Melat Kiros — who’s also a lawyer and a Ph.D student when she isn’t behind the counter at the Whittier Cafe — is picking up momentum in her first-ever political campaign. She’s running against longtime U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the Democratic primary for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District in Denver.

DeGette, who was sworn into office the year Kiros was born, has .

But Kiros, a Democratic socialist, rose to prominence after she demolished DeGette in the Democrats’ Denver County assembly last month. And while political observers, including Kiros herself, say the assembly process isn’t actually representative of who will vote in the June primary, the win still marked a surprising development in a race that many considered to be predetermined.

“This has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the fact that Denver Democrats want a fighter — somebody who is actually committed to transformative change,” Kiros said in an interview this week with The Denver Post.

Kiros didn’t keep DeGette off the ballot, but she gave her a scare. Kiros won 646 votes, or the support of 63% of those present at the county assembly. DeGette won 336, or 32% of the votes.

It was the first time DeGette had lost a county assembly vote since she initially won her seat in Congress in the 1996 election.

Two weeks after the county assembly, DeGette, 68, narrowly won her place on the primary ballot at the 1st Congressional District party assembly, receiving 33% support — just above the 30% threshold to make the ballot. A third primary candidate, University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, , but her voter signatures are still under review by the state.

Denver-based state Rep. Javier Mabrey, who endorsed Kiros, said he saw her as part of a larger movement within the Democratic Party: voters who don’t want to see the same types of candidates elected.

Like New York City’s new Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Kiros is a more progressive Democrat than those who currently make up the majority of the party’s members in Congress, he said.

“I think there’s an energy for politics that says, ‘Our problems are more complicated than Donald Trump alone. We’ve got to confront the conditions that led to Donald Trump,” Mabrey said of the Republican president. “I think Melat has tapped into that.”

Kiros will still have a long way to go if she hopes to pull off a win of the June 30 primary, however. The assembly gathered only a tiny sliver of the 416,000 people eligible to vote in the June Democratic primary — 230,000 unaffiliated voters and 186,000 registered Democrats, as of March 1, according to the secretary of state’s office.

A spokesperson for DeGette’s campaign said the congresswoman was proud to have made the ballot through the assembly process.

“This is ultimately only a small first step with a small group of people,” Jennie Peek-Dunstone wrote in an email. “Now, we are talking with hundreds of thousands of Democrats and unaffiliated voters across the District. Diana has deep support across Denver because she’s always fought for us. She’ll keep championing our progressive values by standing up to Trump, fighting for universal health care, and defending our democracy — just as she always has.”

Denver is a Democratic stronghold, meaning that whoever wins the primary is all but guaranteed to win the general election. In 2024, DeGette defeated her Republican challenger with 77% of the vote.

Kiros’ background

A child of immigrants, Kiros was born in Ethiopia but moved to Denver with her family as a baby. She left the city to attend Washington College in Maryland and went on to attend law school at the University of Notre Dame. After passing the bar exam, she began work as a securities regulation attorney at , one of the biggest law firms in the country.

Kiros said that two years in, firm leaders fired her for a by Hamas in Israel, which responded by launching a war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In the post, she questioned Israel’s legitimacy as a state and disavowed about the rise in antisemitism.

“This letter rightfully rebukes the anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and bigotry of all kinds that has spiked in recent weeks, but then goes on (to my confusion) to cite ‘calls for the elimination of the Israeli state’ as anti-Semitism,” she wrote. “… To conflate such bigotry with the geo-political question of Israel’s legitimacy is one of the greatest travesties in this conflict.”

More recently, Kiros has been criticized for sharing last month with a video that said Democrats “fellate Israel” and “suck (expletive).” The video was promoting an online rally for progressive candidates and speakers.

Kiros said she didn’t write that phrasing and doesn’t endorse that language.

After her firing from the law firm, Kiros says she decided to get more involved in politics. Now, she’s pursuing a doctorate in public policy with a focus on “democracy reform” at .

In 2024, she volunteered as the communications director for Democrat John Padora’s campaign in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District — one of the most conservative seats in the state and now represented by U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert.

‘Our party isn’t fighting back’

Kiros’ online ads , calling out not only DeGette but also former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. One shows large Xs over photos of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former President Joe Biden while Kiros says: “We hear politicians say over and over that we need bold leadership, progress and change. We’ve heard this for years. Decades. But they never deliver.”

“Our party isn’t fighting back like they should,” she goes on to say.

Kiros is endorsed by the Denver chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Justice Democrats. She says that if elected, she sees herself aligning with members of Congress like U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

She would use her position, she said, to “call out the Democrats who are not actually fighting for our values” and pressure them to change the votes she disagrees with. That could include civil protests and threatening quorum.

Her top three policy priorities would be passing “Medicare for All” and universal child care and creating a publicly financed election system similar to the one that Denver uses in city elections, which includes public matching for smaller-dollar donations.

DeGette supporters emphasize that the congresswoman is also a co-sponsor of Medicare for All legislation. Angie Anderson, a Platt Park resident and mother of 2 young children, said she’s heard DeGette talk about it.

“I consider myself pretty progressive, and I think that she represents me very well,” said Anderson, who said she has voted for DeGette in every election since she’s lived in Denver.

Ocasio-Cortez even gave DeGette a shout-out for her support of the policy .

“She is one of the most powerful people in Congress on health care,” Ocasio-Cortez said to the crowd of 30,000 people. “And Diana DeGette is a co-sponsor of Medicare for All. She believes in the guaranteed right to health care for every American. Thank you for electing her.”

Anderson said she thinks Kiros and DeGette are actually pretty similar politically.

