David Seligman
Democratic Party
How does your experience make you qualified to represent the people?
First, I have extensive legal experience litigating in court on behalf of working people in Colorado and across the country. I’ve gone up against Amazon and Uber. I’ve taken on the largest corporate landlord in the country for illegally ripping off tens of thousands of renters with junk fees. I’ve sued billion-dollar hospital systems on behalf of tens of thousands of working families buried in medical debt. I have filed first-in-the-nation class actions to challenge surveillance wages on behalf of Uber drivers, AI hiring systems on behalf of job applicants, and the largest meatpacking corporations in the world on behalf of meatpackers dying during the pandemic. We just won in the U.S. Supreme Court in a case I’ve been litigating for more than a decade on behalf of thousands locked up at the immigration detention center in Aurora taking on the GEO Group, the private prison company that runs it. My non-profit and the clients we fight for have recovered nearly $100 million dollars stolen from working people and forced the biggest corporations in the world to follow the law.
This experience matters. Because as attorney general, I would use the law boldly and courageously to take on the Trump Administration and the cruelty and corruption that surround it and to go after the corporate abuse that’s undermining our freedom, prosperity, power, and safety: corporate landlords charging junk fees and forcing families into unsafe and uninhabitable homes; corporations crushing unions through shell structures designed to evade accountability; polluters like Suncor poisoning communities and expecting a pass; private equity turning healthcare and housing into investment vehicles for billionaires; special and metro districts jacking up prices and hurting homeowners; and Big Tech companies building AI systems that deny people jobs, housing, and healthcare, spy on us, manipulate our kids, and build massive data centers that boil the planet to do it.
But it also matters that I’m the only one in this race who hasn’t been either a prosecutor or elected official. This means that I know where the bodies are buried in a legal system that is rigged against working families—because I’ve spent my career navigating it, challenging it, and beating it. And as the next Attorney General, I’ll be focused on taking on a legal system that has too often left working people behind.
Second, I’m the only person in this race who has the entrepreneurial experience of helping to build an organization. As the Executive Director of Towards Justice since 2018, I’ve helped to turn it into a national powerhouse in the fight for economic justice and civil rights. I’ve done it by building coalitions with people and organizations across the country and recruiting and retaining the best lawyers and non-lawyers in the country. That’s the kind of leadership experience we need right now.
Third, I have extensive experience working in the state capitol, helping to draft and pass around a dozen critical worker, consumer, and civil rights protections over the past several years. No one else in the race has that kind of experience. That experience is essential because as the next Attorney General, I’ll know how to work closely with legislators to pass legislation that protects working families in Colorado.
What are your top policy priorities?
My three top priorities for this office flow directly from the conversations I’m having with people across this state.
First, federal overreach and the surveillance state. ICE's paramilitary enforcement is tearing families apart and making our communities less safe. I've already been fighting it—helping to stop the Polis administration from handing Coloradans' personal data to ICE, going after sheriffs who violate laws prohibiting collaboration with ICE, and litigating what may be the largest human trafficking class action in U.S. history — on behalf of immigrants detained at the GEO Group facility in Aurora. As AG, I'll open an ICE Accountability Unit, ready to prosecute agents who violate Colorado law and go after contractors profiting off people's suffering. And I'll take on the broader surveillance state. Big tech companies in collaboration with the government are building a surveillance infrastructure unlike anything we’ve ever seen. I’ll take it on.
Second, we’re getting crushed by an economy that’s rigged against working families. And this is core to the central work of the attorney general. The affordability crisis is really an accountability crisis. . Working people are getting ripped off, and it is not an accident. Nearly a million Coloradans are drowning in medical debt. Insurance companies jack up premiums and deny claims. Corporate landlords pile junk fees on us, and private equity buys up our housing and healthcare. Big Tech companies collect our most intimate personal data and feed it into algorithms that figure out the maximum we’ll pay for a plane ticket, groceries, or our kid's medicine — your pain points, monetized. And union busting is part of the affordability crisis too: it's whether we earn a decent wage and whether we have a meaningful seat at the table when the boss decides otherwise. I’ve dedicated my career to using workers rights, consumer rights, and antitrust laws in bold and new ways to take on the corporations that are ripping us off. I've recovered nearly $100 million for working people and forced the biggest corporations in the world to follow the law. The AG's office has more tools to do this work than any other law enforcement office in Colorado. I know how to use them, and I will.
Third, corporate pollution and climate change. With the EPA being dismantled by the Trump administration, we have to go on offense — and I'll be honest, even before Trump, state agencies weren't doing enough. Suncor has committed over a thousand emissions violations in Commerce City, a predominantly Latino community where kids have elevated asthma rates, and paid fines that amount to rounding errors against billions in quarterly profits. CDPHE allowed Suncor to monitor itself. State agencies approved fracking 1,400 feet from the Aurora Reservoir. PFAS is contaminating communities across the state and we’re not doing enough to enforce the bans the legislature already passed. I'll create an Environmental Justice and Protection Unit in the AG's office — independent of the agencies of the Governor — to go on offense for working families across the state. I’ll make polluters pay, meaningfully.
What is one issue you think is being overlooked in this race, and how would you address it?
On the campaign trail we’re often asked about what we’re going to do to take on the cruelty of the Trump Administration, but we’re rarely asked about what we’re going to do to take on government overreach at home. I want to be perfectly clear that I intend to work closely with state and local agencies across Colorado to protect the safety and prosperity of Coloradans. But my ultimate responsibility is to the people of Colorado, not the agencies of state or local government. That means I’ll take on law enforcement or corrections agencies systemically violating civil rights, building on the work of the Aurora consent decree and ensuring we do more to protect people in Aurora and across the state, or agencies colluding with ICE. It means I’ll go after the use of Flock or license plate reader technology in ways that violate the constitution or laws protecting immigrants and people coming to Colorado to obtain reproductive care. It means I’ll take on government agencies or private institutions that violate state anti-discrimination law by acquiescing to the administration to sell out LGBTQ+ people, immigrants and others. It means I won’t be afraid to use Colorado’s anti-corruption laws to go after the grift, including investigating members of our own congressional delegation who violate Colorado law by trading stocks based on information they obtained in their office.
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