AURORA | Harsh campaign attack ads targeting a handful of Democratic primary election races in Aurora have prompted allegations of racism and false information in the last few days leading up to the June election. 

Multiple Democratic primary races in Aurora are seeing a flurry of advertisements and messages from independent expenditure committees, which expressly advocate for or against clearly identified political candidates.

Two of the races most targeted include House District 41, between incumbent Rep. Jamie Jackson and challenger Aurora Public Schools board member Anne Keke. Also drawing unusual sums of outside money is the House District 42 race, where Sarah Woodson is challenging incumbent Rep. Mandy Lindsay.

Mailers targeting Keke, Jackson, and Lindsay, sent out by outside money groups Colorado Labor Action, Fighting for a Better Aurora and Promoting Progressive Women, have drawn particularly sharp criticism from the candidates in question.

Much of the financial support for the anti-incumbent ads is linked to One Main Street, a controversial dark-money independent expenditure group in Colorado widely reported for funding Democratic candidates considered more pro-business than some progressive Democrats.

Documents filed with the Colorado Secretary of State on behalf of the groups linked to One Main Street all cite Jimmy Dickson as an official agent and an address linked to an apartment complex in Durango. Dickson did not reply to repeated requests for comment.

In a press release on Thursday, Keke’s campaign accused Colorado Labor Action of using racist tropes in its campaign materials opposing Keke. Her campaign said the mailers in question used a photo of Keke taken from social media, surrounded by money and a darkened image, which the campaign says “harkens back to minstrel shows and the ‘coon caricature.’” 

In another mailer, an image of Keke provided by her campaign the image appears desaturated and darkened. 

Keke, a Black immigrant from Côte d’Ivoire, said the mailers are “dog whistled racist tropes,” adding that she asked for an apology. 

“Instead, that dark money group doubled down and sent a piece that is obviously and overtly racist,” Keke said in a statement. “I never thought that I would see this harmful racist caricature from the Jim Crow era used in Aurora in 2026, and I certainly did not expect to see it used by 

an organization that purports to uphold Democratic values.”

Her incumbent opponent, Jackson, is also Black, a committee director for the Aurora NAACP and vice president of the Colorado Black Women for Political Action group.

The opposing campaign and creators of the mailers rebutted Keke’s claims, providing the Sentinel with their own images of the mailers, saying they specifically ensured the image of Keke was not darkened.

When asked by the Sentinel, the independent expenditure committee credited with the mailers, Colorado Labor Action, directed questions to Superior Blue, a political advertising firm that designed the anti-Keke mailers. 

A spokesperson for Superior Blue provided the Sentinel with internal documents that gave explicit directions to ad designers not to change Keke’s skin tone. 

Scott Remley, a partner with Superior Blue, told the Sentinel: “These claims are unequivocally false. No edits were made to the image of Dr. Keke.” 

Remley said Keke “is trying to distract voters from her record” and “from learning her campaign is propped by astroturfed corporate interests,” referring to One Main Street groups, linked to large corporate business interests including oil and gas.

Talking with the Sentinel on Friday, Keke said what she believes is an altered picture crossed the line from normal political mudslinging into divisive territory.

“It is very disheartening and saddening,” Keke said. “I thought everything was about policy and about the work that we want to do, so to tread into what I literally call racism is disappointing.”

Her campaign statement called on Colorado Labor Action to “denounce the mail piece” and urged them to “do a better job of vetting and hiring vendors who know better than to use unacceptable racist imagery in their attacks.” 

Other mailers point to Keke working for a pro-charter school group, the Colorado League of Charter Schools, as the director of grassroots advocacy, to claim that she supports conservative legislation and candidates.

Keke disputes the claims on the mailer. 

Keke said she started working at the organization in February 2025, and her work has never included legislative advocacy. The proposed legislative bills that the mailer attempts to link Keke with were introduced in 2023 and 2024 legislative sessions, before Keke worked with the Colorado League of Charter Schools. Similarly, the mailer highlights the Colorado League of Charter Schools’ support for a far-right Republican candidate for the state Board of Education in 2024, before she was there.

Keke said she feels like her work is being “weaponized” because of misconceptions about charter schools. 

“I’m not involved in the political decisions (at the organization),” she said. “My work is helping families understand how they can advocate for their kids.”

Keke said that if she is elected, she would support more campaign finance regulations and efforts to improve transparency in election spending. Jackson, her opponent, promised the same, if she wins the primary election and the vote in November.

