Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidates Barbara Kirkmeyer and Scott Bottoms faced off in a debate Thursday, answering questions about their allegiance to President Donald Trump, their state budget priorities and whether or not there are pedophilia rings running rampant in the state.
Both candidates are current elected members of the legislature. Throughout the debate, Bottoms, who has been a state representative for Colorado Springs since 2023, repeatedly referred to concerns about pedophilia rings but then said he had no way to back up his claims.
“The FBI is checking into all of that,” he said. “There’s no way I can prove this right now because I’m not a federal investigator … but we’ll see.”
Kirkmeyer of Brighton has served in the state Senate since 2020 and has been on the influential Joint Budget Committee since 2022. She leaned heavily on that experience throughout her responses Thursday.
“I’m the better candidate because I have the most experience and I’m qualified and I know how to get the job done,” she said. “I actually govern and run a multibillion-dollar budget in this state.”
During her time in the Democratic-majority legislature, she has, at times, reached across the aisle for policy-making. She during the 2026 legislative session, which ended Wednesday. Many of them were the product of the budget committee’s work and, in keeping with how that body works, included at least one Democratic sponsor.
“You have to work across the aisle to get anything done,” she said.
Bottoms is the lead pastor at the Church at Briargate, a Colorado Springs evangelical church. Bottoms is one of the most conservative members of the legislature. In four years in the Capitol, he has been the primary sponsor on one bill that became law — This year, he had no Democratic co-sponsors on the , and he was the sole representative on four of them. They focused on topics like restricting abortion access and gender-affirming care for minors. His fellow legislators rejected almost all of them after their first committee meetings.
“I don’t shy away from the scary kind of issues,” he said. “I’ve tried to pass many bills that have specifically to do with that leadership, grooming our kids, trafficking kids, parental consent, pedophilia.”
The debate was sponsored by The Denver Post, Denver7 and Colorado Public Radio. Last week, the same outlets also hosted a debate for Democratic candidates Attorney General Phil Weiser and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.
Kirkmeyer, Bottoms or Victor Marx, a third candidate who didn’t participate in the debate Thursday, will take on Bennet or Weiser in the general election. The odds are unlikely that a Republican candidate will win that race, as the state has become increasingly blue in recent years. Gov. Jared Polis defeated Heidi Ganahl by more than 19 percentage points in 2022.
Still, the winner of the Republican primary is significant, in that the victor will show what direction the state’s minority party is headed. The Colorado GOP has had years of upheaval as its members have fought over what direction to take next.
Unaffiliated voters’ participation in primaries
A major point of contention for the state Republican Party has been whether unaffiliated voters should be allowed to participate in the party’s primaries. The candidates disagreed about that issue, among several others, during the debate Thursday.
Bottoms, who filed a lawsuit this month to block the unaffiliated voters said he believes the change would keep the system in line with the Constitution.
Kirkmeyer, who unsuccessfully ran to represent Colorado’s 8th Congressional District in 2022, said she wouldn’t support blocking unaffiliated voters because it would alienate unaffiliated and Republican voters and force the state to use only the caucuses — a system she said many voters aren’t familiar with.
The candidates also disagreed about whether the state’s voting system is secure. Kirkmeyer said she believes the system may need some new rules, like ID requirements, and that voter rolls should be cleaned up. But overall, she said, she believes it is secure. Bottoms said he wants to see lots of changes, inlcuding ending the state’s mail-in voting system and requiring IDs to vote.
Alignment with Trump
When moderators asked the candidates how they would differentiate themselves from Trump, the candidates took different approaches. Kirkmeyer said she disagrees with some of the president’s decisions that have impacted Colorado, like declining requests for disaster relief dollars and removing the Space Force headquarters from the state. She added that she would try to find ways to work with the president and remind him “we are all his constituents as well.”
Bottoms praised the president’s work but said he isn’t afraid to stand up to him if he doesn’t agree with his decisions.
“I’m a reformer. I do not mind looking at people in power,” he said.
Kirkmeyer and Bottoms mostly focused on their own experience and opinions throughout the debate but a few times directly clashed with one another. When discussing the state budget, Bottoms posited that widespread corruption is costing the state billions of dollars, adding that if he were elected he would “DOGE” all the departments — referring to the now-disbanded Department of Government Efficiency.
“We have hundreds of millions of dollars right now that are going to illegal immigrant abortions and transgender surgeries,” he said.
Kirkmeyer said his comments were untrue and asked him to directly point to where those items are in the budget. He didn’t directly answer.
“Pretty much everything Rep. Bottoms said is inaccurate,” she said to one of his responses.
The candidates disagreed about whether former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Bottoms said no while Kirkmeyer said yes. Both said Trump isn’t eligible to run for another term.
Bottoms secured the top spot on the primary ballot after he won the most support during the party’s state assembly in April. He won 45% of the 2,145 delegates present, with Marx coming in second. Kirkmeyer landed on the ballot through a signature-gathering process.
The primary will be June 30. The general election will be Nov. 3.
The third candidate on the Republican primary ballot, Victor Marx, didn’t attend but hosted his own livestream at the same time.
