As the 2026 election cycle begins, an unusually large number of Colorado lawmakers — many appointed through the vacancy process — are facing primary challenges that reflect deepening divisions within both major parties.

And it isn’t only open seats that candidates are eyeing. At least 14 current lawmakers, almost all in the House, are facing primary challenges from within their own parties.

Six are lawmakers who began their legislative service through the vacancy process, including four who gained their seats in the past year. 

On Monday, former Rep. Amy Parks, R-Loveland, announced she would challenge Rep. Ron Weinberg in House District 51. Parks was the partner of the late House Minority Leader Hugh McKean. 

Vacancy committees chose both Parks and Weinberg in the wake of McKean’s death in 2022. Parks was selected to serve the final weeks of 2022, while Weinberg was appointed to serve the remainder of McKean’s term through 2024.

Weinberg is facing a campaign finance complaint filed by a fellow House Republican, alleging he used campaign funds for personal items. He’s also been accused of using a master key to access a colleague’s office in the state Capitol, prompting the House Speaker and others to request that their locks be changed. Weinberg was also accused of sexually harassing several party workers before his time in the legislature.

The Secretary of State’s elections division announced on Dec. 19 that it would move the campaign finance complaint forward to the hearing stage, with a Jan. 20 scheduling deadline. The division wrote in its Dec. 19 filing that Weinberg’s candidate committee “spent thousands of dollars on expenditures that were not reasonably related to his election, including nearly $2,000 to an Israeli football club, and thousands of dollars for clothes, haircuts, hotels, and meals.”

“We need steady, reliable leadership. Loveland deserves better,” Parks said of the allegations against Weinberg. “We need to hold these people to a higher standard.”

Weinberg has denied all the allegations against him. He suggested that the claims of unwanted sexual advances were politically motivated.

“These claims, nearly four years old, were never mentioned when I ran for office,” he earlier wrote. “Now, the moment I announce my run for Republican leadership, they suddenly surface. I will not be intimidated by political smear tactics. I have hired legal counsel and will defend my name and family through the law.”

As for the allegation of misusing campaign funds, Weinberg told Newsline that he is “not going to lawyer up. I’m fully transparent — I know that everything I’ve done campaign-wise is not in violation.”

Meanwhile, Sen. William Lindstedt, D-Broomfield, was sworn in Monday to represent Senate District 25. Lindstedt was appointed to the seat by Gov. Jared Polis last week to succeed the late Sen. Faith Winter, who died in a car crash on Nov. 26. Winter was intoxicated at twice the legal limit, as determined by the Arapahoe County coroner.

In the upcoming June primary, Lindstedt will face challenger William Klenow, whom he defeated in the vacancy process last month.

Sen. Lynda Zamora Wilson, R-Colorado Springs, was chosen by a vacancy committee last year to succeed Sen. Paul Lundeen. She will vie for the seat against former Rep. Terri Carver in the June primary. The two had competed for the vacancy last July.

Seth Masket, a political science professor at DU, said he found the number of primary challenges heading into 2026 “striking.” 

Masket previously examined primary challenges in the Colorado House between 2010 and 2020 and said there were perhaps a dozen in all that received more than 20% of the vote. Many would file to run but weren’t always mounting serious challenges, he told Colorado Politics.

“This is also kind of a national story,” Masket added, noting that Democrats are dissatisfied with their party, with the leadership probably less popular with its own members than it’s been in decades.

Masket noted that what’s happening is akin to what Republicans faced in 2010, with the rise of the Tea Party, when many incumbents faced challenges across the country. 

For 2026, this could indicate that progressives are dissatisfied with incumbents and with what they see as an inadequate response to many of the major crises underway today, the political scientist said.

“They just want to see a more aggressive party coming out of it,” he said.

In the House, 12 current lawmakers have drawn challenges from within their parties, most of them Democrats.

In addition to Weinberg, they include the following:

• Rep. Lorena Garcia, D-Adams County, of House District 35, who is running for her third term.

• Rep. Sean Camacho, D-Denver, of House District 6, who defeated former Rep. Elisabeth Epps in a hotly contested primary in 2024.