“I just think the real difference is that Rep. DeGette has many years of experience and is actually a very skilled policymaker and legislator,” she said. “I take issue with the idea that youth and inexperience is fundamentally required to effect change.”

What did assembly win mean?

After Kiros’ assembly win, a wide swath of political observers jumped in to say that while the event’s outcome was surprising, it wasn’t particularly meaningful for the upcoming primary.

Doug Friednash, a former Denver city attorney and chief of staff to then-Gov. John Hickenlooper, wrote in a Post opinion piece recently that assemblies exclude the vast majority of voters, resulting in a “tiny, highly motivated slice of activists” to determine results.

“More and more extreme candidates in both parties have effectively used these caucuses to fly under the radar and effectively organized a small cadre of activists, like the Democratic Socialists, to show up at the caucus, leading to stunning results that make most voters shake their heads in extreme disbelief,” wrote Friednash, now a partner with Denver-based law firm Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber and Schreck.

At the very least, the win showed that Kiros’ team found a way to out-organize DeGette’s team. But it remains to be seen if that will continue through the primary election.

Kiros and her supporters agree that her assembly win doesn’t mean she’s a shoo-in to win the primary.

“I don’t think that folks who talk about the assembly not being reflective of the general electorate are wrong,” Kiros said. But she noted it was unusual for an incumbent to lose an assembly vote.

“DeGette has been challenged before,” Kiros said. “This is a different kind of campaign.”

Mabrey said finding ways to raise money for her campaign will be one of the keys for Kiros in the remaining months before the primary.

“Melat����ap going to need an injection of grassroots campaign cash to keep up,” he said.

Through the end of 2025, she had raised about $204,000 and spent nearly $138,000. DeGette had raised about $729,000 and spent $507,000 through then, while James had raised about $179,000 and spent $86,600.

Despite having lower cash reserves than DeGette, Kiros is getting recognized more often when in public, she said. During a recent hourlong interview with The Post at a Capitol Hill coffee shop, two people stopped by the table to introduce themselves and voice their support for her.

“I’m totally voting for you, dude,” one said. “Your campaign is (expletive) awesome.”

Between now and June, Kiros plans to knock on doors, call voters, work with businesses and use digital advertising to get her message out. Nearly 200 people volunteered at a recent weekend canvassing event, she said.

“The thing that we need to do to win,” she said, “is to give people enough faith that getting involved will make a difference.”

Staff writer Seth Klamann contributed to this story.

Dwayne Romero on Tuesday announced his candidacy for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District — which covers western and southern Colorado, including much of the Western Slope, the San Luis Valley and Pueblo. , a businessman from Old Snowmass, .

Both men aim to unseat freshman Republican U.S. Rep. , a Grand Junction attorney elected to the seat in 2024. In the Republican primary, Hurd faces Hope Scheppelman, a former Colorado Republican Party vice chair who’s now endorsed by President Donald Trump.

Romero, who now lives in Snowmass Village, moved to Colorado in 1997 after serving in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer, during which he was deployed in the Persian Gulf War. He lived in Carbondale for six years before moving to Aspen in 2003. He runs a real estate company in the Roaring Fork Valley called the Romero Group.

He previously served on the Aspen School District’s board, the Aspen City Council, and the boards of the Aspen Fire Protection District and the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority. He also spent a year as the state’s chief economic development director under then-Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Trump pulls back endorsement of U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd after he bucked president on tariff vote

He emphasized his military service in his announcement as well as his upbringing as the child of a single mom who relied on food stamps to make ends meet.

Kelloff's campaign points to his family's deep roots in western Colorado, which stretch back four generations. Kelloff co-founded Armada Skis and spent the majority of his career working for several large investment firms.

Both Kelloff and Romero pledged to push back against President Donald Trump's administration, including opposing budget cuts to social services.

"I'm running for Congress because Jeff Hurd and Donald Trump have taken too much," Romero .

In 2024, Hurd 50.8% to 45.8%. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report , which before Hurd was represented by U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, as "likely Republican" in this year's midterm election.

Two years later, that margin landed at a still-slender 2,449 votes. Advantage: Republican.

Political watchers expect another close call in November, given the politically competitive makeup of the four-year-old district that stretches from Denver’s northern suburbs to Greeley and Larimer County. But who will end up victorious in the 8th District, which , is where people are laying their bets.

“It’s in the top 10 pickup opportunities for Democrats,” said Erin Covey, the U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report. “Democrats only need to flip three seats to take control of the House. This is going to be on the front lines of the Republican defense.”

Three Democratic challengers have emerged from a field that just a few months ago was twice as large. They are state Rep. Manny Rutinel, attorney and former state Rep. Shannon Bird, and Evan Munsing, a former U.S. Marine and an investment firm adviser.

They must battle it out amongst themselves in the June 30 primary before one of them goes on to face freshman Rep. Gabe Evans in the Nov. 3 general election.

On paper, things look tough for Evans, a former state lawmaker himself.

Historically, midterm elections have gone poorly for the party that occupies the White House. Democratic victories in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey last November — and — may be a harbinger of things to come.

“It should be a good cycle for Democrats,” Covey said.

Add to that mix a polarizing president with , an uncertain economy and chaotic recent scenes from Minneapolis, where two protesters were fatally shot by federal agents last month during an immigration crackdown.

The main strategy for the Democratic field in the 8th District is clear: Make it about Trump.

“Gabe Evans has a track record of doing what Donald Trump wants, even if it hurts our district,” Bird said. “We have a current representative who is rolling over for this administration.”

Rutinel said Evans is “just interested in going along.”

“Trump says jump, and Gabe Evans says how high,” he said.

Evans said that’s not true. He points to a letter he and other GOP members of Congress sent to President Trump in October from Argentina. He has also advocated a different approach from the administration to dealing with migrants who are in the country illegally.

