We can all agree that the bitter tone and excess of political money in Washington, DC has no place here in Colorado. We’ve shown the country time and again how Colorado leads on so many forward thinking ideas.

It’s time for our state to lead again, so I challenge my Democratic primary election opponents to join me in pledging to:

Run Clean Primary Campaigns:

I promise to run a positive campaign. This is not the time or place for Democrats to run negative campaigns against each other. Democratic primary election voters - Democrat and Unaffiliated alike - want honesty from their candidates and they deserve that. Let’s agree to keep derogatory mentions of each other’s names out of our campaign commercials, mail pieces, phone calls, tweets, etc.  Voters want to hear where we stand on the issues - they don’t want to hear personal attacks. Let’s honor Colorado voters and give them what they want.

Spend Responsibly:

An obscene amount of money gets spent on our elections these days, and people are tired of it. Let’s agree to scale back campaign spending in the Democratic primary. We want to be a strong, united front going into the general election in November. I am asking all Democratic candidates to pledge to cap primary election spending at $3 million -- plenty of funding to get our names on the ballot and effectively communicate with primary voters. This is far more than any Democratic gubernatorial candidate has spent before in the primary, so this should not be a hardship for any of us.

Reject Corporate Influence:

Corporations have too much influence in our politics today. I propose we all pledge to not take -- and if necessary, return any -- corporate PAC contributions, or donations  from corporate lobbyists, to eliminate this influence in our campaigns and in our state government. And for any of us who have already accepted corporate donations, we should agree to return those contributions. When corporations lobby at the capitol it's because they have a profit motive.

Send a Message to Outside Groups:

Obviously, we can’t coordinate with any outside group that might be supportive of our campaigns, so we can’t tell them what to do.

As candidates, we need to send a message about what kind of politics we feel is appropriate in Colorado.  If we keep our campaigns positive, they may follow suit.

If we can all work together toward improving our elections, maybe Colorado voters will feel more respected and get more engaged. If we show voters in the spring that Democrats are responsible leaders seriously focused on the issues and putting Coloradans first, whichever candidate wins the primary then will then have a strong start in winning the trust of voters in the fall.