It is not a great moment to be a Democrat with a record of working in Washington.
Last week, Representatives Adriano Espaillat and Dan Goldman of New York were tossed out by Democratic voters in favor of primary challengers running to their left.
Tomorrow in Colorado, three Democrats who have been in elected office for nearly a collective three-quarters of a century face primary opponents who argue that they have been in politics too long. The challengers say the veterans of Washington are not suited to oppose President Trump at a moment many liberals view as an existential test for the party and the country.
It is also another place that will test Democratic voters’ positions on Israel and whether to pull back or end American military support to the country. Those issues roiled New York’s elections, are playing a major role in the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan and are certain to color the party’s 2028 presidential contest.
Two of the left-wing challengers in Colorado — Melat Kiros, a lawyer running for the House, and Julie Gonzales, a state senator running for the Senate — are democratic socialists vying to be the next progressives to rattle the party and steer its foreign policy away from Israel.
Colorado is now deep blue, so statewide Democratic primary winners will be heavy favorites in November. The Republican front-runner for governor is Victor Marx, a pastor who claims that when he was 7 years old, his stepfather forced him to kill a man.
Here’s a look at the three Colorado primaries that will be the latest test of progressive energy.
A fierce House challenge in Denver
Colorado’s most vulnerable Democrat appears to be Representative Diana DeGette, who is seeking her 16th term in Congress. DeGette, 68, is a true-blue progressive who is running a TV ad in which she is praised by none other than Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. (Ocasio-Cortez has not endorsed anyone in the race.)
DeGette’s problem is Kiros, 29, an immigrant who has framed her campaign around her support for the Palestinian cause. In a speech this year at a party nominating caucus in Denver, Kiros said she would fight for a world in which “our taxes fund universal health care and not bombs.” Kiros is endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
DeGette has in the past called herself “a strong supporter of Israel.” In December, she said she opposed selling “offensive weapons” to Israel that could be used against Palestinians, a position in line with many progressives but not as far as Kiros would go.
DeGette is being propped up by late outside spending, the origins of which — as is often the case now — can be difficult to pinpoint. A new pro-DeGette super PAC called Pro-Choice Majority Action has spent more than $1 million, with money that came from another PAC that received funds from two-other pro-Israel PACs. One of those PACs has supported DeGette and no other candidates.
Kiros’s supporters have sought to turn the incumbent’s mysterious support work into a liability late in the primary.
At Denver’s Pride Parade this weekend, pro-Kiros activists tried to present DeGette with a giant “dark money” novelty check for $1.65 million. A man in a DeGette T-shirt shoved them out of her way.
A governor’s race all about Trump
Senator Michael Bennet is not technically an incumbent, since he is running for governor, but he might as well be, the way this primary has played out.
Bennet, who ran a short-lived campaign for president in 2020, entered the governor’s race last year as the prohibitive favorite. He had endorsements from congressional colleagues, the current and former Denver mayors and other ambitious Colorado Democrats. It surely was not lost on them that Bennet, if he became governor, would have the power to appoint his replacement in the Senate.
But over the course of months, Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, positioned himself to Bennet’s left and painted him as a creature of Washington. In one TV ad from a PAC supporting Weiser, the narrator recounted the Trump cabinet nominees whom Bennet had voted to confirm and declared him “too soft on Trump, too long in Washington.”
Never mind that Weiser is no political newcomer: He is a two-term attorney general who before that was the dean of the University of Colorado law school. He has framed the governor’s race as a contest between himself as a Washington outsider and Bennet as the insider who has been in the Senate since 2009.
A Senate primary where Hickenlooper hopes to hang on
Senator John Hickenlooper has been a fixture of Colorado politics since 2003, when he was first elected as mayor of Denver. Since then, he has served as a governor and senator and has also run for president — without, he says, ever running a negative ad.
Hickenlooper appears to be the most likely of the three tenured Colorado Democrats to survive. His challenger is Gonzales, a state senator from Denver who has not won high-profile endorsements the way that Kiros has. Hickenlooper’s financial advantage — he has spent 13 times as much on his campaign as Gonzales has — has buttressed his standing among progressives.
But the Senate primary is still being watched for the margin. If Gonzales can get close enough to put a scare into Hickenlooper despite being relatively unknown, it would send a clear message about how Democrats are feeling about their incumbents heading into the midterms.
A House primary where A.I. is an issue
The Democratic primary for the right to face Representative Gabe Evans, a Republican seen as vulnerable, is between two state legislators: Shannon Bird, a moderate who would align herself with the centrist Blue Dogs, and Manny Rutinel, a progressive former animal rights activist.
Rutinel is considered the favorite. He has raised more money and is Dominican American in a district that is nearly 40 percent Latino. Bird has argued that her politics would play better in the general election in a district that narrowly voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and then Trump in 2024.
One wrinkle to this race is that Rutinel helped write Colorado’s law regulating artificial intelligence. A pro-A.I. regulation super PAC is running ads backing Rutinel that feature Pope Leo XIV saying that “artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.”
In One Graphic
One of this year’s top Senate races appears neck and neck, according to a New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll.
In Maine, the progressive oysterman Graham Platner is narrowly leading the Republican incumbent, Senator Susan Collins, among likely voters as the sprint to fall begins, the poll found.
quote of the day
“We’ve got to figure out a way so it doesn’t blow the party apart.”
That was Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. As debates over Israel and Iran fracture the Democratic and Republican parties this midterm season, Bennett described a Democratic “freakout” over whether the rise of left-wing candidates would repel Jewish and moderate voters.
My colleagues Patricia Mazzei and Anton Troianovski have more on these powerful foreign policy issues, which are reshaping the battle over Congress this year and could affect the presidential election in 2028.
ONE LAST THING
New photos of the Trump passports just dropped
Fresh renderings of the limited-edition passports adorned with Trump’s face have made it to the public eye. The Patriot Passport, as the White House calls the documents meant to honor America’s 250th anniversary, is emblazoned with the president’s face and signature in gold ink. Trump’s visage floats atop the Declaration of Independence.
While supplies last, 40,000 U.S. citizens will be able to snag one of the passports at the Washington Passport Agency, starting on July 6.
Bayliss Wagner, Theodore Schleifer and Taylor Robinson contributed reporting.
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