Democratic hopefuls in the race would be wise to restrain their most progressive impulses, said Robert Pruehs, a political science professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Elections in Colorado’s 8th District have very much turned on candidates successfully wooing independents, the district’s largest voting bloc.

“You need to have a broad coalition in this kind of district,” he said. “The unaffiliated voters in the general election are going to demand some moderation.”

Rutinel, who has lived in Commerce City for five years, says the race is “personal for me.” He was brought up by a single mother in a house that was foreclosed on during the Great Recession. At 31, he is the youngest candidate in the race. He sees a piece of himself in the district’s working-class voters.

Of the Democratic contenders, Bird, 56, has had by far the longest tenure — 25 years — in what became the 8th District, Colorado’s newest seat in Congress, when it was drawn following the 2020 census. A former Westminster city councilwoman and a state lawmaker since 2019 — she resigned last month to focus fully on her congressional campaign — Bird was also brought up by a single mom. Tips from her grandmother’s casino dealer job in Reno, Nevada, sustained the family, she said.

As the only Democratic candidate with military experience, Munsing said he would be the best choice to take on Evans, a former Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot who served in the Middle East. Munsing, 37, was deployed to Afghanistan in 2013.

“If we want to go toe-to-toe with him, we need a veteran and a businessman,” said Munsing, who has lived in the district for about a year.

Covey, with the Cook Political Report, said the frontrunner position in the Democratic race is as yet unfilled. Rutinel , but there’s still a long way to go until the end of June, she said.

“I would say this race is pretty wide open,” Covey said.

Immigration at the crux

Immigration policy will likely be one of the more salient issues in the 8th Congressional District race.

The district has the highest proportion of Latinos among Colorado’s eight congressional districts, with about 40% of the population identifying as such when it was created. Weld County is home to numerous large farms and food production businesses that hire immigrant workers — including the U.S. headquarters of JBS, part of the world’s largest meatpacking company.

“The real issue is, how is Gabe Evans going to respond to ICE activity over the next eight months?” Pruehs said. “The onus is on the Evans campaign to distance him from the Trump administration.”

Evans, 39, of Fort Lupton, believes the priority should be on the apprehension of those who are in the country illegally and have committed crimes. As Trump’s mass-deportation efforts ramped up in his first few months back in the White House, Evans joined five members of the Congressional Hispanic Conference in sending a letter to ICE leadership expressing concern “that your limited resources may be stretched to pursue individuals that do not constitute an immediate threat to public safety.”

In an interview with The Denver Post last week, Evans said he has been “very consistent on immigration.”

“Secure the border, go after the bad guys and have some sort of pathway forward for the people who aren’t causing problems and are integrated into our economy,” he said.

But that’s not what’s happening, said Rutinel, who has called for impeaching Kristi Noem, Trump’s Homeland Security secretary. Her department oversees ICE.

“People voted for order, security and safety — instead they’re getting chaos and danger,” he said. “What’s happening under the Trump administration should terrify every American.”

Munsing says Evans hasn’t been nearly loud enough in highlighting the abuses committed by ICE agents and other officers involved in immigration crackdowns, including the “deeply troubling” deaths of protesters Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month. He said ICE agents are poorly trained and have .

“We need to get rid of warrantless arrests. Racial profiling and indiscriminate arrests based on how people look and their accent has been very troubling to people here,” Munsing said. “We should fire all these people who were hired since Trump got into office and bring the (ICE) budget back to where it was in 2024.”

Evans, a former police officer, said he opposes ICE agents entering homes without a search warrant.

“I was a cop for 10 years — you got to have a search warrant to go into a house,” he said. “So I disagree with the ICE memo that says they don’t need a search warrant to go into houses.”

On the first anniversary of the start of Trump’s second term on Jan. 20, the Department of Homeland Security that 70% of those arrested by ICE were “convicted criminals or have criminal charges.” During Trump’s first year back, the agency said, ICE arrested more than 43,000 people who posed a potential national security risk and apprehended more than 1,400 known or suspected terrorists. It has made 7,000 gang arrests, according to the administration.

Earlier this month, CBS News it obtained revealed that less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in Trump’s first year had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses. Other watchdog groups and news organizations that have scrutinized ICE data have questioned the administration’s characterizations of those arrested, too.

But Evans’ said the CBS report was “100% muddying the waters,” given that offenses like distribution of child pornography, human smuggling, drug dealing, burglary and drunken driving fall into the nonviolent category.

Bird said the idea that ICE can’t adhere to the law when apprehending criminals who are in the country illegally is a “false choice.”

“ICE needs to be held to the exact same standards as every other law enforcement agency,” she said.

While immigration enforcement may be a difficult issue for Evans, the congressman might gain political traction by turning to the nation’s plummeting crime rate.

According to a January report from the , homicides were down 21% in 2025 compared to President Joe Biden’s final year in office, while there were 9% fewer aggravated assaults, 22% fewer gun assaults and 2% fewer domestic violence incidents.

Evans’ Democratic opponents say that improvement has little to do with Trump.

“Nice job for trying to take credit for something that happened at the state level,” Bird said, citing her support for bills in the state house that clamped down on auto and catalytic converter theft.

Evans scoffed at the former state lawmaker’s assertion.

“Gee, what happened across the country starting in 2025?” he said. “It’s not because under Joe Biden, blue cities forgot how to police — and then under Trump, blue cities all of a sudden started policing again. It’s because of federal law enforcement going after the known bad guys, the professional bad guys, the cartels, the drug dealers, the organized criminals.”

Prices, tariffs also in play

Perceptions of the economy’s health will undoubtedly take center stage this fall, Covey said, and Evans’ fate — and that of the party in power — will be tied to its performance.

