On Nov. 3, Phil Weiser ’90 was elected governor of Colorado after serving as the state’s attorney general since 2019. Weiser grew up outside of New York City before attending Swarthmore and graduating with a degree in political science. Shortly afterward, he studied at New York University School of Law before moving to Colorado to clerk at the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He later clerked for Associate Justices Byron White and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Weiser joined the faculty at the University of Colorado Law School in 1999. He took a leave to work in the Obama administration’s Department of Justice Antitrust Division and National Economic Council. He returned to University of Colorado Law School to serve as dean from 2011 to 2016.
Weiser won the 2018 and 2022 elections for Colorado Attorney General. In his two terms, he garnered attention for bringing regular legal action against the Trump administration, as well as against opioid distributors and major tech companies.
In the 2026 campaign for governor, Weiser faced off against longtime U.S. Senator and 2016 presidential candidate, Michael Bennet, in the Democratic Party primary. Defeating Bennet by thirteen percentage points in June, Weiser cruised to a 28 percentage point victory in the general election last week against Victor Marx. Two days after his victory, he spoke on the phone with The Phoenix about his campaign and the present political moment. A transcript of that conversation — edited for clarity and brevity — is below.
Daniel Perrin: In some ways, it seemed your successful primary campaign — in which you were perceived as the more progressive and perhaps less of an establishment candidate in Colorado — got at key questions about the future of the Democratic Party. I want to give you the chance to characterize that campaign for yourself. What approaches and ideologies did you try to embrace as a candidate? How do you think those choices fit into the context of the party as whole, especially in the context of last Tuesday’s electoral results?
Phil Weiser: I want to first say there are multiple dimensions, and I think the ideological left-right dimension is one that there’s an overappreciation of at the expense of some other dimensions. You’ve heard other candidates, James Talarico most famously, say, “Is it left-right or is it up-down?”
I was the upstart candidate in this race. If you ask the question, “who did the companies and the out-of-state billionaires support?”, the answer was my opponent. I was outspent two-to-one. This obviously goes hand in hand, but I was the grassroots candidate. Who was the candidate who showed up everywhere? Who was the candidate who relied on engaging people? That was me. One of the articles about my campaign had this wonderful line: “I drove long distances to give speeches to small numbers of people.” And what I was so heartened by is the fact that on those events, people noticed, people cared.
And then there was actually a third dimension. People are really sick of Washington, and people were concerned about whether or not we had leaders who were fighters who would stand up against what looked to be a real threat to the rule of law, to our democratic republic, and to Colorado. I was very vigilant in saying “when this Trump administration undermines the rule of law, when it harms Colorado, I fight back,” and I had a clarity of that message that was also important.
So I just gave you three dimensions other than left-right. Top-down: who is backing you monetarily? I was backed bottom-up. Then there’s showing up versus — literally, in some cases — being missing in action. And engaging in a way that is showing you’re the candidate of Colorado, protecting Colorado, fighting for us. I had a lot going for me on those other dimensions.
If you say to me, “What’s my explanation?” I think those three dimensions explain a whole lot more than the left-right dimension, which obviously for some people may have been what they were thinking about. But if you’re looking at this in a broader lens, I would separate out these as relevant points. When people study this race, I would make sure that people realize the entirety of what helped us win, and I don’t think it boils down to “who was the candidate who would be this quote-unquote ‘progressive?’”
DP: Building on those three dimensions, so much of politics these days seems to be about capturing attention in an increasingly competitive attention economy, and how to break through to normal people at a time when it sometimes seems arbitrary which ideas break through and how. What did you notice on the campaign trail about what resonates with people today, both politically and in terms of the other dimensions that you spoke about? What do you think that means for our politics and your politics going forward?
PW: I’m still figuring this out, so let’s just start by acknowledging that we are on a changing landscape. It is a fascinating time and it’s a challenging time to, as you put it well, “break through.” The rise of social media and the way people get information is very different today than it was a decade ago, and from two decades ago, it’s probably close to unrecognizable given how much has changed. It is a generational change that we are in the middle of right now. So, I was doing my best in this campaign to put myself out there, my message out there.
In terms of what I think breaks through, I actually go back to an old-school quote from Teddy Roosevelt: “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Part of what I think broke through for people — and those three dimensions I mentioned are aligned with this — they felt like “Phil shows up for my community. He cares about me. He’s fighting for me.” And when people feel that way about you, it actually is an enabler. When the people feel “I don’t believe that you really care about me,” it is a disabler. I was able to really lean into “I’m here fighting for you. I care about you. I’m listening to you,” and that is going to continue to be how I view my job.
