The two candidates most likely to be Colorado’s next governor shared a stage for the first time at a union hall Saturday just north of Denver, addressing a crowd of Democrats eager to hear about the party’s path forward under President Donald Trump’s second administration.

U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, both Democrats, took questions from moderators and audience members in a forum hosted by the Colorado Young Democrats at the headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 68.

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Bennet began the event by acknowledging Renee Good, the Colorado-born woman who was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday, sparking protests around the state and nation. Weiser called Good’s killing a “painful reminder” of what can happen “when we fail to train officers for the work they need to do safely.”

In their first face-to-face appearance ahead of the June 30 primary for governor, both Democrats promised to stand up to Trump and make Colorado a more affordable place to live.

“We are living at a momentous time in Colorado history and American history,” Bennet said. “We are living at a time when we have some of the worst income inequality and wealth inequality that we’ve seen as a nation in a hundred years, and your generation is going to bear the cost of that, if we don’t act quickly to deal with it.”

“I’m here as the child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, liberated by U.S. soldiers, who made a decision to come to America and build a life for themselves, to get union jobs and opportunity,” Weiser said. “And that’s what I want for everyone here.”

Heavily favored

But the two candidates sparred repeatedly over their differences in approach throughout their 30 minutes onstage together. Weiser criticized Bennet’s votes in favor of several Trump Cabinet nominees and a super PAC supporting Bennet’s campaign that has received donations from billionaires and dark money groups.

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“Colorado and America want fighters — people who meet the moment,” said Weiser, who touted the 50 lawsuits his office has filed against the Trump administration since last January. “And I’ve shown as attorney general what that looks like.”

Bennet twice objected to being “lectured” by Weiser about resisting Trump, dismissing the attorney general’s raft of legal actions against the administration — many of which are brought jointly by the attorneys general of numerous Democratic-led states — as “signing on to other people’s lawsuits.”

“My opponent spends a lot of time talking about — fight, fight, fight, lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit,” Bennet said. “But what we really need in this nation, in addition to fighting Trump, is a vision for what the future is going to look like.”

Weiser, a former law professor, is serving his second term as attorney general after he was first elected in 2018.

Bennet is a former Denver Public Schools superintendent who was appointed to the Senate by Governor Bill Ritter in 2009. He ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020 before winning reelection to a third full term in 2022.

The winner of the primary between Weiser and Bennet will be heavily favored to win the general election in November. Coloradans have only elected one Republican governor in the last 50 years. Democrats have won every statewide election held in the last eight years by an average of more than 10 percentage points, and are widely expected to gain ground in a favorable midterm election year.

Democratic Governor Jared Polis is term-limited.