The inflation rate has fallen sharply from its peak of 9% in 2022, and it more than some economists expected. But what matters is how voters feel about their financial situations come fall.

“The economy more broadly is going to be the driving issue,” she said. “A lot of people are dissatisfied with the way Trump is handling the economy as opposed to his first term.”

Affordability, Bird said, is the top concern she hears from voters while campaigning. That includes prices at the grocery store, but more notably a projected doubling of health insurance premiums for the 320,000 Coloradans who had been receiving now-expired enhanced pandemic-era subsidies on the individual marketplace.

Meanwhile, Trump’s tariff policies have been at the heart of the cost-of-living problem, she said.

“For our ranchers and farmers, there’s a fear of retaliatory tariffs and trade wars,” Bird said.

In a momentous decision Friday, the Supreme Court struck down the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs the president had levied on nearly every other country last spring. The majority found that the Constitution “very clearly” gives Congress the power to impose taxes, which include tariffs.

Rutinel, who worked as an economist for the Army Corps of Engineers, said the residents of the 8th District have been paying the price for Trump’s import taxes.

“You don’t have to be a trained economist to see how tariffs are essentially a natural sales tax on all consumers and that they will bear the brunt of the costs,” Rutinel said. “What the folks in the district are telling me is they feel they’ve been lied to.”

This month, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation calculated that Trump’s tariffs of $1,000 per American household in 2025, an amount projected to increase to $1,300 this year.

While inflation has been tamed from the runaway prices under the previous administration, Munsing said the impacts of the White House’s tariffs are still working their way through the economy. Businesses, along with farmers and ranchers in the 8th District, are having trouble planning the year out because of the uncertainty, he said.

“They’re getting to the point where they have to pass these costs along,” Munsing said. “They survived COVID, they survived supply chain disruptions — and they are hearing from customers who are worried about prices going up.”

For Evans, Covey thinks he had a “potentially missed opportunity to separate himself from the president.” He chose not to join fellow Colorado Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, who — along with five GOP House members — that Trump has used as the basis for imposing tariffs on Canada.

Evans said that while tariffs are challenging for the agriculture and ranching sectors, lopsided trade arrangements that hurt American producers are no better.

“So yeah, long term, big picture: I’m totally a free trade guy, but free trade has to be fair trade,” he said.

June 30 primary comes first

Before a Democrat can face off against Evans this November, they have to face off against each other in June.

Rutinel, who was first to jump into the race at the beginning of 2025, has raised the most money of the three — with $2.5 million taken in as of the end of 2025. Bird has raised $1.2 million and Munsing has collected nearly $500,000.

The race has gelled in recent months as other candidates have dropped out, including Colorado Treasurer Dave Young; Amie Baca-Oehlert, the former president of the state’s largest teachers union; and former U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo, the first person to hold the seat.

Evans has one challenge from his own party. But that candidate, Adam Derito, has raised less than $30,000 to Evans’ more than $3 million haul.

Among the Democrats, Munsing fired the first big campaign salvo this month.

He accused Bird of being too soft on ICE by voting against a 2025 bill in the state House. Senate Bill 276 attempted to further curtail federal immigration authorities’ access to public spaces in Colorado — from government buildings to libraries to public schools — and limited local governments’ ability to share information with those authorities.

“Shannon Bird continues to bury her head in the sand and hope that voters are not going to pay attention to the vote that even perplexed her colleagues in the state legislature,” his campaign wrote in a Feb. 12 news release.

Last week, Rutinel weighed in on SB-276 too, saying he co-sponsored the law “to protect our immigrant neighbors from ICE brutality.” He said he and his Democratic colleagues were “severely disappointed that Shannon Bird was the only House Democrat to vote against it.”

Bird said her “no” vote on SB-276 happened during a committee hearing on the bill. She thought the bill needed improvement before getting her support, she said. When the bill came up for a vote on the full floor of the House a few weeks later, she was absent due to a family medical emergency.

“It was one of the few votes I missed, and I regret that,” Bird said.

She said she would have voted yes on the final go-around.

With Rutinel having been elected to the state House only once and Munsing having no experience in public office, Bird said she is the most viable candidate to defeat Evans in November.

“I’m the only one in this race to win a contested election and to do it five times,” she said.

Pruehs, the political science professor, said the Democratic candidates can stake out positions on the left up until the primary election. Then, in a district so evenly divided along partisan lines, they will need to artfully and nimbly steer to the political middle as November draws closer.

“There is a need to make sure your message isn’t so far afield that you can’t attract more moderate voters,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen unveiled a federal bill that would require social media companies to respond to warrants and subpoenas related to “credible threats” within three days, versus the 35 days it can take now.

She said response delays were a “devastating and glaring policy failure” that contributed to the shooting in Evergreen in September.

State Rep. Tammy Story, an Evergreen Democrat, said she planned to introduce similar legislation in the Colorado legislature in coming weeks, echoing another bill filed last month. A bill that included a three-day timeline for social media companies to comply with state warrants was vetoed by Gov. Jared Polis last year, though his cited concerns were with other provisions in the legislation.

The FBI had been investigating threats made by Desmond Holly, the 16-year-old shooter in Evergreen, for two months before he shot two students and himself in September, officials said.

That included filing an initial search warrant on July 5 looking for Holly’s IP address, a numeric designation that identifies a location on the internet; a second search warrant seeking additional information; and finally, a third search warrant seeking Holly’s home address, Jefferson County Sheriff Reggie Marinelli said.

Hours after the shooting happened, the third warrant came back with the address. She didn’t provide a more specific time frame.

“Because of the time it took to get those search warrants back, the shooting had already occurred,” Marinelli said.

