Updated 9:55 a.m., Sept. 17, 2025
CU Regent Wanda James is running for Congress in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, which covers Denver. To make that bid, she intends to primary long-time Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette.
James is expected to formally launch her campaign later today.
“It’s time, right? We’ve seen Democrats nationwide asking for people who are going to fight for democracy, fight for our brand,” James told CPR News about why she’s jumping in now. “This is not a time for us just to have somebody that votes well as a Democrat. It’s time for us to change this brand, to get people excited again about what it is that Democrats do.”
James said Denver has changed over the last 30 years that DeGette has been representing it. “We have a 35-year-old average age. We are entrepreneurial. We are diverse. And I’m an entrepreneur. I’m bringing lived experience to this seat. I’m bringing different ideas, motivation. I’m changing the brand that is Democrat.”
For her, changing the brand means stressing her background: raised by a single father who was in the military, first-generation graduate from the University of Colorado, commissioned through the Naval ROTC in college, small business experience as the founder and CEO of Simply Pure Dispensary, and a range of community involvement.
But while those are the details she’s pitching to voters, the biggest thing James may bring to the race to help with her bid is her extensive political rolodex.
Deep political roots in Colorado
James has been involved in state politics for almost two decades.
She managed Gov. Jared Polis’ first campaign for Congress in 2008 and was later part of his gubernatorial transition team. Then-Gov. John Hickenlooper named her to the Amendment 64 Task Force, which came up with recommendations on how to regulate marijuana in the state.
And she knows how to raise money. She was part of former President Barack Obama’s National Finance Committee in 2008, and a top bundler, someone who organizes and collects campaign contributions from others, for him in Colorado. She was also appointed to the National Finance Committee for former Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden in 2020.
For the past two years, James has represented the 1st Congressional District on the CU Board of Regents, easily winning the general election in this heavily Democratic district after coming out on top in a close primary.
A DeGette campaign spokesperson said the congresswoman is “steadfast” in her commitment to serve her district, citing her efforts to fight cuts to Medicaid, support reproductive freedom, and boost medical research.
“In these uncertain times when extreme MAGA Republicans control the White House and Congress, we need Congresswoman DeGette’s proven leadership to hold the Trump administration accountable and continue delivering for Denverites,” said spokesperson Jennie Peek-Dunstone in an emailed statement. “No matter which party holds the majority, Congresswoman DeGette remains laser-focused on doing the job she was elected to do.”
It’s been over 50 years since the district last sent a Republican to Congress. Except for her first race, DeGette has won her seat with at least 65 percent of the vote each time. In 2024, she took more than 76 percent of the vote.
The real race in the district is in the Democratic primary and it’s been years since DeGette, the dean of Colorado’s delegation, has had a primary challenge that gained traction, much less been challenged by a fellow Democratic officeholder.
“I am already an elected official in the district,” said James, explaining why she believes she will give DeGette a real race. “So name recognition, political know-how — I’m not a political newbie … And also Diana has never had a race with anybody that has the ability to raise money. So I’m raising money. I’ve got name recognition. I have political acumen. Yeah, this is a first for her.”
As a longtime House member, DeGette will have backing from the House Democratic campaign arm, but James didn’t seem concerned.
She said her time in the military, “removed the word ‘can’t’ from my vocabulary.”
For Democratic voters looking for change, James may be offering that more in attitude and background rather than actual age, since she and DeGette are less than a decade apart.
Potentially complicating the picture, James doesn’t have the challenger field all to herself. Two young political newcomers have also filed to run: 28-year-old Melat Kiros and 28-year-old Carter Hanson.
To make the primary ballot, candidates will either need to collect signatures or win enough support at the district caucus. A crowded field would be a hurdle for all the challengers, because it divides up the voters who are seeking change and helps the incumbent.
James’ opposition to racial depictions in public health materials provoked recent censure
James comes to the congressional race after enduring controversy this year in her role as a regent.
In July, she was censured 7-1 around comments she made over a public health campaign on the risks of marijuana use that she said included racist tropes. The materials featured images of Black and dark-skinned males alongside descriptions of the potential harms from early exposure to THC, such as delayed mental development and poor school performance.
“I mean, it was horrible. It was embarrassingly horrible,” she said.
The CU Board of Regents said the censure stemmed not from the content of her critique, but from her conflict of interest as both a regent and the owner of a cannabis dispensary.
“I wasn’t just censured, I was sanctioned,” James noted, maintaining she did nothing wrong. While she’s allowed to go to regents’ meetings and vote, she was removed from committees and is not allowed to participate in university events that regents usually attend for the rest of her term, which is up in 2029.
James was accused of improperly urging the governor to cut funding for the public health campaign.
However, she said that she didn’t even see the images until months after Polis first proposed zeroing out funding as part of a larger package of cost saving measures.
The day James was censured, the governor’s office said Polis had no recollection of speaking to her about the 2025-2026 budget submission, but that he was made aware of the “deeply insensitive images” and didn’t support the funding. The office added that, given the “difficult budget environment,” the governor and his budget team made the decision for additional cuts.
“To be quite frank with you, I was told by the former general counsel that the Regents were just upset because I kept speaking about the fact that the University of Colorado was not upholding its responsibility to communities of color, and they got tired of me bringing that up,” James said.
Still, if she wins the election, James said she will “remove myself entirely from the cannabis business” and give up her ownership role in Simply Pure, the dispensary and delivery business she and her husband founded in Denver’s Highlands neighborhood.
Despite the pain of the censure, James said that in some ways the Board of Regents “handed me a gift by keeping my name in the newspapers all summer long.”
And she said it brought her support from other Democrats and her community.
“Every Black elected official has signed off on letters to the regents saying that this is ridiculous. Morgan Carroll, the past chair of the party and the past Senate president, wrote letters and op-eds,” she said. “I mean, the amount of support that I have from the Democrats in Colorado is over the top.”
But as someone who has worked on campaigns in the past, James also knows not all publicity is good publicity, and that negative name recognition is something politicians have to be wary of.
Still, she thinks voters will give her a chance despite the censure. She noted that she was elected by people in the 1st District — more than 211,000 people voted for her for regent in 2022. But in that same election, almost 227,000 also voted to send DeGette back to Congress.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with a statement from the DeGette campaign.
Copyright 2025 CPR News