Bernie Sanders is coming to Colorado in the midst of the state’s midterm elections with the aim of giving Democrats and progressives such as gubernatorial candidate Jared Polis a boost in the home stretch.

Sanders, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont, will be in Fort Collins and Boulder on Oct. 24 for get-out-the-vote rallies, the Colorado Democratic Party said Tuesday.

Sanders, a senator who caucuses with Democrats, galvanized progressive voters when he ran an underdog campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, ultimately losing it to Hillary Clinton.

Sanders may be weighing another presidential run. His trip to Colorado is part of a nine-state push that includes stops in key early-voting states in the 2020 presidential cycle: Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina.

Colorado’s Democratic voters warmed up to Sanders in 2016, supporting him over Clinton in the state’s caucus. During the 2016 presidential nominating contest, Polis was a Democratic superdelegate who backed Clinton and faced pressure to change his vote to Sanders in the nomination process. He never did.

Anita “Nita” Lynch, who was a national delegate for Sanders in 2016, said his visit to Colorado should help rally voters who felt disenfranchised that Sanders didn’t clinch the nomination.

“He doesn’t hold grudges and that’s going to be his message — that this election is crucial — and I applaud him for doing that,” said Lynch, also the group representative for Our Revolution Metro Denver, a progressive group that grew out of Sanders’ national rise.

Polis, a congressman, is running against Republican state Treasurer Walker Stapleton in the governor’s race. Republicans quickly responded to news of Sanders’ visit to cast Polis as a candidate that’s too far to the left for Colorado.

“Congressman Polis and Senator Bernie Sanders are two Washington radicals that promise free government programs, but Coloradans know free is really expensive,” Stapleton said in a statement.

Ticket information for the Colorado events is not yet available.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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