Resistor Vic Podcast · Resistor Vic getting Main St voices into the political conversation

Resistor Vic Pod 39: Julie Gonzales

·46 min·3 clips

Julie Gonzalez says she takes zero dollars from corporate PACs and would reject them if offered.

Big Mike opens by treating politics as something that ought to land with regular people. Gonzalez responds with a family story rooted in Southern Colorado, where her people stayed put and the border moved around them. She talks about parents who worked hard, stretched every dollar, and still found ways to support other people. That memory becomes the base of her politics, especially the idea that you lift as you rise. The interview keeps coming back to education as a public necessity rather than a talking point. Gonzalez says she is running for the U.S. Senate in Colorado because she thinks the state needs leaders who have been doing the work all along, not just people with seniority. The host presses on John Hickenlooper and asks what he has done in five and a half years that has clearly improved Coloradans' lives. Gonzalez does not dodge it. She argues that the left has to look hard at whether it keeps rewarding officeholders who have not actually led on the issues that matter. She describes herself as a Working Families Party Democrat, not a label-first ideologue. The point, she says, is to meet people where they are. From there, the conversation gets concrete. She names unrigging the economy, protecting the freedom to join a union, and defending bodily autonomy as core commitments. Gonzalez says she helped found the Colorado Working Families Party before she ever ran for office. She also describes her relationship with Denver DSA, saying the group was organizing young people and renters in ways she respected. Her membership eventually lapsed during her first year in the state legislature, which she describes as intense enough to crowd out everything else. Still, she says she aligns with the values DSA stands for. What she wants now is not a purity test. She wants a broad coalition that includes the left flank and people just taking their first steps into politics. The episode closes on the familiar campaign reality of money, support, and the need to outwork a better-known incumbent.

As heard by us

A plainspoken Senate interview about class, coalitions, and Colorado power.

Julie Gonzales comes across as a candidate who grounds her Senate pitch in family memory and organizer politics. Her Southern Colorado background and lift-as-you-rise ethic shape how she talks about education, unions, and power, and that gives the interview a plainspoken center.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Colorado Senate pitch that sounds like a doorstep conversation.

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