“Tragically, that identity wasn’t revealed until after the shooting, nearly two months later — preventing our law enforcement from intervening and being able to stop this from ever happening,” Pettersen, a Democrat whose congressional district includes Evergreen, said Monday.

Before the attack, the FBI had found that Desmond was “discussing the planning of a mass shooting with threats non-specific in nature.” But agents could not identify the account holder for the social media accounts, so there was no probable cause for arrest or other federal action before the attack, the FBI said in a statement shortly after the shooting.

The shooter appeared to be involved in violent, nihilistic online networks, according to extremism experts. His social media accounts exhibited a mix of white supremacy, antisemitism, and a fascination with violence and mass shootings, including the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

On Sept. 10, Desmond shot two students at Evergreen High and then died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The two other students survived.

Pettersen said she was still working to win bipartisan support for the federal measure, which is one of three she said she planned to introduce. The U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate are each controlled by Republicans. She will also need to overcome any objections from deep-pocketed social media companies.

“Unfortunately, there’s been significant pushback from social media companies in general for any accountability,” Pettersen said, though she added that she had been working with TikTok.

But if the measure were law, she was confident “that they would absolutely work to meet the moment” and work with law enforcement on warrants to identify possible threats.

In addition to the response deadline bill, Pettersen also introduced legislation that would allow the Department of Justice to issue grants so local entities could buy firearm storage and distribute it to community members. Her third bill would create a federal grant to provide training and assistance to implement extreme risk protection orders, also called red-flag orders, and develop standardized training nationwide.

At the state level, Democrats control each chamber of the legislature. The bill last year that included the deadline for complying with warrants, , passed with sweeping bipartisan support, though backers couldn’t rally enough support to override Polis’ veto.

Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said Monday that Polis believes the search warrants bill that was already filed — — takes a good approach to ensure “social media companies are responsive to warrants” so that law enforcement can investigate online crime.

SB-11, which has a bipartisan set of sponsors and is set for its first hearing Wednesday, would also give a 72-hour window for online platforms, including social media companies, to comply with search warrants. It would require them to maintain a staffed hotline for law enforcement to contact.

But Maruyama cautioned that the governor would want any bill, including Story’s still-pending legislation, to meet certain constraints.

“The governor wants to protect internet freedom while making Coloradans safer, but would have serious concerns about any bills that negatively impact freedom, innovation and privacy,” Maruyama wrote in an email. “He is not comfortable with the government forcing social media companies to act as law enforcement.”

Story said she’d had an “initial discussion” with the governor’s office about this year’s upcoming bill and that she believed it is in “a better place” than last year’s vetoed bill.

“We are choosing to prioritize the safety of our students and teachers over the administrative convenience of billion-dollar corporations,” Story said. “We owe the people of Evergreen nothing less.”

Colorado features one of the closest congressional races in the nation — the 8th Congressional District, which covers a stretch of suburbs and farmland north of Denver. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper has attracted a few intraparty challengers to his reelection bid, though he handily outraised them in the final quarter of 2025.

In Colorado’s ruby red 4th Congressional District, incumbent Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert trailed badly in the fundraising game in the last quarter of last year, though the Democrats trying to send her packing have a tough road ahead given the district’s political makeup.

Here’s a closer look at where donors are lining up in Colorado’s most competitive congressional contests, along with a glance at the U.S. Senate race. The three districts represented by Democratic incumbent Congress members , and are largely without political intrigue so far in this election cycle.

The latest numbers from the Federal Election Commission cover the period from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025.

Evans’ reelection race

The 8th Congressional District is the race the political chattering classes often point to as one that could decide the balance of power in the U.S. House, given its ultra-competitive nature. Cook Political Report , with Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans hoping to retain power for a second term.

He beat former Rep. Yadira Caraveo , a Democrat, in 2024 by fewer than 3,000 votes.

Evans managed to outraise the competition in the fourth quarter of 2025, but not significantly. The former state lawmaker and police officer pulled down nearly $487,000 and now has around $2.55 million of cash on hand. His closest competitor, Democratic state Rep. Manny Rutinel, raised nearly $419,000 and has around $1.2 million in the bank.

Rutinel has actually outraised Evans for the entire election cycle — $2.5 million to $1.85 million, according to FEC data. He also spent the most in the field last quarter — $230,000.

Former Democratic state Rep. Shannon Bird, who resigned from the Colorado General Assembly in December to put full focus on the 8th District race, collected $375,000 from donors in the fourth quarter, adding to the nearly $1 million she had raised before Oct. 1.

Marine combat veteran and finance professional Evan Munsing pulled in $225,000 during the quarter. The Democrat has more than $213,000 in his war chest.

Boebert outraised by Democrats

Republican firebrand Boebert, the incumbent in the sprawling 4th District on the Eastern Plains, had an anemic showing in the most recent filing with the FEC. Collecting less than $150,000 in the final quarter of 2025, she trailed Democratic challenger Eileen Laubacher by a massive margin.

Laubacher, a Navy veteran and rear admiral, had the biggest haul of the quarter of any candidate running for Congress in Colorado. She pulled down just over $2 million, bringing her contribution total in the election cycle to nearly $6.5 million. She sits on a pile of more than $2.5 million in cash compared to Boebert’s $219,000.

Laubacher also spent a hefty $1.5 million on her election effort last quarter.

Trisha Calvarese, the Democratic nominee who lost to Boebert in 2024, had an impressive haul — just over $1 million in the fourth quarter — but was only at about half of what Laubacher took in. Still, Calvarese has more than twice Boebert’s cash on hand, with $518,000 in the bank.

Democratic contenders John Padora, who has run for the 4th District before, and Jenna Preston each collected around $20,000 last quarter. Preston, a clinical psychologist, has nearly $53,000 in cash on hand to Padora’s less than $9,000.

