Sonya Jaquez Lewis resigns from Colorado Senate amid ethics investigation
State Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis abruptly announced her resignation from the Colorado legislature Tuesday morning amid an ethics investigation into her alleged yearslong mistreatment of her Capitol staffers.
The announcement came just before the Senate Ethics Committee, which was reviewing the complaint lodged against Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, revealed Tuesday that the senator had submitted at least one fabricated letter of support sent to the panel that purported to be from a former aide. The aide told legislative investigators that she didn’t write the letter and hadn’t been in touch with Jaquez Lewis for roughly a year.
Jaquez Lewis didn’t cite the probe, which threatened to lead to her removal from the General Assembly, in her announcement, which was made at about 6 a.m. on Facebook.
The Senate Ethics Committee was set to meet at 8 a.m. Tuesday.
“I have a wonderful new opportunity to serve with a regional not-for-profit organization that focuses on women’s and LGBTQ+ leadership through an international lens,” Jaquez Lewis said in the Facebook post.
Her resignation comes after she was reelected to a second four-year term in the Senate in November. A Democratic vacancy committee will be convened to select her replacement at the Capitol, who will serve until at least the 2026 election.
Constituents in District 17 — which takes in parts of Broomfield, Lafayette, Erie and Longmont — will be without representation in the Senate until her replacement is selected, a process that could take several weeks. The 2025 legislative session ends in early May.
Several of Jaquez Lewis’ former aides have come forward in the past year to share stories of alleged mistreatment with the media. Two staffers who worked at the Capitol for her last year filed a workplace misconduct grievance with the legislature claiming Jaquez Lewis used one of them to do chores like yard work and bartend at a party at her home.
The aide who did the yard work and bartending told The Colorado Sun he worried that if he did not accept the side jobs, Jaquez Lewis would not promote him after working for her during the 2024 legislative session as an intern.
The staffer said he was promoted after doing the landscaping and bartending work, as well as campaign work that he did upon the senator’s request. But in November, the promotion was rescinded and he was let go.
At the start of 2024, the senator was removed as chair of the Senate Local Government and Housing Committee and blocked from serving as a lead sponsor of a wage theft bill following accusations that she refused to pay one of her aides.
In April 2024, Colorado Public Radio reported that four of Jaquez Lewis’ former staffers told the news outlet that “she withheld wages, set unreasonably demanding work schedules, and attempted to prevent them from communicating with other people in the Democratic political sphere.”
The aides and a former campaign manager who spoke to CPR were not the same people who filed the workplace misconduct grievance against the senator reported on by The Sun.
Democratic leadership in the Senate, citing the patterns of allegations against Jaquez Lewis, barred her from having state-paid legislative aides and stripped of her committee assignments.
Then, last month, an ethics complaint was filed against Jaquez Lewis with the Colorado Senate by four of her former legislative aides and a former campaign manager through the Political Workers Guild, the union representing Democratic political staffers.
In a formal response to the ethics complaint, Jaquez Lewis said the accusations lodged against her by her former staffers, and the allegations of mistreatment they have shared over the past year, were really part of a veiled attempt by Colorado Capitol aides to get collective bargaining power.
“This complaint is no more than a compilation of incidents unsupported by actual facts that are meant to focus attention on valid universal aide issues by scapegoating one senator,” Jaquez Lewis wrote in her Jan. 31 response. “I am being dragged through the mud for political ends. With false allegations, the PWG is using me to showcase its concerns.”
Jaquez Lewis said the complaint is “full of distortions and falsehoods and should never have been assigned to an ethics committee.”
“I understand that the Political Workers Guild is upset,” she said. “They want collective bargaining.”
Jaquez Lewis submitted several letters of support with her response, some of them from people purporting to be her former aides. Nonpartisan legislative staff said Tuesday that they couldn’t verify the authenticity of any of the letters, and were informed by at least one of the people whose name was on a letter that she hadn’t actually written the missive.
The aide whose letter was fabricated told the Ethics Committee that “many experiences working with (Jaquez Lewis) were not positive” and “the letter in itself was offensive in tone and substance, and mentions my children.”
“Under no circumstances was I the author of the letter that bears my name,”the former aide said in an email to the committee. “I was horrified to see that my name is being used to indicate public support of Sen. Jaquez Lewis without my consent or knowledge.”
When confronted, Jaquez Lewis told legislative investigators that she was relaying information she had gathered from conversations in years’ past with the former aide. The letter, however, appeared on letterhead with the aide’s name on it and was written in the first person.
“She was a terrific boss,” the letter said. “I would tell anyone to work with Sen. Jaquez Lewis anytime and anywhere.”
Jaquez Lewis didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to questions from The Sun about the fabricated aide letter.
