State Sen. Julie Gonzales’ bid to challenge U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper in Colorado’s Democratic primary got a boost Tuesday from Indivisible when the national arm of the progressive grassroots group endorsed the Denver lawmaker.

The national group’s endorsement comes less than a week before Gonzales is expected to land a top-line designation on the June 30 primary ballot Saturday at the Colorado Democratic Party’s nominating assembly in Pueblo, on the same day local Indivisible groups plan to sponsor more than a dozen anti-Trump “No Kings” rallies across the state.

Hickenlooper, a former two-term governor and former two-term mayor of Denver, is seeking his second term in the Senate in a state rated by nonpartisan election analysts as solidly Democratic in this year’s midterms.

Gonzales and political science professor Karen Breslin are vying for the chance to face the incumbent in the Democratic primary, while half a dozen Republicans and nearly as many independent candidates are also running for the office.

“Colorado deserves a fighter in Congress,” said Ezra Levin, a co-executive director and co-founder of Indivisible, in a statement that went on to charge Hickenlooper with treating President Donald Trump’s second term as “business as usual.”

“If you’re happy with how the Democratic Party has performed over the last year, Hick is your guy,” Levin said. “But if you think the Democratic Party needs more energy, conviction, and fight, Julie Gonzales is your candidate.”

Levin told Colorado Politics that the national group followed the lead of the Indivisible Colorado chapter, which formally endorsed Gonzales a month ago after members voted by a wide margin to back her.

“It’s got to start with the locals,” Levin said in an interview. “From our point of view, even in cases where we would love to get involved, we don’t bigfoot the locals. And then there’s got to be a super-majority vote of the actual members in the state for us to do an endorsement.”

Robin Kupernik, lead facilitator of the Indivisible Colorado Action Network, said in a statement that backing Gonzales had been an easy decision.

“Sen. Gonzales has the sense of urgency that meets this moment — we need elected officials to fight hard against Trump and the Republican’s authoritarian power grab,” Kupernik said.

Gonzales said last month, after receiving the state-level group’s formal support, that she was running to be a senator “who answers to working people, not corporate lobbyists.”

“The same special interests jacking up costs are funding extremists who want to take away our freedoms,” Gonzales said in a statement. “We need leaders right now who don’t just make promises, they fight, and they deliver.”

The Gonzales endorsement is only the fifth made by the national group in a Democratic primary so far this cycle. It’s part of an aggressive program, Indivisible says, that it adopted after a handful of Senate Democrats voted to end the federal government shutdown last fall without achieving any of the goals party leaders had insisted on at the outset.

“All endorsed candidates represent a break with failed, status quo Democratic Party leadership and commit to driving toward a true opposition party in 2026 and beyond,” Indivisible said in a release.

Like his delegation colleague, Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, Hickenlooper remained opposed to reopening the government under the deal Republicans struck with some of their fellow Democrats.

Levin said Hickenlooper’s votes for Trump’s cabinet nominees last winter and his continued support for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were among the reasons the group’s members cite for replacing the lawmaker.

“The primary measure of whether or not Indivisible leaders and groups are getting behind primary challenges is, our incumbent an actual fighter and treating this moment like an existential crisis for democracy, or are they basically treating it as politics as usual?” Levin said.

Hickenlooper, he added, “is a fine, mediocre Democratic senator from a blue state that could have a fighter. And I think that’s why you’re seeing Indivisible groups and members overwhelmingly endorse some real change. Why shouldn’t Colorado have a fighter in the Senate?”

Hickenlooper’s campaign manager, Justin Lamorte, told Colorado Politics last month that a steady stream of endorsements from national groups makes clear that the senator has been fighting for progressive values.

“Whether it’s defending our democracy from Trump’s corruption and corporate interests, blocking Republicans’ plans to sell off Colorado’s public lands, reigning in ICE and opposing cruel mass deportations, or fighting to make health care affordable and accessible for every Coloradan, Hickenlooper is meeting this moment with urgency,” Lamorte said in a statement. “He is building a strong coalition to defeat MAGA and keep Colorado blue.”

Hickenlooper has won endorsements from abortion-rights advocacy group Planned Parenthood Action Fund; gun-control advocates Brady PAC and GIFFORDS PAC; election reform groups End Citizens United and Let America Vote; environmental groups League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, National Resources Defense Council Action and Conservation Colorado; and 314 Action, a Democratic-aligned group that works to elect candidates with scientific backgrounds.

Levin told Colorado Politics that simply checking the right boxes wasn’t enough.

“I do think even among rank-and-file Democrats right now — people who are across the ideological spectrum — there’s demand for change,” he said. “People feel let down by the Democratic Party and want to see folks who aren’t promising just to do the same old, same old.”

Saying it can be difficult to figure out which politicians can deliver, Levin added: “So one of the major things that we can do with an endorsement is identify who’s actually walking the walk, not just talking the talk.”