Colorado state Rep. Mike Weissman, left, who was seeking the Democratic nomination for a state Senate seat, talks with Casey Henderson during canvassing in Aurora on Thursday, June 20, 2024. Weissman won his race against Idris Keith on Tuesday as a further left candidate despite some progressives’ losses.
Deep Badhesha, a left-wing activist who ties to several of the campaigns, said a main takeaway for progressives was that many of their stances are popular. But the messenger matters. Five takeaways from Colorado’s primaries as voters give Lauren Boebert new life, pick a Denver DA and more It’s also true that the deep-pocketed groups opposing them won a nearly clean sweep Tuesday night: One Main Street, the center of an opaque spending web, trumpeted that it won 10 of the 11 primaries in which it spent money. Colorado Labor Action, an AFL-CIO group that backed Hernández, Lindstrom and others, won three and lost three.
In those races, the candidate who successfully argued that they represented the mainstream of Democratic voters was successful, officials involved with spending on both sides argued. Generally, they said, the better candidate won — pointing at Carter in Aurora and Zokaie in Fort Collins as examples. The situation was different for Epps, who had backed progressive policy positions including an assault-weapons purchase ban, abortion rights bills and substance-use reform — but also had publicly castigated many of her colleagues, legislative leadership and members of the media. Epps very publicly derailed a November special session,