Here are the players that Colorado Politics expects to be hearing a lot about in 2020.

10. Rep. Tom Sullivan

As gun-control advocates and Second Amendment advocates skirmish — before Democrats exercise their majority powers — expect Sullivan to once again be in the center state. His son, Alex, was killed in the Aurora theater shooting in 2012 and he’s been the point man on the issue in the legislature. Sullivan, a Democrat from Centennial, also was the focus of a failed recall effort in 2019 that only raised his profile among Democrats and those vying for more stringent Colorado gun laws, including an eventual ban on assault weapons if Democrats continue to impose their majority.

9. U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse

The Democrat from Lafayette has made a name for himself as a first-year Congressman with a juicy appointment to the House Judiciary Committee and solid questions during the impeachment trial. So high is his profile that his name has been mentioned as potentially one of the impeachment managers if and when the trial goes to the U.S. Senate. 

8. (tie) Sen. Bob Gardner and Rep. Leslie Herod

It’s a legislature in which Republicans don’t have enough votes to score anything; all they can do is block and tackle. Blessed will be the deal-makers. Herod, a Democrat from Denver, and Gardner, a Republican from Colorado Springs, have shown the remarkable ability to get things done with people who don’t agree with them. Expect more of the same in 2020. All roads to compromise could run across their desks.

7. Senate Republican leader Chris Holbert

The minority leader from Parker led the minority into a first-ever lawsuit over how bills are read at length — that lawsuit is still wending its way through the courts — and he recently told Colorado Politics that when you’re in the minority, you use the tools you have. The fears that a 2020 session could be as cantankerous as 2019 are being talked about around the Capitol and outside of it, too. Holbert’s ability to negotiate and navigate this year might determine his long-term viability for higher office. At a time when the Republican bench is shallow, a star such as Holbert bears watching closely.

6. House Speaker KC Becker

In her second year in charge of the lower chamber, the Democrat from Boulder has the daunting task of topping what she did in 2019, when she authored the state’s Climate Action Plan and shepherded through a package of bills reshaping health care, oil and gas regulation and college savings. In an election year in which Democrats have safe majorities in the state House and Senate, expect Becker to be front-and-center once again.

5. Candi CdeBaca

Love her or hate her, the progressive wunderkind was the biggest name in Denver city politics in 2019, but it was a scale balanced with determined ideas and novice stumbles. How the council woman stands up for human rights and against gentrification will determine how she matures into the job she won in 2019. CdeBaca must find common ground under a powerful mayoral system that critics allege is too cozy with developers. That’s taking on the twin Goliath of money and politics. That also will tell Denverites and those eyeing her for bigger things whether her first-year sizzle in the headlines amounts to a movement or a moment.

4. Shoshana Lew

The director of the Colorado Department of Transportation will prove herself and solidify the legacy of the governor who hired her in the year ahead. The state highway department is expected to release its long-term plan to address highways, transit, rural needs and a backlog of work to catch up with growth that’s valued at nearly $9 billion. There are also questions about how the department functioned under former Gov. John Hickenlooper, a situation Lew has to clean up while preserving the reputation of the candidate who most top Democratic operatives are pushing to take on incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner. What Lew does in 2020 is eclipsed only by how she does it. 

3. U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet

The Democrat from Denver fights on as a presidential candidate, but each day that passes while he’s mired at around 1% of the polling puts him farther in the rearview mirror of the race. Those with insight, however, see Bennet more as an appointee, potentially to a Cabinet position, depending on who wins the party nomination and the White House. How Bennet handles his time in the national race and not in his district — a campaign assault Democrats deployed on his Republican counterpart, Cory Gardner, up for reelection this year — could unofficially kick off Bennet’s reelection race in 2022, if Colorado isn’t forced to fill his seat sooner. 

2. Gov. Jared Polis

He muscled through an aggressive agenda in 2019, his first year as governor, but some of those big hits — taxpayer-funded full-day kindergarten and reinsurance — are predicted to cost a lot more in 2020 than was estimated in 2019. Will he rein in — and/or veto — high-ticket bills in the 2020 session? Polis is a tech millionaire from Boulder who served for eight years in Congress. Living on a balanced budget necessarily isn’t his first skill, yet Republicans in the General Assembly say he’s proven to be more libertarian and moderate than some of his more progressive fellow Democrats.

1. U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner

The road to power runs through Yuma. The Republican incumbent from the Eastern Plains poised himself as a moderate when he unseated Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall in 2014, but his ties to a deeply divisive president leaves him painted in a tough electoral corner to win a second term. Democrats, however, are in disarray over the two men at the top of their tickets and a field of viable women who tell Colorado Politics they don’t feel as though they’ve been treated fairly by their party. That’s a recipe for news in the new decade.