Outside groups spent roughly $5 million to influence several Democratic legislative primaries last month, an eye-popping sum revealed in final disclosures this week that was part of a broader struggle for influence over the state’s dominant political party.
Beyond the outside money, the candidates spent more than $1.8 million in those races themselves. Much of the outside spending, which was used to bolster or attack candidates, came in the form of dark money untraceable to its original sources. The bulk of the outside cash — just over $3 million — came from a network of loosely connected groups backing several state legislative candidates and opposing sitting Democratic Reps. Elisabeth Epps, Tim Hernández, Julia Marvin and other left-wing candidates in races in and around metro Denver.
The money poured into races for largely safe Democratic seats, but not all spending was reported before the June 25 primary. It came from organized labor and trade unions, from charter school supporters and the Colorado Education Association, from the pharmaceutical and homebuilding industries and, in heavy quantities, from fully opaque sources that are not legally required to provide any insight into their funders.
It remains unclear, for instance, which person or organization was behind $670,000 spent by one super PAC-backed group to block Rep. Mike Weissman’s bid to join the state Senate.
Weissman, who has championed consumer-protection policy in the legislature, won his party’s nomination, with the help of outside support from organized labor groups. Epps, Hernández and Marvin all lost.
Denver millionaire and former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry gave more than $1.2 million to a brand-new spending committee created to support challengers to Epps, Hernández, Weissman and others. Because Thiry’s donation came just days before Election Day, the full extent of his involvement wasn’t clear until Monday, when final campaign finance reports were due.
He was one of two people to donate to the new committee; the other donor contributed $25.
Given how late his spending came in the race, it’s unclear if Thiry’s money, though substantial, had any impact. Almost all of the races he backed were comfortably decided, and the TV ads financed with his money seemed more trained on his frustrations with Colorado lawmakers over his own policy goals.
In May, Colorado lawmakers inserted a late amendment into a bill that was intended to slow Thiry’s plans to overhaul the state’s elections system, including by instituting ranked-choice voting, if ballot measures he’s backing win voter approval this fall.
A significant portion of the outside spending — particularly the cash used to bolster more moderate and less left-wing candidates — was passed through a web of groups generally connected to One Main Street, a nonprofit that bills itself as backing “pragmatic” Democrats.
The group, which does not disclose most of its donors, spent $700,000 in the races, with more coming from a small group of trade unions. Additional money in the network came from supporters of charter schools, from the real estate and development industries, and from other opaque nonprofit groups.
After last week’s primary, One Main Street announced that 10 of the 11 candidates it had supported won. The 11th — Fort Collins tax attorney Yara Zokaie — cruised to victory in her state House race.
On the other side of One Main Street was Colorado Labor Action, which spent just under $800,000 on Zokaie, Weissman and others. The group also backed Kathy Gebhardt, who won her state board of education race despite more than $1 million in outside spending against her. The labor group received much of its money from the AFL-CIO and from the Colorado Education Association.
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