Crank’s strong money challenge

Another firmly Republican district, Colorado’s 5th will give Democrat Jessica Killin a run for her money as she tries to oust Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank. A former U.S. Army captain and chief of staff to former second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Killin jumped into the race last summer.

Her fundraising prowess has been impressive, and she collected around $611,000 in the fourth quarter. That brings her total for the cycle to more than $1.6 million. Crank pulled in just over $280,000 for the quarter. Killin holds a cash-on-hand advantage of $1.1 million to Crank’s more than $968,000.

But Crank won the seat, which encompasses Colorado Springs, by 14 percentage points over his Democratic opponent in 2024.

The race has attracted several other Democratic challengers, including unsuccessful 2024 contender Joseph Reagan, but none have come close to matching Killin’s haul.

Quieter money race in CD3 this time

Gone are the days of eye-popping money in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, when Boebert was being challenged by Democrat Adam Frisch before she switched districts to the 4th in the waning days of 2023.

Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman who raised more than $12 million in the 2024 election cycle, lost to Republican Jeff Hurd in the right-leaning district that primarily covers the western stretch of the state.

Hurd’s Democratic challenger this cycle, San Luis Valley native Alex Kelloff, raised $65,000 in the final quarter of 2025 — compared to Hurd’s $240,000 haul. Kelloff has $434,000 cash on hand while Hurd’s pile has grown to more than $1.57 million.

But Hurd, a Grand Junction attorney who is in his first term in Congress, must first fend off a candidate to his right in the June 30 primary — former Colorado Republican Vice Chairwoman Hope Scheppelman.

However, the difference in fundraising is stark. Scheppelman raised around $43,000 last quarter, according to FEC numbers, and has less than a tenth of Hurd’s war chest.

James, Kiros take on DeGette

Democrat Diana DeGette is Colorado’s longest-serving member of Congress — by a long shot. But she has several candidates in her party to fend off in June before standing for reelection in November in what will be an attempt at her 16th term in office in the 1st Congressional District.

Most notable is Wanda James, a University of Colorado regent and marijuana entrepreneur, who raised more than $78,000 in 2025’s final quarter. That total brings her cash on hand to $93,000. Attorney Melat Kiros, a native of Ethiopia, nearly matched James’ take at $77,500 but has less in the bank — with cash on hand of $64,000.

Meanwhile, DeGette pulled in nearly $249,000 last quarter and sits on a pile of $535,000 in cash on hand.

No Republicans have raised any money in the Denver-centered race so far.

U.S. Senate primary shapes up

In Colorado’s lone Senate race, Hickenlooper was the king of fundraising last quarter. He reported collecting more than $936,000 from donors. The former Denver mayor and Colorado governor, who is in his first term in the Senate, has a war chest of nearly $3.9 million.

He is being challenged on the left by state Sen. Julie Gonzales, who jumped into the race in December. In less than a month, the Democrat managed to pull in nearly $180,000 and has nearly $161,000 cash on hand.

University of Colorado political science professor Karen Breslin is also challenging Hickenlooper in the June primary. The Democrat raised just over $58,000 last quarter and has just $7,000 in the bank.

Several Republicans are also in the race. Janak Joshi, a former state lawmaker who unsuccessfully ran for the 8th Congressional District in 2024, collected the most in the fourth quarter, with just over $60,000, and had nearly $350,000 cash on hand.

George Markert, a U.S. Marine for more than 30 years, took in $55,000 last quarter and sits on nearly $73,000 in cash, according to FEC filings.

State Sen. Mark Baisley of Woodland Park switched in early January — after the end of the reporting period — to the U.S. Senate primary from the crowded GOP primary in the Colorado governor’s race.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the former Colorado U.S. senator and congressman who served first as a Democrat and then as a Republican, died of natural causes Dec. 30 at his ranch in Ignacio, Colorado at age 92.

A member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Campbell grew up poor and spent part of his childhood in a California orphanage, yet he led a life of excelling. He became a judo champion in 1963, winning a gold medal at the Pan-American Games; served in the Air Force for four years where he earned his GED; went on to get degrees in physical education and fine arts at San Jose State University; and honed skills as a silversmith and jeweler. His Western belt buckles were prized.

He entered politics in 1982, first serving as a state legislator. He was next elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving rural Western Colorado from 1987 to 1993, then was elected to two terms in the U.S. Senate.

When Senator Campbell switched from being a registered Democrat to a Republican on March 3, 1995, “the switch was shocking and traumatic to his staff,” said Ken Lane, his longtime chief of staff. He quit soon after Campbell’s announcement.

Lane said there was lots of speculation about why Campbell became a Republican. A major irritant for Campbell, Lane recalled, was what the senator called the “elitist” attitude of Democratic leaders in Denver and Boulder, who found him too moderate. Campbell’s main support always came from the union stronghold of Pueblo, in southern Colorado.

It was known that Republican Senator and majority leader Bob Dole courted Campbell to make the switch, and once he did, Campbell was appointed chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Campbell relished the job, advocating for Tribal rights and spurring the creation of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historical Site in Colorado, where two of his ancestors had been killed by U.S. soldiers.

Dea Jacobson, who worked in his Grand Junction, Colorado office when he was a Democrat, called him a force of nature. “He could do anything he put his mind to,” she said. He was a licensed pilot, and he also earned a commercial driver’s license, which he used in 2000 and 2012 to drive huge Colorado Christmas trees to the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Though his party changed, Jacobson said, Campbell’s politics remained the same: “He was pro-choice, pro-union and, despite criticism from some environmentalists, he backed key legislation protecting Colorado’s public lands.” Over the years, Campbell became known as someone who’d horse trade to get the bills he cared about passed.

