Top Colorado legal officer, running for governor, brings 'wisdom' of Jewish learning to his work

(JNS) — Democratic Colorado gubernatorial hopeful Phil Weiser calls Denver home, but he returned to the city of his youth this week for a quick fundraising visit.

In an interview at a wine bar on Manhattan’s Upper East Side before the private fundraiser, Weiser, who had iced tea, spoke with JNS about his Jewish identity and his successful legal efforts, as the state’s current attorney general, to win back hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money that the Trump administration had cut, including funds for healthcare, education and transportation.

While Colorado’s current governor, Jared Polis, is Jewish, the man who hopes to replace him in 2026 may be the most actively engaged Jew ever to hold public office in the state.

Weiser, 57, and his wife Dr. Heidi Wald, who is a geriatrician and chief quality officer at Denver Health, are long-time residents of the city and members of Kohelet, a non-denominational, lay-led synagogue.

Their two children—a daughter now in college and a son in high school—attended the Denver Jewish Day School and have been involved with BBYO. Wald served for many years as the vice president of their synagogue and is now on the board of the local Jewish family services organization, Weiser said.

Weiser has served on the Jewish life committee of Rose Community Foundation and on the international and overseas committees of the Denver Jewish Federation, known as JewishColorado, he said. Weiser has also studied Talmud at the Denver Kollel. That has taught him that “all truth is partial,” he told JNS. “The Talmud teaches clearly to listen to each other with respect.”

“I believe in Jewish learning, and I bring that wisdom into my work,” he said.

Weiser has also visited Israel several times, he told JNS, both with his family and on two trips with the National Association of Attorneys General, most recently with a small group soon after Oct. 7.

Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Photo by Debra Nussbaum Cohen.

Weiser’s commitment to Judaism and Jewish community stems from lessons learned from his grandparents and mother.

His mother was born in the concentration and forced labor camp Buchenwald and is among the youngest Holocaust survivors—a young infant when she and her mother were liberated. Weiser’s maternal grandfather survived the concentration camp Theresienstadt.

After reuniting with his wife and baby daughter a year later, Weiser’s grandfather had a crisis of faith. His wife—Weiser’s grandmother—told him that if he didn’t remain a believing part of the Jewish community, it would be as if Hitler had succeeded in eradicating the Jewish people. His grandfather stayed in the fold.

“When you grow up in a family of Holocaust survivors, Jewish continuity is important to you,” he told JNS. “You feel an obligation.”

“I strongly identify as Jewish, and I’ve been pretty open about my Jewishness,” he added.

He acknowledges that the violent antisemitism being waged against Jews everywhere, including elected officials like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, whose house was set afire last April while Shapiro and his family slept inside on the first night of Passover, is concerning.

Weiser also knew the woman, Karen Diamond, who died of her injuries after Mohamed Sabry Soliman allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at a group rallying to free the Israeli hostages in Gaza, while yelling “free Palestine.” Following Diamond’s death, state prosecutors charged Soliman with first-degree murder, in addition to state and federal hate crime charges.

Weiser says that he has offered his assistance to the Boulder district attorney, who is prosecuting the case.

“Some people have asked if I’m afraid I’m making myself a target, and to quote one of the great rabbinical scholars, ‘The whole world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is not to be afraid,’” he said, citing the famous dictum from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. “You put yourself out there and do the right thing and cannot allow yourself to be afraid.”

As attorney general, Weiser has filed 45 lawsuits against the Trump administration during the president’s current term. He has won a majority of them, according to the Colorado Sun’s Trump case tracker. Those cases have the potential to recoup $1 billion in funding for Colorado’s SNAP food insecurity program, research, mental health services, transportation and education needs.

His lawsuit preserved $229 million for Colorado’s public health alone, including immunizations and infectious disease prevention, he said in a November speech in Denver. So far the president has abided by court rulings, Weiser told JNS.

“When you’re up against a lawless bully, you have to stand for your principles,” he said. “You don’t try to make nice. You fight for what you believe in.”

Weiser grew up in the Bronx and then Hastings-on-Hudson in Westchester, and attended New York University Law School before clerking for Supreme Court Associate Justices Byron White and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a faculty post at University of Colorado Law School at Boulder brought him to the Denver area.

A decade later, Weiser was lured back to Washington when President Barack Obama appointed him deputy attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division. But at that point, he had already fallen for the state.

While at the UC Law School, where he became its dean, “I fell in love with Colorado,” he told JNS. “Before that I didn’t know from Denver. I loved that the people there really root for each other to succeed, and the Jewish community there is tight.”

Then in 2018, he handily won the race for his first elected office, as the state’s attorney general. In 2022, he won 54% of the votes cast against a Republican challenger, for a second term as attorney general.

It remains to be seen how he will fare in next year’s Democratic primary for governor, against Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).

But Weiser is clear about his mission, as an elected official and as a Jew.

“We have got to be proud of what we believe in and to fight for it, leaving it all on the field,” Weiser said over his iced tea. “We have to stay hopeful, positive and know that we are all doing everything we can. We need leaders we can really believe in.”