Democratic state Sen. Julie Gonzales launched a primary bid Monday to unseat U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper next year, calling herself an “insurgent progressive” in a race that will fuel the increasingly fiery debate in Colorado about how liberal the party should be.
“Go-along-to-get-along, poll-tested incrementalist politics have not made Coloradans’ lives better,” Gonzales said in an interview with The Colorado Sun ahead of her campaign launch. “Those politics have not delivered affordability, accountability or just, like, everyday, concrete policy change for Coloradans.”
Gonzales criticized Hickenlooper for voting for nearly half of President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees — including Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — calling those decisions “disqualifying.”
“I haven’t heard good rationale as to how voting for those nominees actually made Coloradans’ lives better,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales, a Denverite, is entering the final year of her two terms in the Colorado Senate. She has championed a host of progressive causes at the statehouse, from criminal justice reform to abortion rights to gun control. But her biggest passion is in the realm of immigration, working at an immigration law firm and as a Latino community organizer for many years before her election to the state legislature.
“Coloradans feel like they no longer have control over their everyday lives and some of the most basic decisions that we make about our lives — where we live, what types of jobs we can work, decisions about our health and our care and our families,” Gonzales told The Sun.
Beating Hickenlooper, Colorado’s former governor and a former mayor of Denver, won’t be easy — especially given the truncated campaign Gonzales will have to run. She’s entering the race about seven months before the primary, leaving her relatively little time to raise money and introduce herself to statewide voters as she faces one of the most established Democrats in Colorado political history.
“Republicans know their only hope of flipping Colorado hinges on dividing us,” Jess Cohen, a spokesperson for Hickenlooper’s campaign, said in a written statement. “Sen. Hickenlooper looks forward to a healthy and unifying primary.”
Hickenlooper is wrapping up his first term in the U.S. Senate. He ran for Congress in 2020 after a failed presidential bid — and after emphatically, and repeatedly, saying that he didn’t want to be a senator. But since arriving in Washington, D.C., he’s said he has come to love his job.
If he wins in 2026, Hickenlooper’s next term would end in early 2033, when he would be nearly 81 years old. Hickenlooper has said he won’t seek reelection in 2032 if he wins reelection next year.
Gonzales, at 42, is the only one of Hickenlooper’s Democratic primary challengers thus far with a history of political success.
Hickenlooper has faced, and easily beaten, primary challengers before, most notably in 2020 when he fended off former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff by a wide margin in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary.
In fact, Hickenlooper has never lost an election in Colorado.
Hickenlooper’s campaign has been preparing for Gonzales to enter the race. For instance, it redirected people seeking to visit julieforcolorado.co to Hickenlooper’s campaign website. Hickenlooper’s social media pages have also appeared to increasingly share progressive messaging.
“We’re the wealthiest country in the history of the world,” he posted on X recently. “Health care should be a right, not a privilege.”
But even if Gonzales is unsuccessful, she still poses a threat. Every dollar Hickenlooper has to spend in the primary is a dollar he won’t have available to spend in the general election.
The good news for Hickenlooper is that he has plenty of money. His campaign reported having more than $3.6 million in the bank to start October.
Additionally, Republicans don’t have a proven candidate ready to run for Hickenlooper’s seat. And the national GOP has signaled that Colorado won’t be a priority in 2026 as the party looks elsewhere to defend and expand its Senate majority.
Gonzales plans to remain in the legislature while she runs against Hickenlooper. She said her decision to run against Hickenlooper was not made overnight and that it was cemented by the results of the November elections this year, where progressive Democrats notched wins in local races across the state.
Gonzales conceded that some have tried to talk her out of primarying Hickenlooper, encouraging her instead to challenge U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat. She called those encouragements sexist given that DeGette is a woman and Hickenlooper is a man.
“I’ll stand behind my record, and Sen. Hickenlooper can stand behind his, and the voters will decide,” Gonzales said.
The Democratic primary for U.S. Senate will be held in late June.