Q&A: Senator Iman Jodeh on Gaza, Aurora and Muslim moment

By Ahmad B.

Iman Jodeh made history in 2020 as the first Muslim, Arab woman and Palestinian American elected to Colorado’s legislature; she now serves in the state Senate, representing a diverse stretch of Aurora.

She spoke with MNTV on the eve of the 2026 midterm elections — the nationwide vote, held halfway through a president’s term, that will decide control of Congress — in a wide-ranging exchange that moved from daycare bills and ICE raids to the loneliness of being the only Palestinian American voice in her statehouse during the genocide in Gaza.

Your parents came to Colorado from Palestine in 1974, and you became the first Muslim and first Palestinian American in the state legislature. What from that upbringing shaped the legislator you are today, and what made you decide to run?

Growing up, I watched my parents work hard, make sacrifices and still always find ways to give back. They taught me that community is everything, and when people need you, you show up.

My father was a co-founder of the Colorado Muslim Society, the largest and oldest mosque in the Rocky Mountain region, and he played a pivotal role as a bridge to the wider non-Muslim, non-Arab community. I would tag along when he taught or was a guest speaker. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was conditioning me on how to continue to be that bridge.

I grew up in Aurora, went to our public schools, and spent years working with immigrant and refugee communities. I never imagined I’d run for office, but through my parents’ community engagement and organizing, I was well suited to advocate for my community as an organizer myself. Spending so much time at the Capitol, testifying on bills, I knew our communities deserved a voice and a seat at the table. And when people asked me to run, I realized no one there looked like me.

Being the first Muslim, Palestinian American and Arab woman elected to the Colorado legislature isn’t just about being the first. It’s about making sure I’m not the last, and making sure the people I represent feel seen, heard and valued.

You’ve moved from the state House to Senate District 29. What are constituents raising most this cycle, and how is the rising cost of living showing up in their daily lives?

It’s a lot of things — affordability, housing, health care, even data centers. I represent one of the most diverse cities in the country, and with that comes a really diverse set of needs. But despite our differences, so many of the struggles are the same, and a lot of them have been around for years. Now, with federal funding cuts to Colorado, it’s becoming even harder to find the resources to support our communities.

Take child care. The average cost of daycare in Denver is around $2,500 a month. Imagine having two kids in daycare — that’s $5,000 a month before you’ve even paid your mortgage, bought groceries or covered any other bills. Families are having to ask whether it even makes financial sense for both parents to work, but for so many, living on one income isn’t an option either. That’s the kind of impossible choice people are being forced to make. That’s what affordability looks like in people’s everyday lives.

Beyond housing, where do you see the sharpest economic pressure on families — wages, health care, child care, groceries — and what does your record say about how you’d address it?

Families are feeling the pressure from every direction. Wages aren’t keeping up, groceries and child care are expensive, and health care costs continue to be a huge burden. But if you look at my record, health care, immigration and housing have been my biggest priorities. I believe health care is a human right, and no one should have to choose between getting the care they need and paying their bills.

Now, with HR1, we’re facing even greater challenges. The federal cuts to Medicaid are devastating for Colorado and for the Colorado Option. We’re looking at an estimated 95,000 to 108,000 Coloradans potentially losing their Medicaid coverage beginning in 2027 — families losing access to doctors, medications and critical care, and even more pressure on our hospitals, clinics and an already strained state budget. Undocumented folks are feeling it just as much, which is why including them in the Colorado Option was a priority for me.

For me, these issues are all connected. You can’t talk about economic security without talking about whether people can afford to stay in their homes, see a doctor and take care of their families.

Aurora has been singled out in national immigration rhetoric, and ICE enforcement is a live fear for many families. What are you hearing, and what can a state lawmaker do?

What I’m hearing from immigrant families is fear. Parents are afraid to send their kids to school, people are afraid to go to work, and families worry that one interaction with ICE could tear their family apart.

For me, this is personal. I’m the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, I grew up in Aurora, and I’ve spent much of my life working with immigrant and refugee communities. These aren’t strangers to me — they’re my neighbors, my constituents, and the families who make Aurora what it is. Aurora has been unfairly placed in the national spotlight, and our immigrant communities have been caught in the middle of that rhetoric.

But as state lawmakers, we’re not powerless. In 2025, I supported SB25-276, which strengthened protections for immigrant communities around personal information, schools, health care facilities and the role of local law enforcement in federal immigration enforcement. This past session, I prime-sponsored HB26-1276, Protect Safety of Individuals Who Are Immigrants, which was signed into law, and I co-sponsored HB26-1275, on law enforcement identification and immigration training, though that one didn’t pass. These build on years of work, including creating Colorado’s Office of New Americans. Regardless of someone’s immigration status, due process and basic human dignity should never be negotiable.

