DENVER — University of Colorado Regent Wanda James unveiled her campaign to unseat Colorado’s longest-serving congressional lawmaker on Wednesday, hoping to ride a wave of Democratic dissatisfaction with longtime party officials.

“When you take a look at what’s happening right now in America, it’s pretty dismal,” said James, a Democrat, in an interview. “And we are lacking leadership in America.”

James’ effort to beat Democratic U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the Denver-based 1st Congressional District comes nearly three years after James was elected to CU’s governing board. An early marijuana entrepreneur who opened a cannabis shop in northwest Denver, she sought to frame her primary challenge within larger debates consuming the Democratic Party.

Namely: how to respond to the Trump administration and growing frustration among Democratic voters with the party’s leadership.

“When I look at what’s happening here in Denver, Denver is a very, very different city. The 1st Congressional District is a different place than it was 30 years ago, even 10 years ago,” she said. That’s a reference to 1996, when DeGette, now 68, was first elected.

James’ congressional campaign is part of a broader national wave of primary challenges seeking to unseat established Democratic politicians in the 2026 midterms. Indeed, James’ comment about the length of DeGette’s tenure echoes what U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s primary opponent said earlier this year: “We are living in a totally different America than the one (Pelosi) knew when she entered politics 45 years ago.”

Alongside James, four other Democrats have filed to challenge DeGette in next year’s primary. They include two candidates in their late-20s — Melat Kiros and Carter Hanson — who’ve also noted DeGette’s lengthy tenure in Congress, according to Westword.

James a Navy veteran who’s also worked as a political strategist, is the only one currently serving in elected office.

James said that if she wins, she will support a “Medicare For All” program, which would ensure health care coverage for all Americans, and an income-based version of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal to provide free tuition to public four-year universities. She said she will also back policies to boost homeownership in Denver, where more than half of residents are renters.

She said she supports immigration reform that would provide a path to citizenship for people brought to the United States as children, along with farmworkers and “long-term essential workers.” That plan would include more border security — a nod to a growing Democratic consensus on immigration policy.

She said her priorities include trying to repair the Democratic Party’s brand, which has sagged as the party searches for a path forward after President Donald Trump’s election last year. She cast that effort as centered around fighting broadly against Trump policies, including the administration’s mass-deportation agenda.

James, who represents the 1st Congressional District’s residents on CU’s governing board, was the first black woman elected to the panel in decades.

This year, she has faced controversy in that position. She was censured by the board earlier this summer after she was accused of trying to strip funding for a CU campaign that sought to provide information about the risks of high-potency marijuana. One member of the board accused her of putting her own interests as a marijuana business owner over the interests of the university.

James has said the campaign’s materials were racist — they included images of a Black family suffering from a mother’s marijuana use — and she said the censure was about “censorship and retaliation.”

The new wave of challenges against incumbent Democrats has only just lapped the shores of Colorado’s blue strongholds, where two longtime Democratic officials are vying to succeed Gov. Jared Polis next year and U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, who is up for reelection, boasts a hefty war chest and faces only newcomer primary challengers so far.

Still, DeGette has parried aggressive primary challenges before in the 1st District, which is now largely contiguous with Denver city boundaries and also includes Glendale and Holly Hills.

Her 2018 Democratic opponent initially raised more money than the congresswoman, sparking early murmurings that DeGette may be vulnerable. But she cruised to a 36-percentage-point victory in the primary and has not drawn a substantive Democratic opponent since.

She enters this campaign season with more than $320,000 in the bank, according to federal filings from June.

Last summer, DeGette defended then-President Joe Biden’s brief determination to stay in the presidential race. In a virtual town hall earlier this summer, she sharply criticized Trump’s policies and the federal tax bill that later blew a hole in Colorado’s budget. She also said she supported ending U.S. funding of offensive weapons for Israel.

In a statement Wednesday, DeGette spokeswoman Jennie Peek-Dunstone said the congresswoman had fought to “stop the harmful cuts to Medicaid, defend reproductive freedom, lower the cost of medicine, and boost breakthrough lifesaving medical research.”

“In these uncertain times when extreme MAGA Republicans control the White House and Congress, we need Congresswoman DeGette’s proven leadership to hold the Trump administration accountable and continue delivering for Denverites,” Peek-Dunstone said.

But James expressed confidence, saying she had the name recognition and fundraising abilities to beat DeGette.

“This is the first time in Diana’s 30-year career that she’s going to be facing a challenger that can bring all of that to the forefront,” she said.

----------------

©2025 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at denverpost.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.