Meet Julie
A fighter and a champion. For Colorado. For Denver. For you.
Meet Julie: A fighter and a champion.
For Colorado. For Denver. For you.
The sixth of seven children, Julie was born on the San Carlos Apache reservation in Arizona and raised in the borderlands of south Texas. Her mom, Gloria, was an elementary school teacher and her dad, Mario, was a rancher. Together, they taught Julie the value of hard work, honesty, and the importance of lifting as we climb.
Julie’s organizing career began while a student at Yale University. In 2005, she organized a 58-member coalition of working-class families, unions, community organizations, and environmental activists to ensure that tax dollars were spent on affordable housing, a clean environment, and jobs that paid a living wage.
For the next 15 years, Julie continued to organize statewide movements to defend and advance immigrant rights across Colorado, including successful efforts to grant in-state tuition regardless of immigration status and prohibit municipal dollars from being spent on immigration enforcement.
A lifelong progressive Democrat, Julie volunteered and caucused for Bernie Sanders before being drafted into running for office herself. In 2018, she set the record for most votes earned in a Colorado State Senate race, carried by the support of the community she’d served for over a decade.
Julie has established herself as a power broker in the Capitol, delivering meaningful relief for working-class Coloradans and communities of color while empowering community advocates and fellow legislators to hold the line for progressive priorities. Since 2018, Julie has:
repealed the death penalty
codified abortion protections
stopped ICE from raiding state databases
strengthened renter and tenant laws
streamlined cannabis regulations
installed a regulatory framework for deadly air toxins
reduced the cost of prescription drugs
secured over 500 million dollars for affordable housing