• Rep. Junie Joseph, D-Boulder, of House District 10, who was appointed by a vacancy committee in 2022 to replace Rep. Edie Hooton on the 2022 ballot. Joseph is running for her third term.

• Rep. Karen McCormick, D-Longmont, of House District 11, who chairs the House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee. She is running for her fourth term.

• Rep. Regina English, D-Colorado Springs, of House District 17, who posted a lengthy Facebook Live video late last year, in which she blasted some of her fellow Democratic colleagues in the House for being “racists.” She also criticized the LGBTQ+ community and her Democratic opponent, who is gay, for accusing English of being a homophobe, which she strongly denied. The video has since been deleted.

• On Dec. 24, English posted on her Facebook page a request for people of color who live in the district to run for neighboring House District 16. It’s currently represented by Republican Rep. Rebecca Keltie, who chose not to run for re-election. Keltie defeated former Rep. Stephanie Vigil for the seat in 2024. Vigil, who is lesbian, is to date the only Democrat who has filed to run for the seat.

• Rep. Jacque Phillips, D-Thornton, of House District 31, who is a first-term lawmaker.

• Rep. Michael Carter, D-Aurora, of House District 36, who is also a first-term lawmaker. Carter’s 2024 election included a high-stakes primary, with $320,000 spent by an independent expenditure committee backing Carter and other moderate Democrats. 

• Rep. Mandy Lindsay, D-Aurora, of House District 42, who was initially appointed to her seat in 2022 to fill out the term of then-Rep. Dominique Jackson. Lindsay faces three primary challenges for her seat, including former Aurora School Board member Eric Nelson, whose academic and military credentials are in question.

• Rep. Jamie Jackson, D-Aurora, who was chosen by a vacancy committee last January to replace Rep. Iman Jodeh, who went to the Senate, also through a vacancy election. Jackson has two primary challengers, including Anne Keke, a member of the Aurora school board.

• Rep. Carlos Barron, R-Fort Lupton, a first-term lawmaker in House District 48.

• Rep. Ava Flanell, R-Colorado Springs, of In House District 14, who was chosen in October to replace Rep. Rose Pugliese and now faces a primary challenge.

What’s behind the primary challenges?

One factor behind the primary challenges is the division between progressive and moderate Democrats in the Colorado General Assembly.

That division also came into full display in November, when a group called Colorado Common Cause filed ethics complaints against members of the Democratic “opportunity caucus,” alleging they accepted hotel and other costs related to an October retreat at a luxury resort in Vail. The money came from a group that doesn’t disclose its funders — One Main Street Colorado. 

Common Cause filed 17 complaints but withdrew one against a lawmaker who neither participated in the retreat nor was involved in soliciting money for it.

Allies of progressive Democrats, such as the Working Families Party, applauded the ethics complaints and launched a campaign in November to criticize the Opportunity Caucus.

Carter, Phillips, Lindstedt, McCormick and Camacho are part of the group now under investigation by the state’s ethics commission for that October retreat.

Another reason is the vacancies and the vacancy process.

While lawmakers made changes to the vacancy process through legislation in the 2025 session, none of those changes applied to vacancies that occurred in the past year.

Lindstedt, Zamora Wilson, Jackson, and Flanell all won seats through the vacancy process in the past year, in which party insiders selected who would represent their districts. 

Lindstedt was chosen by a vacancy committee in 2022 to appear on the general election ballot that year, replacing then-Rep. Matt Gray, who decided not to run for re-election after being arrested for driving under the influence. He pleaded guilty to driving while impaired. Gray was Winter’s fiancé at the time of her death.

Professor Robert Preuhs, who chairs the political science department at Metropolitan State University, said primary challenges reflect factional splits within each party.

“Both reflect longer-standing and national rifts, but with somewhat different loci for motivation,” Preuhs said.  

For Democrats, he said, “it is the rift over how to deal with Trump and the changing national dynamics, although it is still a progressive versus moderate split.” He cited Carter’s primary challenger, a Democratic Socialist, as an example.

For Republicans, Pruehs said, it looks to be “moderation versus Trump’s faction,” which he said “is generated by contempt over unified Democratic control here in Colorado.”

He believes that at least seven of the 12 contested primaries would be competitive.