It would be funny if it weren鈥檛 sad. A three-way primary race for Colorado governor pits Barb Kirkmeyer, an experienced lawmaker, against two men with little or no governing experience and a propensity for fabrication, and there鈥檚 no way of knowing at this point who will prevail.
Let抖阴ap start with Victor Marx. There are, shall we say, inconsistencies. The man who authored the 2024 book, “The Dangerous Gentleman: A Call for Men to be Courageous in a Culture of Fear,” has thus far refused to face his opponents. Marx, who claims he survived a firefight with ISIS and another attempt on his life, has missed several debates. He says he鈥檒l be at the next candidate forum, but he knows 9News anchor Kyle Clark鈥檚 questions are always on target. Odds are there鈥檚 a scheduling conflict already in the works.
Marx鈥檚 jitters may be due to recent unwelcome scrutiny by conservative talk radio hosts. Thanks to grilling by radio veteran Peter Boyles, we now know that Marx鈥檚 self-declared martial arts rankings are embellished. Also, his organization has not rescued 45,000 women and children in conflict zones. His team provides trauma counseling, material aid and plush toys that play comforting music. That抖阴ap not the same as dropping into war zones to extract hostages while bullets fly, something the word 鈥渞escue鈥� connotes.
Other radio hosts have noted discrepancies in Marx鈥檚 campaign finance filings and raised other questions about his past. Such discrepancies don鈥檛 seem to bother Marx鈥檚 supporters or funders, however. A pernicious myth stirs within a part of the Republican coalition that the state just needs a strong, manly man, an outsider, not a woman or an effete intellectual or an Establishment insider to make Colorado great again.
I recently read Anne Applebaum鈥檚 “Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism,” where she documents how politicians in Europe used political polarization, social media, conspiracy theories, falsehoods and nostalgia to assume power. These putative restorers of greatness evoke a vision of the past that never was and sell it to those who feel a loss of identity in the present.
Not surprisingly, Marx isn鈥檛 the only gubernatorial candidate for whom exaggeration and mythologizing are the modus operandi. Rep. Scott Bottoms regularly asserts that there are pedophile rings in the Colorado House, Senate, and in the Governor鈥檚 office. While there are a couple of pizzerias near the state capitol, Bottoms has provided nothing that even resembles proof of his allegations.
He says, sans evidence, that 45,000 to 50,000 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua have overtaken the state. We know that there was a small TDA gang problem in some of Aurora’s low-income apartment complexes, but that was resolved months ago.
At the debate cosponsored by The Denver Post, Denver7, and Colorado Public Radio, Bottoms contended that crime is so high in Colorado that people are afraid to go outside. Maybe that抖阴ap why Marx wasn鈥檛 at the debate. Bottoms also thinks Trump won the 2020 presidential race and was the target of an FBI assassination plot, again without substantiation.
But Bottoms doesn鈥檛 just enjoy support among election deniers, QAnoners and agoraphobes; he secured 45% of the 2,145 GOP delegates at the April convention with Marx taking second place. Marx, despite not having any public service experience, has raised five times as much money as the next best fundraiser.
If either prevails in the June primary against state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, who secured a spot on the ballot through the signature gathering route, it鈥檒l be a replay of the 2010 gubernatorial election. In that general election, Flak Jacket Dan Maes or Tinfoil Hat Dan Maes split the right-leaning vote with former Republican, now independent candidate Greg Lopez who played the role of Tom Tancredo.
In the months leading up to the election, questions about Maes 2.0鈥檚 problematic record and statements will dominate the headlines instead of the real challenges faced by Coloradans that are central to the Kirkmeyer campaign. Colorado ranks third among the states with the highest cost of living and is the sixth most regulated state, according to the Colorado Chamber of Commerce. The state鈥檚 population growth rate has slowed to a crawl as nearly as many people leave as come. These are real problems that deserve examination by two strong candidates from each party. We need a debate not a dumpster fire.
Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.
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