Colorado Governor Race Narrows to Trump Fight Between Bennet and Weiser

The air in the Denver convention center is thick with the kind of tension usually reserved for championship boxing matches. Two men stand at podiums, not debating housing policy or healthcare costs, but circling each other like prizefighters waiting for the bell to ring. This isn’t a policy debate. It’s a brawl in slow motion.

Michael Bennet and Phil Weiser are tearing each other apart in the Democratic primary for governor, and the central question isn’t who has the better plan for the Western Slope’s energy grid. It’s who can claim the title of "Fightin’ Phil" or "Fightin’ Mike" with the most convincing rhetoric.

Here’s the thing though: the race has narrowed to a single, suffocating issue. Trump. Specifically, how each candidate positions themselves against the former president’s "many depredations."

When Bennet announced his run a little more than a year ago, the assumption was simple. He would face Attorney General Phil Weiser, and the winner would be the one who convinced voters they could better protect Colorado from Donald Trump. It seemed like a solid thesis. Trump is a colossus in all the wrong ways, dominating every political conversation. If you aren’t fighting Trump hard enough, you’ve basically disqualified yourself in the eyes of many voters.

Weiser has been making that charge against Bennet, arguing the senator was too accommodating. Bennet has fired back, pointing out that the current governor hasn’t exactly been a model of resistance. But what I didn’t know when I first wrote about this race was that fighting Trump would become the only issue that stuck.

Picture this: a voter in Delta driving down Highway 50. They hear ads about affordability crises. They hear about childcare shortages. They hear about teen mental health and immigration. But when they look at the TV spots, it’s all Ali vs. Frazier. Only nastier.

Bennet’s ads are funded largely by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s supporting PAC. Bennet says his own campaign ads will go up shortly. Weiser, meanwhile, has been a fundraising behemoth, setting record after record. Both men are spending millions to prove they are the tougher fighter, while the rest of the platform gathers dust.

It’s not surprising the race has turned nasty. Most intraparty races get nasty as they near the end, and the end is nearly upon us. Mail ballots are going out for the June 30 primary. Trump has failed to stop mail-in voting, so far anyway.

The focus of Weiser’s campaign is clear: Fightin’ Phil has brought 64 lawsuits against the second Trump administration. It’s a number that sounds impressive on a bumper sticker. But Bennet’s counter-attack is surgical. By the senator’s count, Weiser has only brought four of those lawsuits directly himself. The rest? He’s joined them. Bennet argues Weiser is misleading voters by claiming for himself the other 60 that he has merely joined.

Weiser says he has led or co-led in 16 of the lawsuits and that Bennet needs to get his numbers straight. And so on. It’s a dispute over semantics and credit, played out in forums and ad buys, while the rest of us wonder if we’re being sold a narrative or a solution.

The housing crisis is still there. Affordability is still crushing families in the valley. But voters seem to have lost faith that anyone can solve it. So they settle for the fighter. They settle for the one who looks like he’ll stand up to Trump, even if that means ignoring the details of how many lawsuits he actually filed versus how many he just signed his name to.

The polls show voters struggling to believe anyone is going to fix the affordability crisis. So why bother debating the specifics? Why argue about the nuance of a housing bill when you can argue about the volume of a lawsuit count?

The ads are flying. The mail ballots are printing. And the two men are still circling, waiting for the final bell.