For decades, the attorney general’s office was seen as a nonpartisan steward of public safety and trust. No more.

In recent years, the office has become a platform for ideological campaigns and headline-chasing litigation — suing presidential administrations and wading into national political fights. Meanwhile, Coloradans have watched crime surge and wondered who’s minding the store.

Fortunately, in Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen, Coloradans have an experienced and trustworthy choice.

The Gazette editorial board endorses Allen for attorney general and urges a vote for him in the upcoming Republican primary as well as the general election. Mail ballots arrive this week.

A career prosecutor since he was an intern attending the University of Kansas Law School, Allen worked in the Kansas attorney general’s office before coming to Colorado.

Voters in El Paso and Teller counties later elected and reelected Allen as DA in 2020 and 2024.

Allen has become a leading voice against our legislature’s terribly misguided “justice reform” policies, testifying before the legislature and speaking out on national television.

When Democrats introduced a shocking bill to narrow the circumstances for what qualifies as first-degree murder, for example, Allen spoke out.

“It really devalues … human life, so to get to a higher sentencing range you have to kill more than one person,” Allen told KDVR in April. “If for some reason someone is just a bad aim… and they only kill one person… that drops that down.”

“You are reducing sentences for some of the worst offenders that we’ve had in Colorado,” Allen added.

He understands what it takes to successfully prosecute murderers, securing the second-longest prison sentence in Colorado history when he prosecuted the man who killed five people and left 22 injured in the Club Q massacre.

Allen certainly won’t play the soft-on-crime game to ease prison sentences and empty prisons.

He prominently added charges of a “bias-motivated crime” against the Club Q shooter — a rare instance where hate crimes prosecution seemed sensible to many across the political spectrum.

His aversion to partisan games — his insistence justice comes first — is overdue at the attorney general’s office. Allen isn’t likely to spend his days joining lawsuit after lawsuit against presidential administrations or appearing on national TV to talk national politics.

As Fourth Judicial District attorney, Allen has focused diligently on his work. He created a new Organized Crime Unit prosecuting fentanyl traffickers, cartels and violent robbery rings — handling more fentanyl-related death cases than any other Colorado office and winning the state’s longest prison sentence.

Allen has spent his career in the courtroom, prosecuting killers, dismantling drug trafficking networks and speaking inconvenient truths to a legislature bent on reducing sentences rather than protecting the public.

That’s the job, and it’s precisely what the AG’s office has been lacking.

With more than half of Colorado voters now registered unaffiliated, Allen’s no-nonsense, nonpartisan attitude brings the common sense and electability that the Republican Party needs.

State law requires that unaffiliated voters receive a primary ballot in the mail for each of the two political parties. They may vote and return one of those ballots.

We urge Colorado’s unaffiliated voters and Republicans alike to choose the GOP primary ballot and vote for Allen.

Michael Allen will return the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to its proper role — serving Coloradans, not political agendas.