WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter on Sunday plans to make official his 2018 run for governor, having told The Denver Post in an exclusive interview that his campaign will seek to contrast Colorado values with the new direction taken by Congress and President Donald Trump.

“We’re going backwards,” said Perlmutter, an Arvada Democrat first elected to the U.S. House in 2006. “There is real opportunity for Colorado to keep moving forward, and I want to be part of that.”

He said his priorities would be reducing housing costs, improving the state’s transportation network and supporting state industries such as aerospace and renewable energy.

“I have a lot of ideas, but I want to hear from people from across the state,” Perlmutter said.

His entry, while not unexpected, adds more firepower to a gubernatorial race that has attracted top-level interest from a long list of Republicans and Democrats looking to replace Gov. John Hickenlooper.

On the Democratic side, Perlmutter will join businessman Noel Ginsburg and former state Sen. Mike Johnston, who recently wowed Colorado politicos by raising about $625,000 in the first three months of 2017.

Cary Kennedy, a former state treasurer, plans to announce her Democratic bid for governor on Monday, and U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, also said he’s considering a run. “I think that any of the serious candidates will have to decide over (the) summer,” Polis said last week.

The winner of the Democratic primary would face the victor of what’s likely to be an equally crowded Republican race that just added prosecutor George Brauchler and is expected to include state Treasurer Walker Stapleton.

All these candidates will compete in a volatile political environment that’s likely to change several more times between now and November 2018. But each politician probably will wrestle with the same conflict. Even as more Coloradans register as independent voters, the local Democratic and Republican parties continue to be stretched by their ideological bases.

Last year, Colorado Democrats went for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders for president while Republicans backed U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. It remains to be seen how candidates such as Perlmutter can navigate their respective primaries without sacrificing their broad appeal in a general election.

In a nod, perhaps, to that dynamic, Perlmutter last year supported Ohio congressman Tim Ryan in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Nancy Pelosi as the top Democrat in the House. He also is opposed to Trump’s efforts to defund so-called “sanctuary cities” that do not fully cooperate with immigration authorities. And he remains a stout defender of the Affordable Care Act, although he said it needs some changes.

“Obviously, there are places to improve it, (such as) reducing the paperwork that’s attached to the darn thing,” he said of the law, also known as Obamacare. “I’d like to see a public option as part of it, which would be a backstop if, for some reason, all the insurance companies ended up merging with one another. At least you have another place to look for coverage.”

David Flaherty, a political consultant with Magellan Strategies, said Perlmutter has an edge as a Colorado Democrat who represents a suburban district that’s neither Denver nor Boulder — but rather a seat between the two liberal strongholds that includes towns such as Arvada and Thornton. “I think that plays to his advantage,” he said.

Still, he added that Perlmutter must wrestle with lengthy congressional service when talking to voters. “You don’t want to fall into the trap that you’ve been in Washington too long,” said Flaherty, who previously worked at the Republican National Committee.

Perlmutter, who served in the state legislature before coming to Congress, plans to launch his campaign at the Natural Grocers in Golden — a nod to the dozens of grocery-store meetings he has held over the years.

It’s also a way for the six-term congressman to begin separating himself from Capitol Hill.

Colorado voters haven’t elected a governor straight from Washington since the 1950s, when Edwin Johnson made the leap from U.S. Senate to the governor’s mansion. And state residents, as with much of the country, remain broadly dissatisfied with what’s happening inside the Beltway.

A recent poll by Keating Research and the left-leaning firm OnSight Public Affairs found that more Coloradans felt the state — more than the country — was headed in the right direction: Specifically, 58 percent of Colorado voters believed the state was headed in the right direction, compared with the 41 percent who felt the country was on the right path — a 17 percentage-point difference.

The perception could be a hurdle for Perlmutter, as might be the challenge of converting his political operation from one focused on a single congressional district to a statewide campaign.

But Perlmutter said he’s prepared.

“We just do it, you know? And move on. Fix the pothole and move on,” said Perlmutter, who rarely dons a suit jacket but wears a wrist device to track his daily footsteps. “You do it also with excellent staff. As a member of Congress, I’ve been very fortunate to have an excellent group of people working with me as anybody could ever have, and I would hope to assemble a team like that — but bigger — to help people all across the state.”