Colorado's two candidates for attorney general spent an hour trading sharp accusations Wednesday night, clashing over courtroom experience, their ties to President Trump, and a tense moment when Democrat Jena Griswold linked death threats she received to Republicans like her opponent. The exchange, held before roughly 250 people at the University of Denver, marked what is expected to be the only debate between Griswold and Michael Allen before Colorado voters decide the race on November 3.
A Debate That Turned Personal
Griswold, Colorado's 42-year-old Democratic secretary of state, and Allen, the 54-year-old Republican district attorney for the Colorado Springs area, used much of their hour on stage to question each other's qualifications for running the state's largest law office, according to The Denver Post. The debate, hosted by the Colorado Sun at the Denver campus, grew heated when Griswold attributed threats against her life during her time as secretary of state to MAGA and Republicans like Allen, a comment that drew gasps, boos and some cheers from the audience.
Allen responded by saying threats against public officials or audience members are wrong and that he would stand with anyone facing them, but he added that Griswold's comment showed a lack of character and argued it made her unfit to be Colorado's attorney general. The attorney general's office Griswold and Allen are vying to lead oversees around 700 lawyers and staff who represent state agencies and handle major civil and criminal matters, a scope outlined by The Colorado Sun.
Dueling Claims on Qualifications
Allen leaned hard into his trial record, telling the audience he is the only candidate in the race who knows how to fight in a courtroom. He is an attorney with more than 20 years of experience and has served as district attorney for Colorado's 4th Judicial District since 2021, where he led the prosecution of the 2022 Club Q mass shooting, securing five consecutive life sentences plus 2,208 years in prison without parole in June 2023, according to a report from OutSFL. Allen said flatly that Griswold is unqualified to be Colorado's next chief law enforcement officer.
Griswold pushed back, saying the attorney general's role is to set the office's legal direction rather than serve as a trial attorney, and she accused Allen of lying about her legal record. She pointed to her own background, noting she worked for a Washington-based law firm from 2011 to 2013, mostly before taking the bar exam, after earlier serving as President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign voter protection attorney and as a Washington liaison for former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, per her official biography on the Colorado Secretary of State website. She was elected secretary of state in 2018 as the youngest elected secretary of state in the country.
The Trump Ballot Fight Resurfaces
One of the sharpest exchanges centered on the 2024 fight over whether Trump could appear on Colorado's primary ballot. Allen said Griswold misled Colorado voters about arguing a lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court to keep Trump off the ballot, while Griswold maintained she was a defendant in the case and that her attorney, not her personally, made the oral arguments. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled unanimously in March 2024 that states cannot enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against federal candidates, reversing a Colorado Supreme Court ruling in the case where Griswold was the named state defendant, according to the Supreme Court's own record in Trump v. Anderson.
Griswold has sought throughout the race to link Allen to Trump and portray him as a threat to Colorado's ongoing lawsuits against the federal government, telling the debate crowd she has stood up to Trump and faced repeated attacks as a result. Allen, for his part, said he is prepared to oppose the Trump administration in court if necessary but argued that litigation decisions should not be driven by politics. He has characterized many of the lawsuits filed by outgoing Attorney General Phil Weiser as politically motivated, though he has not specified which of those cases he would drop if elected.
Nearly 90 Lawsuits and a Space Command Dispute
Weiser, the term-limited Democratic attorney general running for governor in 2026, has launched or joined nearly 90 lawsuits against the federal government since early 2025, covering frozen federal funds, efforts to restrict mail voting, and other administrative rule changes, per the same Denver Post account of the debate. Allen specifically criticized one of those cases, Weiser's lawsuit challenging Trump's relocation of Space Command from Colorado Springs to Alabama, telling the audience he believes the move falls within the president's authority.
The candidates found some common ground on enforcement priorities even as they clashed on tone. Both Griswold and Allen said they want users of artificial intelligence to be held accountable for violations of Colorado's new technology law, a framework that was significantly reshaped in May 2026 when lawmakers passed SB 26-189, repealing the substantive provisions of the state's original 2024 AI statute and pushing enforcement of automated decision-making rules to January 1, 2027, according to legal analysis from Seyfarth Shaw LLP.
Guns and Water Rights Also on the Table
The two also agreed the attorney general's office should defend Colorado's water rights in negotiations with six other states over the Colorado River, a dispute that grew more urgent after the U.S. Department of the Interior finalized operating guidelines in August 2026 for Colorado River reservoirs covering 2027 and 2028, after the seven basin states failed to reach full consensus on long-term rules. On guns, Griswold said she wants to work with the legislature to pass an assault weapons ban stricter than the law enacted in 2025, which already requires new training and licensing for certain gun purchases. Under Colorado Senate Bill 25-003, which took effect August 1, 2026, buyers of specified semiautomatic firearms with detachable magazines must obtain an eligibility card through their county sheriff and complete up to 12 hours of mandatory safety training, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Allen, meanwhile, called for a tougher approach to crime, including state grand juries targeting multijurisdictional criminal rings involved in fentanyl distribution and human trafficking. The debate capped a primary season in which both candidates first had to win their own party's nomination: Griswold won a four-candidate Democratic primary on June 30 with 44.2% of the vote, defeating two local prosecutors and a non-profit executive, while Allen won the Republican primary with 59.9% of the vote over challenger David Willson, according to data compiled by MultiState Elections.
Colorado voters will decide between the two candidates on November 3, choosing a successor to Weiser in an office that will be responsible for enforcing the state's new AI transparency rules, defending its water allocations, and setting the tone for how aggressively Colorado continues to challenge federal policy in court.
