The Massachusetts Democrat who inspired the creation of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told Colorado Democrats that it’s up to them to “organize, organize, organize” to derail the massive Republican tax and spending bill making its way through Congress.

Noting that the budget reconciliation package — named The “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” after President Donald Trump’s nickname for his administration’s signature legislation — narrowly passed the House of Representatives last month by a single vote, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren urged Democrats at the state party’s annual fundraising dinner to pressure at least one of Colorado’s Republican lawmakers to break with their party when the bill returns from the Senate.

“Every one of Colorado’s Republican House members voted for it,” Warren said, sparking catcalls and groans from the crowd. “Any one of them could put a stop to it.”

Jabbing her finger, Warren added: “And yeah, I’m looking at you, Gabe and Jeff and Jeff and Lauren,” referring to U.S. Reps. Gabe Evans, Jeff Hurd, Jeff Crank and Lauren Boebert.”

The four were part of the nearly party-line 215-214 vote in favor of the bill in the House, with all Democrats and two Republicans voting against it and one Republican voting present.

The 1,116-page bill makes permanent individual income tax cuts passed in Trump’s first term and adds additional tax cuts on tips, overtime and interest on some loans for U.S.-made cars. It phases out clean energy tax credits passed during the Biden administration and cuts projected growth in Medicaid and food assistance spending, in part by setting strict new work requirements for recipients. Among myriad other provisions, the bill also increases border security spending, boosts state and local tax deductions and lifts the federal debt ceiling by $4 trillion.

Chances that any of the four Colorado Republicans might help sink the legislation are exceedingly slim, even though some of them have expressed reservations about elements of the bill they voted for the first time around.

“Now, instead of standing up and saying what Trump is doing wrong, Republicans in Congress are suffering a major medical emergency,” Warren said. “It seems that every single one of them has had their spine removed.”

But that didn’t deter the progressive former law professor, who drew steady applause and cheers from the roughly 600 donors packed into the Seawell Ballroom at the Denver Center for Performing Arts on May 31.

“We need Colorado on the front lines. Trump’s big, ugly bill is not law, not yet,” she said. “Now is the time — not next year, not next month. Now call those four Republican representatives, and once you’ve done it once, do it again, and then again and again.”

Warren’s 20-minute keynote address capped the Democrats’ eighth annual Obama Gala, itself at the end of a full day of seminars, discussions, speeches and organizing events that were part of the second annual Dem Fest.

Although their styles bore some resemblance — by turns folksy and impassioned — Warren’s speech was the near antithesis of keynote remarks delivered by former top Trump advisor Steve Bannon at the Colorado Republicans’ annual Centennial Dinner in Colorado Springs on March 28, the eve of the GOP’s biennial reorganization meeting.

Shad Murib, the state Democrats’ chair, told Colorado Politics that party officers decided to move the dinner to the end of May from its customary adjacency to their reorg meeting — held this year in Aurora on March 13 — to avoid landing in the middle of the General Assembly’s session, when legislative business and spring blizzards would often prevent some supporters from attending.

The 2025 Obama dinner’s brisk program bore little resemblance to proceedings at Democratic dinners in years past, which typically included as many as a dozen awards with as many presentation and acceptance speeches, the chance for all manner of elected and party officials to stand and be acknowledged, and even the occasional live auction — sometimes pushing the keynote speaker’s start time close to midnight.

This year’s edition, possibly compressed to prevent organizers from collapsing after starting their work day before dawn, didn’t dispense entirely with awards, however.

Senate President James Coleman handed the Murphy Roberts Rising Star award to Micaela Parker, his senior advisor; party executive director Karin Asensio named Sasha Davis Volunteer of the Year; U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet gave the Democrat of the Year award on U.S. Rep. Jason Crow; and Gov. Jared Polis recognized former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer with the Lifetime Achievement award.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston set the tone for the evening in his welcoming remarks, recalling that he recently honored 90-year-old city staffer Albertine Sellers’ record-breaking 69th year as a Denver employee.

He said she told him she was living in the South in 1955, the year of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling. She told him, Johnston said, that she “‘wanted to go someplace where I thought, as a young Black woman, I could get a fresh start and I could find a job, and I thought that place was Colorado, and I got a bus, and I came all the way out here, and I’ve been working at the City of Denver ever since.'”

“That is what drives people to believe that there is opportunity,” Johnston said. “In the olden days, we used to describe Denver as the capital of the Old West. It was the place where you came but it was open to anyone. You could leave the old prejudices of the old world, you could build a new life, whether that was drilling for oil or looking for silver or looking for gold.”

Johnston said that his hope is that, “in this moment, this city, this state, can now be the capital of the New West — more open, more free, more welcoming, more American, maybe, than any of the rest of those places where you can still help from any place to do anything, and you can build a life, build a family and know you are welcome here.”

Johnston closed by acknowledging the elephant in the room, that while his party might control state government in Colorado, the opposition holds the levers of power nationally.

“We’re in a moment when that is less clear than it’s ever been before, at the national level — less certain than it’s ever been before,” he said. “This is our moment to say we will put a light up on these shining mountains, to say it is still possible that government works. It is still possible that people get more done when they turn to each other and when they turn on each other.”

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