Heading into Tuesday’s election, the state of Colorado is just two Senate seats away from achieving a Democratic trifecta — unified control of the state House, Senate, and governor’s seat. That path to a majority may depend on five Democratic women, four of whom need to win for the chamber to flip.

Republicans, hoping to salvage a sliver of power in the state, have dumped over $1 million into the races in a burst of spending that is extraordinary for statehouse elections.

The women wouldn’t usher just a Democratic majority, but the first of its kind: a majority of the state Senate Democratic caucus would be made up of women.

Rep. Brittany Pettersen, one of the five women, said the new majority would change the Capitol’s culture of workplace harassment and break up the “old boys’ club.” “Electing women isn’t just about checking a box,” Pettersen said. “It’s about ensuring that people in positions of power are going to be a voice and perspective that is absolutely needed. It’s not just enough to have allies at the Capitol, which we need in men. We also need to be there, fighting for these policies because we’re going to fundamentally change what that actually looks like, ensuring that we meet the needs of the women in Colorado.”

The party is expected to hold the state House, and Jared Polis, the Democratic nominee for governor, has a double-digit lead in polls. The five women who will determine the direction of Colorado’s future are Pettersen in Senate District 22; Rep. Faith Winter in SD24; Tammy Story in SD16; Rep. Jessie Danielson in SD20; and Sen. Kerry Donovan in SD5.

Winning unified control of the state would open up opportunities both big and small. The Senate could finally pass, for example, a bill introduced several years in a row by Democrat Steve Fenberg to ban gay conversion therapy for minors. Pettersen, in the state House, has been working on a retirement security bill that could finally become law.

Some of the other bills Democrats are “excited to get across the finish line” deal with paid family leave requirements, K-12 education investment, and affordable housing. And with the threat Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh poses to women’s reproductive rights, these five candidates would ensure that women in Colorado still have access to safe abortions should a post-Roe v. Wade America come to pass.

Electing the five candidates means “that we will be fierce advocates at the Capitol for issues that affect women, like equal pay for equal work, access to birth control, access to safe and legal abortions, making sure that we’re addressing early childhood education, and significantly investing in our K-12,” Pettersen told The Intercept.

Of the five races, three of the seats are currently controlled by Democrats and need to be kept in order for the party to take control, while the other two are in GOP hands.

The Democratic women have out-raised their Republican candidates, primarily with the help of grassroots supporters, and three of the seats — in Senate Districts 24, 20, and 16 — are neck and neck, according to internal Democratic polling provided to The Intercept. In Senate Districts 5 and 22, Democratic women are leading their Republican opponents.

If the candidates were focused solely on running against their opponents instead of battling special interest groups with seemingly endless funds, Pettersen said, there “wouldn’t even be a question of who would win. … Unfortunately, they are dumping millions of dollars on our heads right now trying to buy these seats.”