DENVER—Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) has swept aside a progressive challenger in Colorado’s June 30 Democratic primary and will seek a second six-year Senate term in November against a Republican state lawmaker who did not face a primary to earn the GOP’s November berth.
Hickenlooper, a former two-term Colorado governor, had garnered around 322,000 votes for 57.3 percent of the tally when he was declared the winner at 9:36 p.m. ET by The Associated Press in his primary race against liberal state Sen. Julie Gonzales.
He will face aerospace engineer Mark Baisley, a state legislator since 2018, in November’s general election as a prohibitive favorite. A Republican hasn’t won a statewide election in Colorado since 2016.
Hickenlooper is one of 33 U.S. Senate incumbents with their seats on the 2026 ballot. Of those 33 seats, 20 are held by Republicans, who hold a tenuous 53–47 majority in the chamber.
The Democratic U.S. Senate primary was among several marquee preliminaries on the June 30 ballot in Colorado, the 30th state to hold its primaries during the 2026 midterms cycle. Following a July pause, five states stage Aug. 4 primaries: Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington.
Colorado voters also cast June 30 ballots in partisan battles for governor, eight U.S. House seats, 65 state Assembly berths, 21 state Senate slots, and a host of local government elected positions.
Hickenlooper, who debated former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff on TV three times to win the Democrats’ 2020 U.S. Senate primary, refused to engage with Gonzales, who has served in the state Senate for eight years.
Gonzales, 43, born on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, supports Medicare-for-all, would ban fracking on federal lands, and is calling for the disbanding of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She maintained Colorado needs a younger, more progressive leadership than what the moderate Hickenlooper, 74, can provide.
Hickenlooper enjoyed a significant fundraising advantage over Gonzales, but polls showed the race would be tighter than initially projected.
According to their June 10 Federal Elections Commission filings, Hickenlooper’s campaign raised $9.88 million, spent less than $87,000, and had $2.96 million in the bank, while Gonzales’s collected $870,000 in contributions, spent more than $640,000, and had $226,000 cash in hand. Baisley’s campaign, meanwhile, only shows $77,000 in campaign contributions.
