. The two countries are still negotiating the court-ordered re-implementation of a Trump-era policy known as Remain in Mexico, which forced asylum seekers to wait out their U.S. asylum process in Mexico.

López Obrador has also mentioned on multiple occasions his interest in the U.S. government expanding its temporary work visa program so more Mexicans and Central Americans can fill the demand for labor in the U.S. The temporary workers in turn could have access to the higher pay they seek in the U.S. without becoming part of the illegal immigration flow.

Arriving in Washington on Wednesday, Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said his government would focus on three issues: the pandemic, economic integration and immigration. On immigration, Ebrard said Mexico would try to rally support for two of López Obrador’s signature social programs — tree planting and youth job opportunities — to reduce the push factors of migration.

Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, recently expressed “serious concerns” about the Mexican government����ap attempts to limit competition in the electrical power sector.

Trudeau and Biden are also expected to discuss the future of an oil pipeline that crosses part of the Great Lakes and is the subject of rising tension over whether it should be shut down. Biden is caught in a battle over Enbridge’s Line 5, a key segment of a pipeline network that carries Canadian oil across the U.S. Midwest.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat and Biden ally, has demanded closure of the 68-year-old line because of the potential for a catastrophic rupture along a 4-mile section (6.4 kilometers) in the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. The Biden administration has not taken a position but is under increasing pressure to do so.

Canada last month invoked a 1977 treaty that guarantees the unimpeded transit of oil between the two nations.

___

Associated Press writer Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.

For people, policy and Colorado politics

What’s The Spot? You’re reading an installment of our weekly politics newsletter. .

Heidi Ganahl, University of Colorado regent and the only Republican left holding a statewide office in Colorado, has said she’s considering a run at Gov. Jared Polis next year. This week she making the case against his reelection.

It’s pretty on-the-nose for a gubernatorial hopeful, and it’s easy to see her repeating the column’s talking points on the stump. All that’s missing from is an actual announcement.

Republicans are banking on the historical trend that says the party out of power does well in the midterms, but beating Polis will be difficult. Don’t just take my word for it — Ganahl called it a “moonshot” when I spoke with her several weeks ago.

Why? Democrats now hold a registration advantage that veteran consultants estimate hands them a starting advantage of 5-10 percentage points — meaning they don’t need spectacular candidates to win. It helps Polis’ case , polling well above water throughout the entire pandemic.

Then there’s the matter of his money. Whatever you spend, you can be sure he’ll have more. He’s worth hundreds of millions, and from the start of his political career he has spent extravagantly: At 25 years old, he on a state Board of Education seat — 120 times what his opponent spent.

I caught up this week with the chair of the state GOP chair Kristi Burton Brown, to talk about the 2022 election after she and other party leaders at a Denver gas station.

“It’s very unfortunate that Coloradans live in a state where their governor buys his seat. He shouldn’t get to sit in that seat because he has more money,” she said.

She sounded excited about her party’s chances in the four major statewide contests — governor, attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer — all of which feature a Democratic incumbent. (It����ap the job of any party chair to project confidence.)

More revealing were the remarks from state Sen. John Cooke in a recent talk radio discussion about whether Polis can be beat ( by liberal blog Colorado Pols).

“You know, I would like to say yes, but no, I don’t think he can at this point,” Cooke said. “(M)oney runs campaigns. And one, we need to have a good candidate, and it����ap really getting late in the season.”

About that: Burton Brown said the GOP’s top-of-the-ticket candidates will announce as soon as this summer and as late as the spring.

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Top Line

Cash for kids: Gov. Jared Polis is incentivizing weekly coronavirus tests for K-12 students.

Capitol Diary

Just the links

• Why 2020 is being hailed as a “banner year” for legislation supporting people with disabilities.
• Colorado was the first in the country to legalize marijuana, but other states are catching up — and then some.
• In 2019, Polis authorized digital identification for Coloradans. That����ap newly relevant because among the documents you can store on the app is your COVID vaccine card. .

Federal politics • By Justin Wingerter

The Senate’s small step on pot

Stashed away in the infrastructure bill that the U.S. Senate passed Tuesday is a requirement that three federal departments figure out how to get high-quality cannabis to scientists.