One of his major victories was passage of the Colorado Wilderness Act of 1993, which designated or expanded 19 wilderness areas. The landmark legislation had been 13 years in the making. Campbell also worked on the creation of Great Sand Dunes National Park and helped make the Black Canyon National Monument a national park.

Campbell had a major impact on Colorado’s Four Corners region. Working with the Tribes he changed the Animas–La Plata water project to protect the free-flowing Animas River, despite criticism from environmentalists over the pumping of water uphill into a dry basin. The deal fulfilled long-overdue water rights held by the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Tribes.

I’d called Campbell last October when I was writing a column about changes coming for the reservoir named after him — Lake Nighthorse — authorized by Congress in 1968 as part of the Animas-La Plata Project. I’d been told Campbell was in poor health, but he answered the phone, later telling me, “I’m suffering from old persons’ problems so I’m not following water wars these days. But don’t forget what Mark Twain said about water: ‘Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.’”

Jacobson wasn’t surprised that Nighthorse was affable in our conversation. “He loved newspaper people,” she recalled, and when they were on the road in rural Colorado, “he liked to stop in at a town’s weekly paper.” Though he didn’t drink, he might also visit a local bar or café to start a conversation with locals. Before long, she said, “he was holding court.”

Lane’s recollection was equally warm. “Ben was funny, irreverent and endearing, and he connected with people of all backgrounds.”

A private memorial service will be held by his family at their ranch in Ignacio, Colorado. He is survived by his wife Linda, his children Colin and Shanan, and four grandchildren.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

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Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a former senator and U.S. representative of Colorado, died at 92 from natural causes. He was known for his passionate advocacy of Native American issues and his defense of children’s rights, organized labor and fiscal conservatism.

He served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, starting in 1987. He then served two terms in the Senate, from 1993 to 2005.

Among his accomplishments was helping sponsor legislation to upgrade the Great Sand Dunes National Monument in southern Colorado to a national park.

“From being an Olympic athlete, to jewelry designer, horse trainer and then public servant at the state and federal level, Ben Nighthorse Campbell lived many different lives in his own unique way and always found a way to give back and serve,” Polis said in a . “He will be missed here in Colorado and across the country, and his contributions leave a lasting legacy to our state and nation.”

Campbell was the only Native American in the United States Senate when he served, and also served the United States with distinction in the US Air Force, Polis said.

Polis ordered flags to be lowered from sunrise to sunset on Sunday to honor Campbell.

Former US Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, of Colorado, dies at 92

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Crow’s office posted a on social media late Friday night and thanked law enforcement for their quick response.

“Threats and violence are unacceptable and should be able to be condemned by all Americans, regardless of your political beliefs,” the statement said.

Crow was one of six Democratic lawmakers targeted by President Donald Trump on social media this week, who accused them of sedition “punishable by death” after the group called on U.S. military members to uphold the Constitution and defy “illegal orders” in a video posted online.

Threats against Crow and his office “exploded” after Trump’s comments,

Five of the six lawmakers who appeared in the video have received bomb threats since Trump’s comments,

The Aurora Police Department responded to 911 call about the threat just before 1 p.m. Friday, spokesperson Gabby Easterwood said.

Aurora police K9s responded to Crow’s office and did not find anything, she said.

Trump’s comments drew condemnation from Democratic lawmakers this week, who described them as a

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said he did not believe Trump was calling for violence but merely “defining a crime.”

The state’s four Republican representatives , which passed 222-209 and went to President Donald Trump for his signature. Colorado’s four Democratic representatives voted no, largely citing the uncertainty for enhanced health care tax credits that are due to expire at the end of the year — and which won’t be resolved by the Senate deal that broke the logjam earlier this week.

How is the Colorado congressional delegation voting?

On Monday night, Colorado's two U.S. senators also voted no on the funding bill, declining to join in that chamber. The Senate vote was 60-40.

"Trump and Republicans have created an affordability crisis for working Americans and refuse to come to the table to fix it," Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat from Aurora, said in a statement Wednesday night. "I cannot support a bill that will make a bad situation worse and hand the American people a raw deal."

Rep. Gabe Evans, a Republican from Fort Lupton, countered that "for 42 days, Democrats have held the American people hostage" by repeatedly rejecting clean funding bills.

"Today House Republicans are ending the Schumer shutdown, reopening our government and fully funding three full-year appropriations bills that put America first," he said, putting blame on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

In a statement, Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, said that while the funding bill would "bring relief to families, businesses and communities across Colorado," he urged Congress "to renew the enhanced premium tax credits, to avoid health insurance premiums more than doubling in cost, and help Coloradans afford health care."

How they voted

Here’s how the state’s U.S. House delegation voted on Wednesday evening, by congressional district:

• Diana DeGette (1), D-Denver: No
• Joe Neguse (2), D-Lafayette: No
• Jeff Hurd (3), R-Grand Junction: Yes
• Lauren Boebert (4), R-Windsor: Yes
• Jeff Crank (5), R-Colorado Springs: Yes
• Jason Crow (6), D-Aurora: No
• Brittany Pettersen (7), D-Lakewood: No
• Gabe Evans (8), R-Fort Lupton: Yes

Here's how Colorado's senators voted on the bill Monday:

• Michael Bennet (D): No
• John Hickenlooper (D): No

Public affairs editor Jon Murray and the Associated Press contributed to this story.

By the convention’s end, seven of those defendants had been elected to the party’s board, including as its chair and vice chair, with promises to “clean up” the party’s image, stop “repelling people” and — perhaps most consequentially for the state and country — to go back to running Libertarian candidates across the state.