According to campaign finance reports, the independent expenditure committee Colorado Labor Action spent roughly $28,400 on mailers supporting Jackson between May 28 and June 10, as well as another almost $27,000 in June on mailers opposing Keke.

Keke’s opponent, incumbent Rep. Jamie Jackson, appointed to her seat two years ago by an Arapahoe County Democratic Party vacancy committee, has lodged similar complaints about independent expenditure groups opposing her campaign and supporting Keke’s.

Fighting for a Better Aurora, also linked to One Main Street, spent roughly $97,400 on advertisements supporting Keke and opposing Jackson between May 28 and June 10, according to state TRACER campaign expenditure records, in addition to almost $24,000 on mailers reported after that.

Under Colorado law, candidate campaigns are barred from coordinating with independent expenditure committees. Jackson said that any questions regarding communications or mailers sent by Colorado Labor Action must be directed to that organization.

“I am focused on continuing to pass legislation to lower costs for families, expand access to healthcare, protect civil rights, strengthen protections for immigrant communities, support public education, and benefit working people,” Jackson said. “Unlike my opponent, I made the decision to refuse corporate dark money because I believe this seat belongs to the people — not outside interests trying to buy this election.”

Jackson said attack ads targeting her, circulated by PACs, were also laden with inaccuracies and misrepresent her former work with a subsidiary of the GEO Group, which owns private prisons and immigration detention centers across the nation. Jackson has repeatedly said publicly and she wrote in a Sentinel op-ed that she worked in the re-entry division of GEO, Geo Cares Inc., which is wholly separate —  yet wholly owned by —  from the division that operates detention facilities. Jackson said she made the decision to leave the company five years ago when she found out about the extent of its correction operations. 

Jackson’s role at GEO Cares, under contract with the Colorado Department of Corrections,  was to help people being released from state prison facilities to re-integrate into the workforce and into their local communities.

“Make no mistake about it. The deliberate misinformation in the attack mailers is intended to persuade voters into thinking that I Iack character and integrity by portraying me as morally compromised, unethical, complicit in wrongdoing, and indifferent to human dignity,” Jackson said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. They can’t attack my legislative record, so they choose to attack me.”

Fighting for a Better Aurora, which is also affiliated with One Main Street Colorado, issued mailers accusing Jackson of working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but she did not.

The Sentinel has reached out to One Main Street Colorado for comment, but the group has not responded.

Candidates on all sides of the attacks ads have raised questions about the legality of the claims made in the attack ads.

While Colorado’s campaign finance laws generally don’t regulate the content of political advertisements, it is illegal to knowingly circulate “false statements designed to affect the outcome of an election or relating to a candidate for public office,” state election officials say.

“Alleged violations of these provisions are matters of law, and any complaint alleging a violation would need to be filed with the appropriate law enforcement authority for review,” a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office said in an email. 

Campaign finance laws require ads to include a disclaimer stating who paid for or authorized the communication, which these ads do.

In House District 42, Promoting Progressive Women, an independent expenditure committee also associated with One Main Street Colorado has spent $45,600 in campaign mailers against Aurora Democrat Rep. Mandy Lindsay. Additionally, Promoting Progressive Women launched a website accusing Lindsay of “money laundering.”

While Lindsay was linked to a state House committee investigation into allegations by a House committee  of caucus-group expenditure and reimbursement policy breaches, she has not been accused of criminal activity. Money laundering is a state and federal felony based on covering up acquisition of funds created by criminal activity.

The mailers have seized on an ethics complaint filed by Democratic Rep. Bob Marshall of Highlands Ranch, who alleges Lindsay improperly reimbursed herself from the Democratic caucus bank account for personal expenses. 

A House Ethics Committee found in May that Lindsay likely violated ethical guidelines by mismanaging Democratic House caucus funds. The committee hasn’t determined if Lindsay, the caucus co-chair, is guilty and it didn’t find any criminal behavior, according to caucus committee documents.

Lindsay released a statement on Friday asking her House District 42 constituents to “bring honesty and transparency to some unfair and dishonest allegations made against” her. 

In her statement, Lindsay said that “at no time did I ever intentionally use any Caucus funds for my own personal expenses.” Rather than the House Majority Caucus Co-Chair, she and her co-chair are “responsible for planning, coordinating, and leading all the House Dem Caucus meetings and retreats”. 

