Michael Dougherty, the Boulder district attorney who last year successfully prosecuted the man who killed 10 people inside a grocery store, is running for Colorado attorney general.
Dougherty, 53, has spent the last seven years leading the 20th judicial district attorney’s office. And even though he could technically stay in that job for another seven years if he kept winning re-election, Dougherty said he felt compelled to go for the state’s top law enforcement job because he was alarmed at the actions from President Donald Trump’s first month in office.
“We’re going to continue to see significant challenges coming from the Trump and Musk administration,” Dougherty said, referencing Trump adviser Elon Musk. “So ensuring that the attorney general’s office is led with integrity and that we’re choosing those battles based on principle and the rule of law and not based on politics.”
He filed paperwork officially opening his campaign on Monday night.
Dougherty said his top priorities in the job would be enhancing public safety, growing the consumer protection division and solidifying Colorado’s rights to river water under the Colorado River Compact, which is being re-negotiated now among seven states, including Colorado.
A Democrat, Dougherty said he agreed with most of what current state Attorney General Phil Weiser has done in the past six years, but would put a renewed emphasis on consumer protection. He said he’d evaluate whether to join multi-state lawsuits against the Trump administration based on whether any particular Coloradans would be affected.
“I appreciate that the AG’s office has had a record of success in many of those cases, but I can promise you as attorney general of Colorado that I will only bring a suit against the federal government when it’s something that’s actually harming Coloradans,” he said. “I will never do it for political interest.”
Weiser, in his second term as AG, is running for governor.
Dougherty did note he agreed with Weiser’s recent decision to sue the federal government after Trump’s announcement to end birthright citizenship.
Dougherty also said that as attorney general, he would launch a statewide conviction integrity unit that would probe wrongful convictions — either from police or prosecutor misconduct or DNA mistakes.
He noted the current scandal at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation lab, where a former technician faces more than 100 criminal charges for alleged misconduct between 2008 and 2023, could be helped by a state-run office that would receive applications for conviction reviews.
Dougherty grew up in New York and graduated from Nassau Community College, Cornell University and the Boston University School of Law. He launched his legal career at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he supervised 45 sex crimes prosecutors.
He moved to Colorado in 2009 to join then-Attorney General John Suthers’ office, where he led the criminal justice section, including the DNA Justice Review Project. He then went to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office and was the number two there before he briefly ran for attorney general in the Democratic primary against Weiser. He was out fundraised by Weiser and eventually dropped that bid and launched a campaign to run for Boulder district attorney.
Dougherty is the first person to announce his bid for the November 2026 attorney general’s race, according to the Secretary of State’s website.
