March 24, 2026 04:01 PM UTC

Unpacking Indivisible's Endorsement of Julie Gonzales

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Ernest Luning reports for the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog formerly known as the Colorado Statesman, today national progressive organization Indivisible announced its endorsement of state Sen. Julie Gonzales in her primary challenge against incumbent Sen. John Hickenlooper:

State Sen. Julie Gonzales’ bid to challenge U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper in Colorado’s Democratic primary got a boost Tuesday from Indivisible when the national arm of the progressive grassroots group endorsed the Denver lawmaker.

The national group’s endorsement comes less than a week before Gonzales is expected to land a top-line designation on the June 30 primary ballot Saturday at the Colorado Democratic Party’s nominating assembly in Pueblo, on the same day local Indivisible groups plan to sponsor more than a dozen anti-Trump “No Kings” rallies across the state.

Hickenlooper, a former two-term governor and former two-term mayor of Denver, is seeking his second term in the Senate in a state rated by nonpartisan election analysts as solidly Democratic in this year’s midterms.

As we wrote a few months ago, the Colorado U.S. Senate primary has been on the periphery of a larger struggle playing out as an energized far left flank of the party seeks to challenge long-time Democratic incumbents who aren’t fighting back against the Trump administration with the vigor, performative or actual, that some militant Democratic activists desire.

The biggest problem here being that Hickenlooper, though very much not a hard lefty by brand, doesn’t cleanly fit the profile of a backsliding Democrat who needs replacement:

The Gonzales endorsement is only the fifth made by the national group in a Democratic primary so far this cycle. It’s part of an aggressive program, Indivisible says, that it adopted after a handful of Senate Democrats voted to end the federal government shutdown last fall without achieving any of the goals party leaders had insisted on at the outset.

“All endorsed candidates represent a break with failed, status quo Democratic Party leadership and commit to driving toward a true opposition party in 2026 and beyond,” Indivisible said in a release.

But as Luning correctly points out:

Like his delegation colleague, Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, Hickenlooper remained opposed to reopening the government under the deal Republicans struck with some of their fellow Democrats. [Pols emphasis]

There is no question that the cave-in by a handful of Senate Democrats to end the government shutdown standoff just days after voters across the nation powerfully backed Democrats in their fight for affordable healthcare in the off-year election was seriously damaging to Democratic morale. We’ve never made any attempt to defend that decision to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and the abandonment of a winning position has left Democrats with less negotiating leverage during the present standoff over funding the Department of Homeland Security.

But Sen. Hickenlooper wasn’t part of that cave-in. As much as Hickenlooper’s detractors want to lump him in with the eight Senators who voted with Republicans to end last fall’s shutdown, he wasn’t one of them. And Hickenlooper wasn’t part of the similar cave-in earlier in 2025 that had a similar negative effect on Democratic morale.

Because Hickenlooper qualified for the ballot via petition, Gonzales’ supporters have dominated the Democratic caucuses and are expected to award her the top line on the primary ballot at the state assembly in Pueblo this weekend. From there, Gonzales faces an uphill battle against a dominant and deeply popular incumbent. What we’ll be watching to see is whether Gonzales is able to translate endorsements from progressive organizations into hard financial support that can rival Hickenlooper’s massive war chest.

This endorsement means that Hickenlooper will be challenged to re-affirm his progressive credentials on the primary campaign trail. Allies like Sen. Elizabeth Warren should spend lots of time in our state this spring. And it would behoove Hickenlooper to put all the distance he can between himself and Trump’s Legion of Doom Cabinet, especially our hometown horror, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.

At the end of the day, Sen. Hickenlooper has demonstrated the ability to appeal to the center-left coalition of independent plurality voters who have decided statewide elections in Colorado for the last 20 years. Thanks to Colorado’s semi-open primaries voted into law in 2016, that broader electorate also decides Democratic primaries. This all bodes very well for Hickenlooper’s chances, as do the results of the last several Democratic U.S. Senate primaries in Colorado.

Working against that conventional wisdom is angst that, along with hope, springs eternal.