Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold won the Democratic nomination for attorney general Tuesday night, leading a field of three primary opponents by a wide margin.

Four Democrats were on the ballot for the office held by term-limited Democratic Attorney General Weiser, who is running for governor.

In addition to Griswold, who is serving her second term as secretary of state and also faces term limits, the candidates who ran in the primary were Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty, former top federal prosecutor Hetal Doshi and workers’ rights attorney and nonprofit head David Seligman.

The Associated Press called the race for Griswold at about 7:30 p.m., about a half hour after early results started posting. According to returns at that time, Griswold had secured 46.5% of the vote, followed by Dougherty with 20.6%. Seligman trailed with 17.08%, and Doshi had 15.79%.

The Democratic nominee will face the winner of the Republican primary — 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen or Colorado Springs-based attorney David Willson.

Griswold has led the Democratic field in both fundraising and in the publicly released polling her campaign has commissioned. In two polls published since last fall, she has approached majority support among respondents, while her opponents have remained in the single digits.

Griswold, first elected statewide in 2018 and now a regular presence on national cable news, has significantly higher name recognition than the three other Democrats in the race, according to the internal polling her campaign has released.

She’s drawn national attention as the official in charge of Colorado’s election system, which she’s defended in lawsuits and on the air from what she described as attacks by the Trump administration.

In 2021, Griswold removed former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from her role overseeing the county’s elections after discovering a security breach involving the county’s election equipment, which was later found to have been facilitated by Peters. A jury later convicted Peters on charges related to the incident. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted her nearly nine-year sentence last month.

Eight years ago, Griswold became the first Democrat to be elected secretary of state in 60 years and the first Democratic woman to win the office. She’s also the only Democratic woman to win a statewide election twice in Colorado without having been a gubernatorial running mate.

Griswold, who was in private practice before her run for office, has drawn criticism from her opponents and others for lacking the legal experience needed to oversee what amounts to one of the state’s largest law firms. Her critics also allege she’s overstated the experience she does have by repeatedly claiming that she “argued before the U.S. Supreme Court” in a case in which she was named as a defendant, rather than as part of the legal team.

The case involved an attempt by Republican and unaffiliated voters to bar Donald Trump from appearing on Colorado’s 2024 primary ballot on constitutional grounds. Although the Colorado Supreme Court sided with Trump’s opponents, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the lower court rulings and permitted Trump to appear on the state ballot on his way to winning a second term.

Dougherty has overseen prosecutions in Boulder County’s 20th Judicial District since 2018. He has run the Criminal Justice Section in the Colorado Attorney General’s Office after previously serving as deputy chief of the Sex Crimes Unit in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Doshi, a first-generation Indian American, spent seven years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado and was the lead antitrust litigator at the U.S. Department of Justice in the Biden administration.

Seligman is the founding executive director of the nonprofit Towards Justice, which works with families, Amazon delivery drivers, renters and immigrants held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities.