John Hickenlooper won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, defeating Julie Gonzales and locking in the contest he will carry into the general election. The race was called at 7:36 p.m. Tuesday, with Hickenlooper ahead by nearly 15 percentage points.
That margin was enough to settle a race that had been cast as a test of whether a well-known incumbent could hold off a younger progressive challenge. Gonzales, 43, ran as an insurgent progressive and argued that go-along-to-get-along, poll-tested incrementalist politics had not made Coloradans' lives better. She said those politics had not delivered affordability, accountability or everyday, concrete policy change. Hickenlooper, 74, answered with a more familiar pitch: he had raised $10 million so far this cycle, while Gonzales' campaign brought in $869,000 through June 10.
The money gap helped define the contest, but it did not fully explain it. Hickenlooper refused to appear at forums and debates with Gonzales, yet he still won by a wide enough margin to show that her attack on his record did not break through with Democratic voters. He had the backing of a broader campaign operation and had already defeated Cory Gardner in 2020 after serving two terms as governor of Colorado and a little less than eight years as mayor of Denver.
The policy split was real. Gonzales backed Medicare for All, while Hickenlooper favored a public health insurance option that competes in the market. Hickenlooper also supported dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement, raising the minimum wage and capping prescription drug prices. Even so, Gonzales' argument that he was too timid and too accommodating to Donald Trump-era politics did not stop him from holding his edge.
Hickenlooper, who is finishing his first term in the U.S. Senate, is expected to face Mark Baisley in the general election. Baisley was unopposed for the Republican nomination, and the result leaves Democrats with their nominee while setting up a race that will now shift from an internal party fight to the fall campaign.
At his watch party in Denver on Tuesday evening, Hickenlooper told supporters that a couple of polls had made things look challenging for a while, but he never lost faith in them. For Gonzales, the outcome showed the limits of a sharply drawn progressive challenge against a familiar statewide figure. For Hickenlooper, it was a reminder that in Colorado, name recognition, money and a moderate image can still outweigh a sharper ideological challenge.
