U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper has endorsed fellow Democrat Jessica Killin’s bid to oust Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank in Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, giving the first-time candidate a clean sweep of support from the state’s six-member Democratic delegation.

Killin, an Army veteran and former chief of staff to second gentleman Doug Emhoff, is one of six Democrats vying to take on Crank next year in a district that has only elected Republicans in the more than five decades since its creation.

Despite its solid GOP track record, Democrats are bullish heading into the midterms on finally flipping the seat, which roughly shares its boundaries with El Paso County, citing both the district’s rapidly changing voting patterns and double-digit shifts toward Democrats this year in special elections across the country.

Hickenlooper’s formal endorsement this week means every one of her potential partisan colleagues from Colorado believe Killin is the Democrat who can do it.

“Jessica Killin brings the courage and leadership we need to take back Congress and deliver results for Coloradans,” Hickenlooper said in a statement released by Killin’s campaign. “She is an Army veteran and a fourth-generation Coloradan. She knows working families deserve better than paying double for their health insurance because extreme Republicans handed out tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.”

Added Hickenlooper: “Jessica is focused on bringing down prices and creating jobs across Southern Colorado, and I’m ready to work with her to do just that.”

Hickenlooper joins U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Jason Crow and Brittany Pettersen in endorsing Killin, who burst out of the gate with one of the largest single-day fundraising hauls in the history of Colorado campaigns.

Pointing to last month’s gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey and statewide races in Georgia and Pennsylvania, where Democrats won by unexpectedly wide margins, Bennet said in his endorsement that Killin was primed to turn Colorado’s 5th CD blue.

“(The) elections across the country showed the American people are fed up with Donald Trump’s policies that are raising prices on everything from housing to food to health care. Coloradans have an opportunity to stop Donald Trump’s power grab and restore balance to Washington — and that starts with electing Jessica Killin to the House of Representatives,” Bennet said in a statement.

“Flipping this seat would be a strong rebuke of Trumpian policies that take money out of Coloradans’ pockets, throw our economy into chaos, and hurt working families,” Bennet said. “Jessica has my full support, and I look forward to doing everything in my power to elect her to Congress and flip the House in 2026.”

Heading into next year’s election, House Republicans are defending the narrowest majority held by either party in nearly a century, with just three seats required to flip control of the chamber. Election forecasters predict that’s a likely outcome, since the party that occupies the White House typically loses seats in the midterms. In 2018, Trump’s first midterm election, the GOP lost a net 40 House seats, handing the gavel to the Democrats, though Republicans gained two Senate seats that year and kept control of that chamber.

Since 2020, the 5th CD’s electorate has been shifting in the Democrats’ direction faster than any other district’s in the country, according to election analysts, including its status as one of only a few House districts where last year’s Democratic nominee, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, outperformed Joe Biden’s 2020 results.

Crank comfortably won election last year by nearly 14 points, though that was the lowest margin a Republican has ever enjoyed in the district, amounting to less than half the 31-point margin his predecessor, Doug Lamborn, posted just eight years earlier.

While the district has been consistently rated as a “solid” Republican seat for decades, the nonpartisan Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales moved the 5th CD one step toward competitive territory earlier this year, observing that the seat is “still difficult territory for Democrats but in a wave year could be competitive.”

Independent candidate Matt Cavanaugh, an Army combat veteran and author, is a potential wild card in next year’s race, particularly in a district where 52% of voters are unaffiliated.

“A majority of voters in this district are registered unaffiliated/independent, and recent polling shows 62% want a true Independent option,” Cavanaugh told Colorado Politics last month. “We’re confident we’ll have the resources to communicate that (so) voters truly have options, for a change.”

After drawing national attention from insider political newsletters before she declared her candidacy in July, Killin brought in $750,000 in the first 24 hours and raised more than $1 million in her first quarter in the race, more than any 5th CD candidate from either party had ever reported for the quarterly fundraising period.

That’s about twice what Crank raised for the quarter, though his campaign notes that this year the incumbent has pulled in more than $1.5 million in donations to his principal campaign committee and three joint fundraising committees he controls.

Raised in Colorado Springs and a graduate of Falcon High School, Killin attended college on an ROTC scholarship and then served overseas as an Army paratrooper and military police officer, attaining the rank of captain. Following her military service, she earned a law degree at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, where she later taught.

Killin worked as a lead lobbyist for USAA, a group of financial services companies, before jobs as chief of staff to prominent Democratic lawmakers, including Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Florida Rep. Donna Shalala. She held the same position for Emhoff, Harris’ husband, until Trump took office in January.

The other Democrats running for the seat are Joe Reagan, an Army combat veteran and nonprofit head who ran for the nomination in 2024; Jamey Smith; Zurit Zuriel Horowitz; Justice Lord; and Michelle Tweed.

Colorado’s major party 2026 nominees will be chosen in next year’s June 30 primary.