This cycle has seen openly anti-Muslim campaigning — a sitting president calling a Muslim Senate candidate a “jihadist,” colleagues describing Muslim officeholders as a “Trojan horse.” How do you read this moment?

I see this moment as ours. Muslims are not a monolith, and that’s okay — we don’t have to agree on everything to recognize what’s happening around us. We’ve watched the political landscape shift, up and down the ballot, and too often not in our favor. For many of us, we’ve reached a breaking point.

At some point we have to ask ourselves: when do we move beyond raising our fists in protest to taking our seats at the table? When do we go from demanding change to being the ones making it? This wave of Muslim candidates represents something much bigger than any one election. It shows that our voters are no longer willing to let others define who we are, what we believe, or where we belong in American politics.

And when Muslim candidates win, they’re not winning because they’re Muslim. They’re winning because voters from all backgrounds believe in their values, their vision and their ability to lead. We’re not just demanding a seat at the table anymore — we’re earning it, and we’re helping shape the future of American politics.

As the only Palestinian American in your legislature, you’ve carried that identity through two of the hardest years your community has known. How has Gaza shaped your work and you personally?

It’s been really hard, and honestly, at times it’s felt incredibly lonely. Being the only Palestinian American in the legislature during one of the most painful times in our history is something I don’t think I could ever have prepared for.

I remember how hard it was just to get colleagues to sign onto a letter calling for a ceasefire. A ceasefire. We weren’t asking for anything extraordinary — we were asking for the killing to stop. And even that was a struggle. We tried over and over to engage our congressional delegation, and those efforts went nowhere.

The hardest part was feeling like I constantly had to explain why Palestinian lives mattered. Here I was, watching what was happening to my people, grieving alongside my community, and at the same time having to convince people that Palestinians deserved the same humanity and compassion as anyone else. I heard that same pain from my constituents — people grieving, angry, exhausted, feeling helpless. Sometimes they weren’t looking for answers. They just wanted someone to understand.

This experience has changed me. It’s made me more outspoken and less willing to be quiet just to make other people comfortable. It’s in moments like these — when speaking up is difficult, and sometimes means standing alone — that I really understand why having that seat matters.

What do you want people — Palestinian or not — to understand about representing Palestinian identity in public office right now, and about the toll that comes with it?

It’s both an incredible honor and an incredibly heavy responsibility. There have been moments when I’ve felt like I was carrying not just my own grief, but the grief of an entire community, while still having to show up, do my job and navigate spaces where people weren’t always willing to acknowledge that pain.

It has become a little easier to call out the lack of moral courage we saw when this all started. Some of the things people said, the positions they took, or their unwillingness to say anything at all haven’t aged well, and I think there’s a real sense of shame for some as they realize they were on the wrong side of history. But not everyone has come around, and I don’t think we should confuse people’s silence today with accountability for their silence when it mattered most.

I’ve also learned there’s a time and place for everything. There have been moments when I’ve had to choose my words carefully — not because I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but because I knew those words would carry more weight later. When that time comes, I say what needs to be said. I always have. I’ve never mistaken being strategic for being silent, and I never want anyone to mistake my patience for a lack of conviction. At the end of the day, I know who I am, I know where I come from, and I know why I’m in that seat.

MNTV counts at least 51 Muslim Americans on the ballot this cycle. How do you talk to your community about judging candidates on policy and agenda, not shared identity alone?

For me, an endorsement comes down to a few connected things: Does the candidate recognize what’s happening in Gaza as genocide? Do their policies and priorities align with mine? And who is funding their campaign? That’s been a big shift for me since October 7. I want to know not just where someone stands today, but where they stood when it was difficult to speak up — because that says a lot about their moral clarity and how they’ll lead when faced with hard decisions.

Muslims are not a monolith. We have different backgrounds, political views and priorities, and we won’t always agree. But Gaza has brought our community together in a way I’ve never seen before — a shared sense of grief, responsibility and urgency that has changed our political conversations. So when I talk about candidates, I don’t believe sharing an identity automatically means sharing the same values. I look at what they’ve said, what they’ve done, and what they’re willing to stand up for. Representation matters, but so does what you do with it.

When your constituents and our viewers look back on this election, what do you most want them to take from it, and what gives you hope?

There’s a real sense of urgency heading into this election, and I believe we’re going to see that reflected at the ballot box. But we need to look beyond just winning elections. We have to deepen our bench and make room for a new generation of leaders who don’t simply reflect the old guard or the Democratic establishment — people who bring fresh perspectives, who aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo, and who understand what our communities are actually going through.

What gives me hope is seeing more people step up, more diverse candidates on the ballot, and more voters demanding something different from their elected officials. When people look back on this election, I hope they see it as a turning point — not just in terms of which party won, but in how we started reshaping political leadership.

This Q&A accompanies our profile of Sen. Jodeh: Grief, grit and historic seat – Iman Jodeh’s hardest year. Read it here.