Who Is Phil Weiser? The Democrat Running for Colorado Governor, and His Long Fight With Douglas County

Phil Weiser is the Democratic nominee for governor of Colorado, and by every published rating the heavy favorite to win on November 3. In Douglas County he is something more specific: the lawyer on the other side of the county government's favorite lawsuits.

The resume

Weiser was born in 1968; his mother was born in the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 and survived the Holocaust. He went to Swarthmore and NYU Law, clerked for Judge David Ebel on the Tenth Circuit and then for Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and worked in the Justice Department's antitrust division in the 1990s. He joined the CU Law faculty in 1999, founded the Silicon Flatirons technology center there, served in the Obama administration as a deputy assistant attorney general and then as a senior technology adviser at the National Economic Council, and came back to Boulder as dean of the law school from 2011 to 2016.

He won the attorney general's office in 2018 with 51.6 percent and kept it in 2022 with more than 54.

What he is running on

His campaign's issues page runs to 15 headings, from affordable homes and early childhood to water, rural development and youth mental health. The specifics on the ones most likely to matter here:

• Housing: increase attainable owner-occupied homes by 40,000, which the campaign says would close half the current shortfall; speed up permitting and partner with local governments to lower fees on for-sale homes under $600,000; expand down payment assistance for first-time buyers; ban algorithmic price collusion by corporate landlords.
• Public safety: fund law enforcement and modernize its training; sign and defend gun safety laws and strengthen the Office of Gun Violence Prevention; invest in co-responders; base bail on public safety risk rather than money; create a Governor's Office of Safe Communities.
• Energy: meet the state's emission reduction goals, expand solar, wind and battery storage, establish a Geothermal Development Authority, create a dedicated utility rate class for residential heat pumps, and protect EV purchase incentives.
• Health care: a "Primary Care for All" mandate built on the Colorado Option, a "Health Consumer Pact," and a task force to steady the safety net so everyone eligible for Medicaid is enrolled.
• State government: "lead a statewide conversation on updating constitutional restrictions that hold us back from investing in our state and people," work with towns, counties and special districts as partners, and help smaller local governments reach federal money.

What he did with the office

His record as attorney general is mostly litigation. His office has filed or joined more than 65 lawsuits against Trump administration policies. It secured more than $912 million in opioid settlements for the state, sued to block the Kroger and Albertsons merger (a judge blocked it in December 2024), pursued rent price-fixing cases against large landlords and the software firm RealPage, and ran the investigation of abuse in Colorado's Catholic dioceses.

In June he beat Bennet, a sitting U.S. senator, by 14 points for the nomination, running as the more progressive choice. That is an asset statewide and, as we will get to, a complication here.

His campaign has its own campaign finance matter, smaller than Marx's. Danielle Neuschwanger, a Colorado Springs real estate broker, filed complaints on September 8 and September 10 alleging 18 and then 28 more contributions above the $1,450 limit that were not refunded within the required 10 days; the largest was $2,392. On September 23 the Secretary of State's Elections Division found enough to proceed and gave the campaign until October 6 to cure. Spokesman Nate Jackson said the campaign "has already cured all the alleged violations"; Newsline Local reported the refunds were made, but not within the 10-day window.

"The state has no business in telling me what I have to attest to under penalty of perjury on a federal form." District Attorney George Brauchler, suing the state Weiser represents.

Weiser and Douglas County

Here is the local part. For two years the Douglas County government has been in court against state laws that Weiser's office is obliged to defend.

In April 2024 the county commissioners, joined by El Paso County, sued in Denver District Court to overturn two state laws that limit how local police cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Then-chairman George Teal said it was "the duty of the county to push back against these state laws." Weiser's office declined to comment at the time, as attorneys general generally do on pending cases.

In January 2026, District Attorney George Brauchler and Sheriff Darren Weekly, with the commissioners' backing, filed a federal suit against Gov. Jared Polis, Weiser and two other state officials over a 2021 law on certifying U visas for immigrant crime victims. "The state has no business in telling me what I have to attest to under penalty of perjury on a federal form," Brauchler said.

There is a wrinkle worth knowing. Brauchler, now the elected district attorney for the 23rd Judicial District, which covers Douglas County, is the Republican whom Weiser beat in the 2018 attorney general's race. The most prominent law enforcement official in this county and the likely next governor have history, and it is not friendly.

If Weiser wins, that posture probably does not soften. A Governor Weiser would be signing or vetoing the kind of state immigration law the Douglas County commissioners have gone to court to overturn. The county's habit of suing the state would have a more determined opponent, not a friendlier one. Whether you think that is a reason to vote for him or against him is the whole question.

Can he win Douglas County?

Douglas County has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, and it stayed Republican for governor even in Jared Polis's 2022 landslide, when Polis came within 1,290 votes. Weiser's case for doing better is mostly about his opponents: Victor Marx won the GOP nomination with under 40 percent, and former Parker mayor Greg Lopez is on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate, pulling from the Republican side.

His case for doing worse is about him. Polis had a libertarian streak that played well with exactly the unaffiliated, tax-sensitive voter who decides things here. Weiser ran to Bennet's left. If Douglas County goes blue for governor this year, it will be because of who else was on the ballot, not because the county went looking for a progressive.

More: the full three-way race as seen from Douglas County, every race on your ballot, and the November ballot guide. We do not endorse candidates. Campaigns can send corrections to hello@discoverdougco.com.