Lindsay said that her role as caucus co-chair requires her to collect dues and “oversee and use the Caucus’s funds.”  Lindsay goes on to add that while she had been co-chair, “the Caucus has frequently lacked the funds needed to cover its operational activities. Because of my leadership position, I incurred expenditures with $6,853.48 on behalf of the Caucus to help cover its operational activities.” 

Lindsay said she maintained receipts and documentation for all of these expenditures and that the Speaker of the House “reviewed all of my documentation and confirmed that I had incurred $6,853.48 in proper expenditures for the Caucus” and that she had “been reimbursed for most of those expenditures.” 

Lindsay further pushed back on the accusation of “money laundering.”

“The review by the Democratic Party found no money laundering,” Lindsay said. “My colleague’s complaint alleged that I engaged in money laundering by paying dues from my campaign funds and then getting a reimbursement of those dues that I deposited into my own personal account. This isn’t true. In 2022, I paid my dues from campaign funds. Payment of Caucus dues from campaign funds is common and permissible.”

Lindsay urged voters not to “believe the salacious headlines that are being thrown at you from people who are trying to create a scandal for their political gain,” adding that voters should reach out to her if they have further questions. 

Lindsay’s opponent, Sarah Woodson, said she has no control over the ads issued by independent expenditure committees, adding that she often doesn’t even know which groups are supporting her until the ads are released. 

However, Woodson said it’s appropriate to let voters know about the ethics complaint Lindsay is facing and said she said she believes Lindsay mismanaged the funds.

“She is under an ethics investigation; she did just receive additional time to get a lawyer that the taxpayers will have to pay for as she moves through the process. There was a complaint brought up by Rep. Marshall that accused her of money laundering and mismanagement,” Woodson said. “When you’re running a race, that’s when a lot of what you’ve been doing shows up, whether it’s good or bad.”

Woodson said that just because an independent expenditure committee supported her it does not mean that she would allow them to sway her votes if she’s elected to the House seat. 

“This will be proven in how I vote, but if I am the winner of this race, nobody owns my vote, nobody buys my vote,” she said. “I could be in this seat for two years, and absolutely not do anything (the independent expenditure committees) thought I was going to do, totally piss them off, and then they’ll be running negative ads against me. That is the reality of how this thing goes. So, my goal is to keep my promises to the voters and work on the policies that I said I was going to work on.”

Woodson said she would support more transparency in campaign finance, though cautioned that limiting independent expenditure committees could have unintended consequences.

“Just remember that affects all of us, it doesn’t just affect the person that you don’t like that the money’s behind, it affects the person you like too,” she said. 

Aurora Democratic pundit Ken Manzanares agreed, saying, however, that he at one time supported challenger candidates in Aurora races but has since backed off because of the One Main Street links.

“What kind of influence is going to be behind these candidates if they get elected, and who are they going to side with: voters or One Main Street backers?” he said. Assurances to gain votes aren’t enough.

County Commission Races

Beyond state legislative races, One Main Street and affiliated groups have poured money into advertising and messaging against Democratic incumbents in Arapahoe County commissioner races as well.

In the District 2 and District 4 races, One-Main-Street-related group Blue Collar Progressives recently spent more than $65,000 on advertising against incumbent commissioners Jessica Campbell and Leslie Summey, according to state election records. 

Print and digital ads impugn the incumbents for not doing enough to address affordable housing. Some of the ads, attacking Summey, mistakenly cite wrong meeting dates and targeted county measure titles, Summey supporters said.

So far this year, the groups have spent upward of $230,000 in the District 2 race to attack Campbell and promote her challenger, Cherry Creek schools board member Angela Garland — more than double what both candidates have raised for both their campaigns so far. 

“One Main Street’s tactics are not new,” Campbell said in a statement. “These candidates know what will happen to help them win.”

She said, given the tactics and lack of transparency linked to One Main Street groups, voters should consider, “Why would I vote for someone who is willing to harm our community? And for whose gain? Personal gain? The gain of those who think it is worth it to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this person into office? Is this candidate really interested in working for me?”

She said that if candidates receiving support from One Main Street don’t reject and call out their support, they undermine their own credibility.

Challengers Maya Wheeler and Garland did not respond Saturday for comment on the dark-money ad campaigns.

Election Day is June 30. Ballots were mailed out in early June. Clerks from all Aurora counties caution voters to return ballots now to a voting drop-off box or a county clerk facility, as they may not arrive in time be counted if mailed.

For complete coverage of these races and others in the region and across the state, see the Sentinel Colorado 2026 Voter Guide.

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