← Election Series · All statewide races

Our verdict

LiberalMind endorses Michael Allen

Election Day is November 3. The seat is open: Phil Weiser is term-limited — and is his party's nominee for governor. The Democratic nominee is Jena Griswold, the sitting Secretary of State — note the offices carefully, because her record is an elections record, not a prosecutor's: she is the elections chief running to become the state's top lawyer. The Republican nominee is Michael Allen, the elected District Attorney for the 4th Judicial District, who prosecuted the Club Q mass shooter to a life sentence. A partisan analysis site's estimate — labeled as such, not polling — puts Griswold at 60% to win; it also calls her "the statewide Democrat most at risk of losing." No independent head-to-head polling was located. LiberalMind endorses Michael Allen. Read the records, and see why.

The race and the money

Griswold won a four-way Democratic primary on June 30, 2026; Allen is the Republican nominee; only these two candidates are on the ballot for this office. The money, printed as a named compilation with its period: per Pagosa Daily Post (Oct. 8, 2026), reporting Colorado TRACER filings for Q3 2026 (since July 1), Griswold raised $587,708 in the quarter — the strongest quarter of any non-gubernatorial statewide candidate — and Allen raised $230,913, the most of any Republican statewide nominee and, in the source's words, "still less than half" of Griswold's quarter. Cumulative totals and cash on hand for this race were not in the reporting pulled, and we print none. Structural context: no Republican has been elected to statewide office in Colorado since 2016 (Colorado Public Radio).

Jena Griswold (Democratic) — the Secretary of State

Record in service: Secretary of State since 2019, term-limited in that office. As SOS she discovered Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters's election-equipment breach, removed Peters from direct election oversight, and supported the Republican district attorney's prosecution; Peters was convicted of multiple felonies and sentenced to nine years. In 2026, Gov. Jared Polis commuted Peters's sentence — cutting it roughly in half; she was paroled in June 2026 — and Griswold publicly criticized the commutation, arguing "the courts and a jury should determine punishment."

The counter-record, at its exact sourced strength: Griswold's own SOS office posted voting-system passwords online in 2024, and, per TSS Colorado's summary of the coverage, her office "leaked election-equipment passwords and voters' personal information on more than one occasion." A partisan video account puts the 2024 leak at equipment in 62 of 64 counties — that county count is single-partisan-source and unverified in this research, and we do not print it as fact. The same coverage reports she "has faced accusations of bullying by former employees" — accusations, printed as accusations. She was also the named defendant in the Colorado case seeking to bar Donald Trump from the primary ballot under the 14th Amendment; the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9–0 for Trump. A December fundraising email's claim that she "argued" the case at the Supreme Court is disputed — the AG's office wrote the briefs and the solicitor general argued; that dispute is sourced to a partisan Substack and labeled as such, while the 9–0 outcome itself is public record.

Experience, attacked and answered: Opponents note she has spent little of her career as a practicing attorney — law degree in 2011, a brief Washington firm stint, then politics — and has never prosecuted a case. Her answer, on the record: the AG manages a large office, and she is "the only candidate who has managed an executive office of the state."

Program: Continue Weiser's federal-litigation posture — his office has filed or joined 87 lawsuits against the Trump administration, and Griswold pledges to continue them — plus water, consumer protection and AI oversight.

Pros: Eight years running a statewide executive office, and a genuine law-and-order entry in it: she found the Peters breach, stripped Peters's oversight, backed the prosecution, and then broke publicly with her own party's governor when he cut the sentence — "the courts and a jury should determine punishment." That last item is an in-service break with her party's governor on a justice question, and we credit it as such.

Cons: The office she ran posted voting-system passwords online — the single most job-relevant failure available to an elections chief now asking to be the state's chief lawyer, and, per the coverage, not the only leak. Her litigation program is continuation of an 87-suit posture against the federal administration. And she has never prosecuted a case.

The flaw, plainly: Proven in her own service: the 2024 password posting by the office she ran. The bullying items remain accusations and are priced as accusations; the county-count figure is unverified and unpriced. The proven item needs no help from either.

A note on enforcement framing, per our standing rule: LiberalMind backs ICE the agency and its job; enforcement is never a candidate's stain. No immigration-enforcement record for either candidate was sourced in this research, and none is invented here.

Michael Allen (Republican) — the district attorney

Record in service: District Attorney for the 4th Judicial District (El Paso and Teller counties), first elected in 2020 and re-elected in 2024. Before that: eight years in the U.S. Navy as an Aviation Electronics Technician, and service as a consumer-protection prosecutor in the Kansas Attorney General's office. His office prosecuted the Club Q mass shooter to a life sentence.

Program and posture: He says he would review all 87 of Weiser's federal cases, keep those benefiting Colorado, and dismiss those he considers politically motivated. He posted pro-Trump social-media posts in 2020; asked in 2026, he said he was "severely disappointed" in the president's actions since returning to office and would "not hesitate to challenge the federal government" over unlawful actions.

Pros: The only actual prosecutor in the race, elected twice to run a DA's office, with a consumer-protection AG posting before it and a mass-shooter's life sentence on his office's record. His federal-litigation test — keep what benefits Colorado, dismiss what is political — is a case-by-case standard stated before he holds the power, not after.

Cons: His "severely disappointed" turn toward the president he supported in 2020 is a consistency item voters can weigh — a documented shift in stated posture across six years, printed as such. He has not managed a statewide office, and his quarter's fundraising trailed his opponent's by more than half.

The flaw, plainly: No flaw proven in service was sourced against him in this research. The 2020-to-2026 posture shift is consistency material, priced as biography, not as an in-service failure.

OUR CALL

LiberalMind endorses Michael Allen.

Strip both files to their in-service cores. Griswold's core is an elections office that posted voting-system passwords online while she ran it — a proven failure in the custody of sensitive systems — attached to a promise to continue an 87-lawsuit program against the federal administration, from a candidate who has never prosecuted a case. We credit her real items in full: the Peters discovery and prosecution support, and her public break with Governor Polis over the commutation; that break is noted, and it is one item against a record whose center of gravity never moved. Allen's core is prosecution itself: a twice-elected DA, a prior AG-office consumer-protection posting, military service, and the Club Q life sentence. Attorney general is a prosecutor's office. We endorse the prosecutor, and we print Griswold's best facts above rather than pretend they are not there — they do not carry the office she is asking for.

For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Winner: Jena Griswold (Democratic) — called by the Associated Press. This result was appended on November 4, 2026 (results wave 1); the original article above is unchanged, exactly as published before Election Day.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

← Back to the Election Series