Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser is the first Democrat out of the gate to officially declare a bid for the 2026 gubernatorial race.

Weiser has been Colorado’s Attorney General since 2018. He is term-limited in 2026.

On Thursday, he laid out the arguments for his gubernatorial campaign and noted what he described as accomplishments while serving as attorney general.

“As I have approached my work, it’s always been, ‘How can I best serve?'” he said.

When he started campaigning for Attorney General in 2017, he met Sheriff Robert Jackson of Alamosa County, who told him 90% of the people in his jails struggle with opioid addiction, a problem the sheriff had no resources to solve, Weiser said.

“I talked about opioids and this crisis regularly,” Weiser said.

As Attorney General, Weiser said he took on big Pharma, such as Purdue, Johnson & Johnson and McKinsey, and touted his work as having brought in $800 million to Colorado to address the opioid crisis through a collaborative framework with local governments. He said that campaign was named the best in the nation by Johns Hopkins. 

Those efforts included a treatment center in the San Luis Valley, Weiser said, adding he continues to talk to Alamosa’s Jackson, who is now on his steering committee.

Weiser said there’s a “straight line” between his work as Attorney General and the issues he would address as governor, notably affordability, public safety, protecting air, land and water, and the youth mental health crisis.

“This is a natural step and it’s one I’m really excited about,” he said.

On affordability, Weiser said he hears from teachers, law enforcement and others that they can’t afford to live in the communities in which they work. Housing affordability will require a range of solutions and won’t get addressed overnight, he said. Healthcare and childcare costs are also top of mind, he said.

On public safety, he sees part of the challenge as recruitment and training of law enforcers, he said. That training, he added, will make the state smart on how it fights crime.

Youth mental health has also been a focus in his time as attorney general, he said, noting his office is part of a multi-state effort to investigate TikTok and previously was part of an antitrust lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, on the issue of youth mental health. His office also sued the vaping company Juul, which led to securing $31.7 million, which will go toward school-community partnerships to help young people build better resilience and relationship skills.

Finally, Weiser said he also would continue working to defend freedoms when it comes to abortion rights and same-sex marriage. 

Weiser has had a relatively scandal-free during his time as attorney general. A campaign finance complaint from Defend Colorado in 2021 accused him of failure to report campaign contributions and expenditures and accepting illegal contributions while on a trip to Hawaii for the Attorney General Alliance’s annual meeting. The complaint was dismissed in January 2022 due to insufficient evidence.

He has been criticized by Republicans for positions taken on legal cases, most often by District Attorney George Brauchler, who lost to Weiser by 7 points in 2018. Brauchler has since been elected as district attorney in the 23rd Judicial District.  

Six other candidates have filed the paperwork for the governor’s seat. That includes three Republicans, one identified as “non-partisan,” two unaffiliated individuals, and one with the American Constitution Party. None currently holds an office.

Weiser is expected to file his candidacy paperwork with the Secretary of State later today, according to a campaign source.

A native of New York, Weiser earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Swathmore College and a juris doctorate from the New York University School of Law, where he was the articles editor for the NYU Law Review.

He clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Byron R. White and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and began his law career as an antitrust lawyer for the Department of Justice.

In 2009, Weiser was named Deputy Assistant Attorney General by President Barack Obama for the department’s antitrust division, and later worked in the White House as a senior advisor for technology and innovation for the National Economic Council.

He served as dean of the University of Colorado law school from 2011 to 2016 and has been on the faculty of the law school since 1999.