“We won,” longtime party member Caryn Ann Harlos summarized in an email shortly after the convention ended last weekend.

The overhaul was the result of more than 12 months of growing conflict within Colorado’s largest minor political party, which has about 37,000 registered voters and has long focused on personal and economic liberties over government regulation.

The civil war included lawsuits, competing factions claiming control and prior leadership attempting to place independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the ballot and snub their own candidate. The party also moved closer to the , including trying to clear the field to ease U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans’ path in one of the closest congressional races in the country.

The acrimony grew so pronounced that a judge had to oversee a binding agreement between the party’s warring factions just to ensure that the Oct. 18 convention followed its own rules and didn’t devolve into a “(expletive)-show,” as Denver District Judge Sarah B. Wallace put it.

“The last couple of years, the party took a different direction, and Saturday, the delegates voted me in as chair,” Keith Laube, who comfortably beat one of the party’s prior leaders to become chair, said in an interview last week.

He said party membership, , has dropped, “And I’m proposing a new direction for the party, which consists of more getting back to our Libertarian principles and growing the party.”

The new direction is, in a sense, the old direction. Laube, who previously ran the , and his allies promised to run Libertarian candidates, reverse the decline in their voting base and repudiate the caustic public image embraced by the party’s now-former leaders. He said the party should support LGBTQ Americans, an apparent nod to the prior chair’s use of anti-gay slurs against a sarcastic Facebook critic. At the convention, supporters of the Laube faction “make LPCO Libertarian again.”

In America’s political duopoly, smaller parties often represent distinct voices and ideologies that neverthless have little chance in most contests above the local level. In a bid to exercise direct political power, the Colorado Libertarian Party’s prior leadership had sought to ally with outsiders — like RFK Jr. — at the cost of closer adherence to their own party’s candidates and principles.

The cost of that shift — and the party’s aggressive public posture — was too high for some, who challenged the RFK Jr. deal in court. This year, Laube and allied Libertarians held their own meeting in August, elected a new board and told state election officials that they were now in charge, according to communications from the .

The actual leadership then sued in an attempt to ensure the dissidents didn’t try to exercise leadership authority, arguing they could create confusion at the convention. That prompted Wallace’s apt description and her direction that the two sides come up with an agreement to ensure the convention went smoothly — or else.

The convention did go smoothly, and Laube’s faction nearly swept the contests.

Their victory may have echoes outside of the party: It likely means an end to negotiations with the GOP, for instance, which could influence a major congressional race and control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Under the party’s previous leadership, Libertarian candidates agreed not to run in close races, so long as the GOP candidate signed a “liberty pledge” backing Libertarian principles. The agreement was seemingly borne out of the 8th Congressional District, a seat with razor-thin margins that’s become a chronic national battleground.

In 2022, a Democrat beat her Republican opponent by 1,600 votes, while the Libertarian in the race earned nearly 9,300 votes. In 2024, Republican challenger Evans signed the liberty pledge, and his Libertarian opponent dropped out. Evans then beat Democratic incumbent Yadira Caraveo by roughly 2,500 votes. Evans’ victory represented a rare marquee Republican win in Colorado, and it helped his party secure a narrow majority in the U.S. House.

It’s impossible to say definitively if the Libertarian-GOP deal spurred Evans’ win. Laube argued that candidate-less Libertarians wouldn’t immediately flock to a Republican, and some may support a Democrat instead. But Evans took the possibility seriously enough to sign the pledge and hold a press conference with his one-time Libertarian opponent to announce their armistice.

Looking to 2026, Laube said he didn’t support extending the agreement with the GOP and that Libertarian candidates should run wherever they can. At the convention, the party’s newly elected campaign director, Joe Johnson, touted his previous efforts to run Libertarians up and down the ballot.

“To me, it defeats the purpose of the party if we’re going to tell our candidates to back down to another party,” Laube said. “That doesn’t make much sense. Then we’re not a political party.”

Brita Horn, who was elected to lead the state GOP in the spring after a period of internal upheaval that bore striking similarities to the Libertarians’ struggle, said in a statement that she hasn’t had a chance to meet with Laube and discuss the two parties’ prior agreements.

It’s unclear whether the shift will have an impact: Laube’s election is still just days old, and no Libertarian has filed to compete in CD-8. But if one does, the change could affect one of the closest races in the United States and, as a consequence, could influence who controls Congress in 2027, said Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at .

Republicans have a bare majority in the 435-seat House, Saunders said, and the 8th Congressional District is one of the most competitive contests in the country.

“If Libertarian candidates start running in competitive districts, of which there’s one in Colorado, and if it����ap a scenario like what happened in 2022 — yes, the third party could very well be the spoiler,” he said.

For the party’s now-former leadership, partnering with the GOP meant a degree of tangible — and elusive — relevance. James Wiley, a member of the party’s prior leadership who unsuccessfully challenged Laube for chair, said the division came down to a “difference of philosophy.”

On the other end of Laube’s faction is Wiley and the now-former party chair, Hannah Goodman, who wanted the party to have and wield some measure of tangible power, even if it meant dropping their own party’s presidential candidate and providing explicit support for Republicans. (Goodman now says she intends to join the Democratic Party.)

“What I’m hoping is that — and what I expect of the future of the Libertarian Party — we recognize that the party, ballot access, ballot line, our spoiler capacity — we use them either consciously or subconsciously, for the good or harm of liberty,” Wiley said. “We can become self-aware as a party.”

For the party’s new leadership, running Libertarian candidates and providing an outlet for their voters’ political perspective isn’t spoiling. It’s what they should do as a party with distinct members and distinct views, they argue.

“We are Libertarians,” Joshua Robertson told fellow party members at the convention. “We are not Democrats. We are definitely not Republicans.”