An amendment introduced by Colorado U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper requires the Transportation Department, Health and Human Services and the Justice Department to publish a plan in two years for letting researchers who are studying marijuana-impaired driving get their hands on the cannabis that Americans buy at dispensaries. Currently, researchers can only use .

If the infrastructure bill becomes law (it faces a bumpy road in the House first), it also calls for a plan to be drawn up for creating a national clearinghouse of cannabis. Strains would be collected and distributed, so researchers in states where it����ap illegal could get the strong stuff. For science.

“Colorado led the way on marijuana legalization,” Hickenlooper said in a statement last month (that didn’t mention he opposed legalizing). “The federal government needs to catch up by lifting outdated restrictions on the scientific study of cannabis so we can prevent driving while high.”

Read more about what Congress’ giant infrastructure bill means for Colorado.

More federal politics news

• Mesa County has to get rid of 40 pieces of election equipment, per a state order, after an alleged breach of its voting technology.
• Colorado’s Ken Salazar was confirmed as U.S. ambassador to Mexico.
• The feds are sending over a quick $11.6 million for cleanup on Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon.
• Former Olympian Eli Bremer will challenge U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in 2022.
• Karen Breslin, a from Elizabeth, will too.
• Dominion Voting Systems has sued right-wing media for defamation — again.

Mile High Politics • By Conrad Swanson

Lucky No. 13?

For 50 years, Denver’s had 11 city council seats representing specific districts with well-defined borders and two at-large seats representing the entire city.

The unlikely pair of Candi CdeBaca and Kevin Flynn want to throw out the at-large seats and redraw boundary lines across the entire city so there are 13 council members representing 13 districts.

It����ap a contentious move and one that barely passed the council’s Finance and Governance Committee on Tuesday on a 4-3 vote. The proposal will head to the full council later this month for a decision on whether to put it up to a vote on the city’s November ballot.

Flynn, who’s been on council since 2015, said the city structured the council that way back in 1971 — the era of belted turtlenecks and flared jeans, when the country was still mired in the Vietnam War and Three Dog Night, Carole King and the Bee Gees topped the charts.

CdeBaca believes the original motive was to silence minorities in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. And adding two more districts to the council would mean more area-specific — and therefore equitable — representation for Denverites on the council, she said.

Council members who represent a district can take on citywide issues anyway, CdeBaca said, pointing to Kendra Black’s plastic bag fee or Stacie Gilmore’s long-term rental license law.

Plus, Flynn added, at-large council members are elected differently. The two candidates with the most votes in the races win. He said a former at-large councilwoman once recommended that he run for an at-large seat because he’d “only have to finish second to win.”

But the council’s existing at-large members — Robin Kniech and Debbie Ortega — , saying the move would mean less representation for Denverites because everyone who lives in Denver, no matter the district, has two other council people.

Ortega also said during Tuesday’s committee meeting that the shift could hurt fellow council members who might need an ally, particularly under Denver’s strong-mayor form of government.

“When you’re trying to get an issue funded, it����ap not as easy to get it done if it����ap just each district person trying to fight for those issues on their own,” Ortega said.

Either way the issue won’t affect Kniech or Ortega, both are term-limited and can’t run again.

More Denver metro news

• Boulder County argued Denver Water’s lawsuit over a proposal to expand the Gross Reservoir should be dropped.
• Aurora’s city council turned down a camping ban, but will have to vote again later this month.
• Two of Denver’s seven stretches of shared streets will once again open up to cars.
• New Denver Public Schools superintendent Alex Marrero discussed mask mandates, vaccine requirements and learning gaps.
• School mask guidelines garner criticisms from doctors who want them and parents who don’t. Check out the situation in your district here.

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The U.S. Senate voted unanimously to approve Salazar’s nomination. He is the first of President Joe Biden‘s ambassador nominees to be confirmed.

Salazar, 66, was secretary of the interior under President Barack Obama and served as a Democrat in the U.S. Senate for four years before that.

His confirmation comes at a time when the Biden administration is trying to deal with a large influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, a politically fraught issue that poses humanitarian and logistical challenges.

“Colorado is proud that one of our great statesmen will be representing the United States in Mexico,” Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement Wednesday.