Jefferson County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez, a Democrat, launched a bid Monday to become Colorado’s secretary of state.
Jefferson County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez. (Photo by Recap Photography, provided by Amanda Gonzalez)Gonzalez is the first major Democrat to jump into the 2026 contest that will determine who will be the state’s top election official. A handful of other prominent Democrats are expected to run for the job, too.
“Voting is the way we express hope,” Gonzalez said in a written statement announcing her candidacy. “The way we show love for our community. The way we make our voices heard. I promise to safeguard Coloradans’ access to the ballot box and to fight for secure elections that work for every Colorado voter.”
Gonzalez, a lawyer, was elected as Jefferson County’s clerk in 2022 and her term ends in early 2027. Before that, she served as director of Common Cause, the good-governance nonprofit where she worked on an overhaul of Colorado’s redistricting process.
If elected, Gonzalez plans to focus on advocating for legislation that would make it easier to vote in Colorado. As Jefferson County’s clerk, she pushed for a new state law that requires jails to offer in-person voting to inmates. Before she was in elected office, she was heavily involved in the legislation that requires Colorado to offer ballots in multiple languages.
Gonzalez, in a brief interview with The Sun, said she chose Jan. 6 to launch her campaign for a reason: She wants to prevent the kind of election misinformation that led to the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol four years ago in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss.
The riot happened as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. Congress today is certifying Trump’s 2024 victory.
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Jefferson County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez, a Democrat, is rumored to be interested in running to be Colorado secretary of state in 2026
Read more“I doubled down after that and ran for office in 2022 and have kept working to try and protect our democracy and to improve it,” she said.
The other Democrats eyeing a run for secretary of state in 2026 are Democratic state Sens. Steve Fenberg, Jeff Bridges and Jessie Danielson, as well as Gonzalez’s predecessor, former Jefferson County Clerk George Stern.
Gonzalez said her experience running elections and advocating for voting policy changes make her stand out in the field. She also pointed out how she would be the first Latina and first openly queer secretary of state in Colorado if elected. (She identifies as bisexual.)
Colorado’s current secretary of state, Democrat Jena Griswold, is term-limited. She is widely expected to run for governor in 2026. Griswold won reelection in 2022 by 13 percentage points.
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