The Senate Ethics Committee, even before the fabricated letter came to light this week, appeared highly skeptical of Jaquez Lewis’ response.
Committee Chair Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat, called it “very challenging.”
“This isn’t about other senators,” Gonzales said last week of Jaquez Lewis’ attempt to deflect blame. “This isn’t about other offices.”
Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Frisco Democrat on the Ethics Committee, said he was alarmed at the lack of contrition in Jaquez Lewis’ response.
“The document, I don’t think anywhere contains any sort of apology,” he said. “I understand the senator has every right to dispute the allegations and provide justification for that, but there is no denying that a multitude of aides feel victimized for a variety of reasons. And there’s no apology for that — that feeling — even if it is a misunderstanding in the senator’s point of view.”
Roberts said he was also confused how to balance Jaquez Lewis’ earlier public statements in support of an ethics investigation with her claim now that the complaint “should never have been assigned to an ethics committee.”
Jaquez Lewis hasn’t been at the Capitol since the Ethics Committee met last week to review her response. She was excused Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from the Senate, complicating Democrats’ efforts to pass Senate Bill 3, their marquee gun bill.
Senate Democratic leaders said they weren’t sure where Jaquez Lewis was. Gonzales is one of the main sponsors of the gun bill.
The Senate Ethics Committee was set to rule this week on whether there was probable cause to advance the complaint against Jaquez Lewis. If they advanced the complaint, the panel could have ultimately recommended her expulsion from the legislature, which would have taken a two-thirds vote of the Senate.
The committee ended its work Tuesday in light of Jaquez Lewis’ resignation.
Roberts, after learning of the fabricated letter, said the letter itself could constitute a violation of the Senate’s ethics rules, if not a violation of criminal law — impersonation or identity theft — in Colorado.
“It’s important that this just not be the end,” he said, “that these discussions should continue outside of this forum.”
Gonzales expressed regret to Jaquez Lewis’ aides for the way they were treated and thanked them for coming forward to lodge their complaint.
Jaquez Lewis also separately faces a campaign finance complaint that was prompted by The Colorado Sun’s reporting.
The complaint, filed by conservative activist Cory Gaines, alleges that Jaquez Lewis used campaign contributions for personal purposes not reasonably related to her campaign, made a prohibited contribution to another candidate committee and failed to report contributions and expenditures.
Gaines said he learned about the possible violations through a Dec. 5 story in The Sun about Jaquez Lewis’ alleged mistreatment of her Capitol aides. The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office wrote in a Dec. 19 letter that the story “could establish that (Jaquez Lewis) violated Colorado campaign finance law.”
The Sun reported in early December that Jaquez Lewis paid the aide who did yard work and bartended at a party at her home with a check from her campaign’s bank account. Jaquez Lewis also allegedly used campaign money to pay the same aide for knocking on doors on behalf of an Adams County commissioner candidate who was running in the Democratic primary against the wife of one of her intraparty legislative rivals.
The payments weren’t reported at the time on TRACER, the state’s campaign finance website. Colorado law requires candidate committees to report and itemize expenditures of $20 or more, including the name and address of the payee and the purpose of the expense.
After being contacted by The Sun, Jaquez Lewis amended her campaign finance reports to disclose the payments.
Still, Colorado candidates are prohibited from using campaign funds for “personal purposes not reasonably related to the election of the candidate.” They also are barred from using their campaign accounts to donate to other campaigns, either directly or through in-kind contributions.
In a written statement to The Sun in early January, Jaquez Lewis denied any wrongdoing. She said the July 6 event her aide bartended at was a campaign fundraiser, not a personal event.
“I have substantially complied with Colorado campaign law,” she said in her statement. “I never used campaign funds for personal purposes. The allegations suggesting otherwise are wrong and all work performed was to set up a fundraising event at my home. I had no intent to mislead the electorate or any election officials. When I learned of the mistake from a reporter, I took corrective action.”
She said that the money she paid her aide to knock on doors on behalf of an Adams County commissioner candidate mistakenly came from her campaign when she meant for it to come from her leadership committee, from which the senator is allowed to spend money to help other candidates.
“The wrong checkbook was accidentally used,” Jaquez Lewis said.
In her resignation post Tuesday morning, she said being a state senator “has been the honor of a lifetime.”
“It’s a tough job to be in the state legislature, emotionally, physically and financially and my family and I have made great sacrifices over the last 7 years,” she wrote, “I am not a career politician, so after a little time off, I will be ready for the next chapter of my life.”
Jaquez Lewis was first elected to the legislature in 2018 as a state representative. She then ran successfully for the Senate in 2020 and was reelected in November.
This is a developing story that will be updated.