I articulated my job description as attorney general as “the people’s lawyer.” And so it wasn’t like I started saying this as a candidate for governor. I was able to say “I’ve spent eight years showing up for the people of Colorado, listening to people and fighting for them.” That lent to a narrative and a message that I do think broke through, and that I’m going to continue to do my best to hold on to.
DP: You made a lot of waves using the power of the attorney general’s office to counter the Trump administration through relentless legal action. As governor, you’ll have to work with President Trump to some extent, and be the leader of a state that, while swinging blue, does include millions of people who voted for him. How are you going to approach that relationship and that obligation, and where do you think there might be common ground to be found?
PW: I think you have a few different questions there, so let me try to answer a couple of them. On the question of how I view my prior role and my new role with regard to the Trump administration, my answer is: in my prior role, I said, “If this administration breaks the law, I’m not going to bend the knee. I’m going to fight back.” In my new role, I say the same thing: “If this administration breaks the law, I’m not going to bend the knee. I’m going to fight back.” In fact, you could say as attorney general my role was to be the lawyer for Colorado, and as the governor for Colorado, I become the client. My commitment to what’s right, not giving in to bullying, is a quality that’s not going to change.
As for your question about where we find common ground: well, it starts with when this administration follows the law. There are current instances of this administration following the law, where I can work with them. We’re working on a major antitrust case against Google. Colorado is the lead plaintiff, and the United States government is alongside us. Right now, there is litigation filed against the Trump administration by other states that we’re not joining because we believe the federal government is proceeding appropriately.
So my view, and this is true for whoever’s in the White House, is that if you’re following the law, and you’re doing the job the way you’re supposed to do it, I’m with you to do stuff that’s good for Colorado. If you’re breaking the law and harming Colorado, I’ll be fighting back. And what I’ll say that I believe is also going to be different over the next few years is that we’re going to have a Democratic Congress starting to be a real check on lawlessness, and I’ll be able to work with the Democrat Congress to stand up for what’s right. I also believe that more and more you’ll see bipartisan governors who are willing to say “state sovereignty should not be compromised by the federal government.” The fact that this administration put forward all these threats about taking over elections goes to the heart of our republic. We have a constitution, we have a separation of powers, not just between Congress and the president, but between the federal government and states. I will be able to be someone — because of my knowledge of the law and our constitution, and because of my commitment to fighting for its rights — that will be at the forefront of that.
DP: You mentioned the new Democratic majorities in Congress. I’m curious what you think Democrats, both in Congress and in positions like your own, need to do to ensure that this year’s midterms don’t become an isolated set of elections like some past cycles have been, but build power and a response to Trumpism in the long term?
PW: Well, I’m going to go back to what I said before: “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” What Republicans showed over the last two years, with Trump and his cruelty and his corruption and his chaos, whether it’s tariffs or the Iran war or what happened to immigrants, has been that this administration is acting in callous ways. Democrats can act in thoughtful, compassionate, and effective ways that make life better for people. It’s on us to take that mandate seriously, whether it’s access to homes people can afford, childcare, how we build a better economy, how we work on education to give kids more opportunity, we have a mandate to govern. We need to get stuff done. By doing that, we can keep earning the trust of the people … If we fail that, then we’re at the peril of losing elections.
DP: You’ve been elected to succeed a politically-unique governor in Jared Polis, and Democrats have a trifecta in the state government in Colorado going into your administration. Can you give a sense of your first 100 days — what you might hope to change or keep from the previous administration?
PW: The way I will govern is by bringing people together and making sure we have a collaborative culture where people are in real dialogue, working to meet the problems we have. That’s going to be something that will include Republicans as well as Democrats. I do think one of my first challenges, and I’ve talked about this a bit, is to change the culture of state government to make sure it is more responsive. I want to make sure that we’re acting creatively, not just operating on autopilot. And how do we make sure that people are seeing us as showing up for them? So I do think an early item on the agenda, which will extend to our legislature, extend to our local governments, and most importantly, extend the people of Colorado, is to set the right culture for governing. That’s something that I’m excited to do, and I recognize the responsibility.
DP: Finally, I’m wondering what you think about your relationship to Swarthmore and the role of the liberal arts in your public service career and time in government.
PW: I wouldn’t be where I am without the education I got at Swarthmore College. It started with the mentorship I had with [Professor Emeritus of Political Science] Richard Rubin, whom I met when I first got to Swarthmore and expressed an interest in a public policy concentration. Richard encouraged me to do some internships in public service, and he is the reason I ended up going to law school. The ability to think rigorously, the ability to have leadership positions, and my public speaking all really started to take root at Swarthmore, where I had mentor support, and that has made my career possible. I owe Swarthmore a lot. It is something that I treasure, and I look forward to my next visit there to try to recruit some Swatties into state government.
