For all those who wonder why the U.S. Congress is so pathetic and feckless, consider the case of one hopeful but probably doomed candidate: Julie Gonzales.
The 42-year-old state senator from Denver last week announced her audacious plan to challenge U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, 73, in the Democratic primary in June.
“Go-along-to-get-along, poll-tested incrementalist politics have not made Coloradans’ lives better,” Gonzales told The Colorado Sun. “Those politics have not delivered affordability, accountability or just, like, everyday concrete policy change for Coloradans.”
She criticized the senator for voting to confirm several of Trump’s cabinet nominees and said that Coloradans increasingly feel they “no longer have control over their everyday lives.”
She pointed to her record.
Gonzales, a longtime Latino organizer, has championed legislation to prevent local governments from sharing personal data with ICE and to protect immigrants from arrest when they go to hospitals, schools and places of worship.
She is an advocate for abortion rights, gun safety legislation and criminal justice reform. She supports universal health care and efforts to make housing more affordable.
She’s unapologetically progressive and points to her work with the working class, not the vulgar billionaire class.
Before she even announced her plans to run, Hickenlooper’s campaign machine mobilized to crush her like a gnat.
Political consultant Michael Whitehorn, who is supporting Gonzales’ candidacy, told the Denver Post he was threatened by Democratic Party goon Chris Rork who said he would be blackballed from any future campaign work if he continued to advise the insurgent candidate.
Rork said Gonzales should abandon her Senate bid and patronizingly suggested she run for mayor of Denver instead. He didn’t exactly tell her to shut up and be a good girl, but he didn’t have to. The message was clear.
At least that’s what anybody with two X chromosomes heard.
Rork told Whitehorn that if he persuaded Gonzales to quit, the Democratic Party would guarantee the consultant work in the coming election cycle.
It was mafia-style transactional politics at its most sinister.
And you thought only Trump used threats and extortion to wrest support from potential rivals.
But wait. There’s more.
In what has to be one of the most transparently adolescent tactics for countering a political challenge, the Hickenlooper campaign snagged the julieforcolorado.co URL to redirect any quick-fingered potential Gonzales supporters to a fundraising page for the incumbent’s war chest.
(In case you’re looking, the real Gonzales site is julieforcolorado.com.)
But c’mon, what is this, a race for senior class president?
As of October, Hickenlooper had $3.6 million at hand for his campaign. His name recognition is through the roof. And he’s never lost an election.
And still he’s dinking around with URLs like a dweeb from “South Park.”
It’s the kind of crass behavior that makes voters believe there’s no point in voting. The cynical among us insist Democrats, Republicans — they’re all self-interested buffoons, trolling for campaign contributions from fat cats who then command all their attention.
It’s hard to argue with them.
So, Sen. Hickenlooper, how about respecting the voters for a change. Instead of trying to manipulate the process, engage honestly in it.
If the votes to confirm Trump’s cavalcade of incompetent cabinet nominees were justifiable, explain yourself.
If you’ve represented Coloradans and raised their concerns effectively on the Senate floor, let’s hear about it.
If you have a record of accomplishment in this, your first, term when Democrats held the majority in the Senate most of the time, run on it.
If that’s not possible, at least stop sandbagging the Gonzales campaign. Seriously, it’s not a good look. Political insiders give her ice-cube-in-hell chances of success, after all.
Her late start is an overwhelming disadvantage for fundraising and generating name recognition. And no woman has been elected to the U.S. Senate from Colorado — ever — so there’s the persistent misogyny that guarantees an overwhelming advantage.
But regardless of whether lucky Hick’s political fairy dust ensures he can’t lose the election, even he can’t get away with dismissing what’s happening across the country. It’s obvious.
As Chuck Schumer’s popularity tanks, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political currency is growing. Zohran Mamdani shocked the New York political-financial establishment with a landslide victory in the mayor’s race.
In Colorado, progressive candidates prevailed in last month’s elections for the Denver Board of Education, Aurora City Council and even the Douglas County School Board.
Win or lose, if candidates like Gonzales succeed in holding the arrogant rich guys in the U.S. Senate with their super PACs, their pollsters, their wheeling-dealing consultants and their raging sense of entitlement accountable for their performance, they deserve our respect.
The status quo is not an option. We deserve better.
Diane Carman is a Denver communications consultant.
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