Rep. Jodeh seeking Aurora state Senate seat vacated by Buckner after Nov. 5 win

AURORA | Aurora Democratic State Rep. Iman Jodeh said this week she would seek the state Sen. District 29 seat, being vacated by state Sen. Janet Buckner.

Buckner announced her resignation days after winning re-election to her Aurora state Senate seat unopposed.

Jodeh also won re-election for a third term in her House District 41 seat on Nov. 5.

Jodeh, 42, is a lifelong Auroran and daughter of Palestinian immigrants who has spent her career advocating for the rights of people who, like her parents, came to the U.S. seeking better, safer lives. 

If elected, Jodeh’s House District seat vacancy would set off another race among Democrats in the region.
“I am ready to carry forward the values that have informed my work in public service: fairness, inclusion and an unrelenting commitment to creating a better, brighter future for all Coloradans,” Jodeh said in a statement.

The progressive Democrat leads programs building relationships with and cultural understanding of Middle Easterners. She serves as a community advocate for the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado. And, as co-founder of the Colorado Muslim Leadership Council and spokesperson for the Colorado Muslim Society, she has fought Islamophobia and racism.

Jodeh and state Rep. Yara Zokaie recently announced the launch of the Joint MENASA and Muslim Caucus, an initiative aimed at advocating for Middle Eastern, North African, South Asian, and Muslim communities. This caucus is the first of its kind in the Colorado General Assembly and seeks to address the challenges of representation, equity, and discrimination facing these diverse groups.

Jodeh is the first Muslim and Palestinian American elected to the Colorado General Assembly.

“With a Trump presidency looming and the threat of policies like the Muslim ban resurfacing, our communities need fierce advocates,” Jodeh said in a statement. She touted the caucus’s mission to combat xenophobia and Islamophobia through legislative action, public engagement, and amplifying diverse voices.

In a Sentinel interview about her re-election campaign, Jodeh said her policy agenda “is informed by basic human rights,” which she notes are as much a state issue as an international one. “It means the right to housing, clean air, access to jobs and education and health care for all,” she said. 

On health care, she said she is most proud of her legislation relieving and at times forgiving medical debt and ensuring birth doulas are covered by insurance. On housing, she touts her work extending eviction processes from 48 hours to 10 days to “avoid putting people on a path of homelessness.”

She highlights her legislation making eviction proceedings accessible remotely “so more people can defend themselves” at hearings. On immigration, she points to her efforts helping establish the state Office of New Americans as a hub for immigrants seeking to navigate life in Colorado. 

Jodeh had said a seat in the Legislature would allow her to continue focusing on social policies that help immigrants and other vulnerable communities.

“When you have my identity markers as a Palestinian Muslim woman in America, you really don’t know anything other than how to advocate,” she said.

Her advocacy work intensified last fall when, following Hamas’ and its allies’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack that killed 1,139 people in Israel, Israel waged a war in Gaza that had killed more than 46,000 Palestinians there as of Dec. 4. Photos and video footage of dead and wounded Palestinian babies the age of her own daughter, who was born a month before the war, have haunted her, she said.

Late last year, Jodeh circulated a letter to Colorado’s congressional delegation calling for hostages to be released, humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza, a ceasefire and U.S. involvement brokering a lasting Palestinian-Israeli peace. She was dismayed that many longtime political allies and even friends wouldn’t sign it: 

“It was really hard to hear from my colleagues that a Palestinian life didn’t mean as much as the life of an Israeli. I felt a sense of abandonment.”

Nearly a year later, she continues speaking at rallies and urging members of Congress to press for an end to what she sees as Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but has no plans to circulate another ceasefire letter. 

“If people haven’t said anything by now on their own volition, then I don’t know how to help you.”

It has been gutting, especially as a new mother, she added, to “very much come to think I will never see a Palestinian state in my lifetime.”

Arapahoe County Democratic Party officials said a vacancy committee will meet Monday, Jan. 6 to select a replacement for Buckner. The time and place are still undecided. The first day of the 2025 Colorado legislative session is Jan. 8.

Buckner’s abrupt resignation has resulted in a flurry of concern among both Democrat and Republican party officials. Both parties have called for changes in election law and requirements for special elections, in an effort for one party to hand over the seat to another party member without voter input.

Denver state Sen. Chris Hansen also won re-election to his Denver state Senate seat and announced, abruptly after victory, that he would resign and move to the Western slope for a job, according to CPR and other reports.

“The growing number of senators and representatives of both parties serving in office as a result of vacancy committee selections and not traditional elections should concern every Coloradan, and it certainly concerns me,” Democratic Party Chairperson Shad Murib said in a statement.