Activists, Senate Hopefuls Kick Off Democrats' Bid to Beat Cory Gardner

A new generation of grassroots progressive activists powered Colorado Democrats to historic victories at the state level in 2018. Now they plan to help the party capture a U.S. Senate seat.

“This is the force that helped win the House of Representatives last cycle,” 2020 Democratic Senate candidate Mike Johnston told a crowd of activists from Indivisible and other groups on Sunday, June 9. “This is the force that will help flip the U.S. Senate in this cycle.”

Johnston and seven other candidates in an ever-widening primary field spoke at the campaign’s first candidate forum on Sunday at Denver’s Barnum Park, making their case to more than a hundred attendees for why they should be Democrats’ choice to unseat Republican incumbent Senator Cory Gardner in 2020. It’s fitting that the primary campaign’s unofficial starting point would be hosted by local Indivisible groups, which have reinvigorated Democratic politics since being formed in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election.

“It’s kind of like we’ve already been waging a campaign against Cory for the last two, three years,” says Dana Miller, an Indivisible Denver activist. “One of the things that’s so exciting about Indivisible is that because we have worked so hard and showed up in so many arenas, we have credibility.”

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