The rule of law and the courtroom are the tools the Democratic candidates for Colorado attorney general intend to use to fight what they see as unlawful policies of the Trump Administration.
During a statewide Democratic candidate forum at Society Hall on Saturday, three of the four Democrats running for the top law enforcement office, despite running against one another, were unified in their disapproval of the administration.
Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, Towards Justice Executive Director David Seligman and former Department of Justice litigator Hetal Doshi spoke at the event. Not in attendance was Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswald. The four candidates face each other in the primary election on June 30.
Current attorney general Phil Weiser, who is term-limited, is running for governor.
The candidates in Alamosa also spoke on Saturday of their commitment to maintaining a coalition of state attorneys general who consistently work for their states and for the communities within. They spoke on their experiences in state and federal courtrooms and their intention to lead with the entire state of Colorado in mind.
The three candidates voiced their commitment to anti-trust enforcement in Colorado. Weiser has a track record of anti-trust litigation as attorney general, including blocking the Kroger-Albertsons grocery merger.
“The rule of law is the best defense we have,” said Michael Dougherty. “It’s the bulwark against the Trump Administration.”
Dougherty is currently the Boulder County district attorney. He’s from New York and got his start in the Manhattan DA’s office before moving to Colorado to work in the attorney general’s office. He’s tried some large cases in Boulder, including the 2021 King Soopers mass shooting.
Dougherty’s office has assisted the Valley’s district attorney’s office on a number of occasions, he said, including the Adre Baroz killings that occurred in 2020.
12th Judicial District Anne Kelly was an attorney in his office before she moved to the San Luis Valley. Kelly, a Republican, has publicly endorsed Dougherty in his campaign.
“We’re facing the greatest threat to democracy I’ve seen in my lifetime,” he told the audience.
When asked about the actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he said, “ICE is not above the law.”
After taking office in 2018, Dougherty said he started an immigrant protection program. He said his office and Boulder police officers don’t ask questions about a person’s immigration status. “If we found out” someone was undocumented, he said, “we never reported it to the federal government.”
His office also provides Know Your Rights training sessions and offers guidance for interactions with ICE.
“It’s about showing up and standing up and fighting for local communities,” he said.
Candidate David Seligman said, “We’re going to need to go on the offensive.”
Seligman is the executive director for the legal nonprofit Towards Justice and has been an advocate for consumer rights throughout his career.
His focus was on the power of supporting the working class and holding large corporations and billionaires accountable. “It’s the power of the working people coming together.”
He said he wanted to hold big companies accountable. Companies like Palantir, which before last week’s quiet move to Florida was a Colorado-based company. Private companies that own immigrant detention centers would be on the top of his list. He said he’s been protesting Geo Group, the private company paying to keep the lights on at the Denver Contract Detention Facility.
Seligman said that by “boldly and courageously” using the law against the powerful, the people can make change.
Seligman answered a question about public lands, saying the fight for lands isn’t a new fight. Colorado’s river access is of the most restrictive in the west, even in light of the state’s allure for outdoor recreation. Most states follow a longstanding legal doctrine known as the “Equal Footing Doctrine” that says the ground underneath streams and waterways belongs to no one.
“The laws determining public access to Colorado’s waterways stem from several fact-specific cases and the overarching fact that the Colorado legislature has never acknowledged nor defined what qualifies as a navigable waterway within the state. The legal void caused by the lack of a clear definition has effectively blocked public access to many of Colorado’s waterways,” reads a Colorado Environmental Law Journal report looking at recreational stream access.
Without clear definitions, many of Colorado’s waterways are private, even to float through. Private landowners purchase and mark their private land up to and past the river, declaring the waterway a no-trespassing zone in many cases.
Seligman said this kind of appropriation of land and laws is because for “far too long Democrats and Republicans have bent to the will of the wealthy in these kinds of contexts.”
He said he would “rip out the old memos” that make it difficult for rafters and anglers to access rivers.
“That’s the kind of thing that we can do when we use the law boldly and courageously on behalf of the people, not the wealthy and powerful,” said Seligman.
For candidate Hetal Doshi, the “fight is personal.”
A first-generation daughter of immigrant parents, she says the battle in this moment is not between the left and the right, but between “those who have power and those who do not.”
She believes the next attorney general has to “build resiliency” in Colorado and to “take on the economic and social circumstances that led to Trump.”
Until last year, Doshi was a deputy assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division litigating criminal and civil cases. “It takes a fed to beat a fed in this particular moment.”
She said she was routinely in court against powerful CEOs and corrupt public officials and the like. “I’m really comfortable holding wrongdoers to account.”
But she said ICE is “special” at this moment. “I think it’s important to remind the federal government and those agents that put on that uniform every single day that they work for us.”
Doshi took a question on artificial intelligence and what she would do to protect Colorado from its impacts.
“There are lots of different ways, legal steps in the court rooms you can take to hold A.I. accountable when it ravages our lives that are not technologically advancing it and is actually making it worse for us to get a job, to get fair housing, to access our healthcare system,” she said.
Growing up just 90 miles from the Edmund Pettis Bridge, Doshi said, “I come by my fight honestly.”
Editors note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct number of candidates in the Democratic primary for Colorado state attorney general.
