Republican primary voters are choosing among three markedly different gubernatorial candidates in terms of their experience, commitment to political and governance norms, and the issues they consider most important to Coloradans.
The Denver Post does not endorse in gubernatorial or U.S. Senate races, but we do offer observations into the race based in this case on meeting with two of the candidates and observing the third through interviews and one debate.
Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican lawmaker who is on the powerful Joint Budget Committee, is a good-governance, fiscal hawk with the political chops necessary to whip the $47 billion state budget into shape. For Colorado voters furious over waste, fraud and abuse in government agencies, Kirkmeyer is your ideal candidate.
The no-nonsense Trump supporter says she will tighten the state budget, fight for affordability and keep taxes low. Her critics say she’s too much a part of the establishment. She was a Weld County commissioner from 1993 to 2001, when Gov. Bill Owens, our last Republican governor, picked her to run the Department of Local Affairs. She was elected to the state Senate in 2020 and quickly became a leading voice on crafting the budget and finding compromise with Democrats who held both chambers of the General Assembly and the governor’s office. We know “compromise” has become a dirty word to many who have lost all faith in government.
Kirkmeyer, a former dairy farmer who still calls Weld County home, told us an anecdote about a conversation she had with Gov. Jared Polis about all of the federal money Trump had withheld from Colorado. We think it says a lot about her ability to work collaboratively and her credentials as a Republican who has stuck firmly to her values and principles.
“Well, how did it feel?” Kirmeyer said she asked. “Because during COVID, that is exactly what Jared Polis did to Weld County, said he was going to withhold funds if we didn’t execute his executive orders. And we told him — — but basically told him we weren’t going to be in charge of enforcing his executive orders, and we told him he couldn’t withhold funds from Weld County. He tried the same thing. It just doesn’t work. That bullying, intimidation thing just doesn’t work. And I think with Trump, I can work with him to build a relationship to help get what we deserve here in Colorado.”
State Rep. Scott Bottoms, a Republican pastor from Colorado Springs who joined the U.S. Navy fresh out of high school and was actively enlisted for six years, is laser-focused on cultural and religious issues. He will pull religion back into the state and will push for a law enforcement crackdown on sex trafficking. Bottoms is sure to shake things up for those Colorado voters looking to upend the state, including his pledge to defund public education and instead cut $15,000 checks to parents of every child for them to use as they please.
We found Bottoms to be earnest in his ideas for the state, even as we found his suggestion that the state strip local, state and federal funding from school districts a likely violation of Colorado’s Constitution, which requires the General Assembly to provide a “thorough and uniform system of free public schools.”
“I just see so many negative things, so many bad things happening to the people, and to parents and to schools,” Bottoms said. “I decided it was a time to jump in rather than just be a loud voice on the sidelines.”
Critics say Bottoms is obsessed with his often-repeated claim that a sex trafficking ring is being run in the governor’s office. Bottoms told The Denver Post he has evidence of this crime ring, but no victims or witnesses. Bottoms says the FBI is taking his claims seriously, but declined to even to say what type of evidence he has.
Victor Marx is an elusive candidate who came in second place on the ballot during the Republican assembly behind Bottoms. Little is known publicly about Marx, who served three years in the U.S. Marines and has most recently run a nonprofit ministry that solicits donations online for international aid. He did not respond to requests for interviews by The Denver Post Editorial Board.
What is known about Marx can be gleaned from his websites, a public debate and recent interviews with The Denver Post’s Seth Klamann, Peter Boyles on 710 KNUS, on 9News and Candace Owens on her YouTube channel. The interviews have been bizarre to say the least.
Marx told Klamann that voters will decide if his story is true — which is why we wrote an editorial about how Marx’s nonprofit operates according to tax filings, interviews and other documents.
Marx, who has said his stepfather forced him to kill someone as a child, refused to tell Clark how many other people he had killed, indicating he may have killed people in self-defense. Notably, Clark was not talking about Marx’s short time in the U.S. Marines.
In all four interviews, Marx has backed away from the claim that his organization spends substantial resources rescuing thousands of women and children every year, physically, from abuse.
“It’s the assumptions people make and put on me,” Marx said when Boyles pressed him about a claim on his website that he had rescued 45,000 women and children. “I would never say anything like that.”
Today his website is more clear, stipulating they have “served more than 45,000 women and children, some of whom needed to be rescued from captivity.”
This board has grave concerns that both Bottoms and Marx are basing their bid for public office, respectively, on a criminal conspiracy that we cannot verify and smacks of homophobia, and a man who, last year, raised $7.6 million in donations in part on claims of extraordinary, life-changing international aid work for thousands of women and children, very little of which can be verified.
We do appreciate, however, the role both men play in broadening the discussion around conservative ideas in Colorado. Bottoms and Marx are correct that sex trafficking and child abuse are problems in Colorado. The Common Sense Institute reported that 88 cases of sex trafficking were prosecuted in 2024.
Bottoms and Marx will have to convince moderate voters that they understand how Colorado’s government works and can govern on these bread-and-butter issues. Kirkmeyer will have to convince voters she isn’t part of the existing establishment that, for too many years, has accepted the status quo in Colorado.
The contrast between Kirkmeyer, Marx and Bottoms is clear. Unlike other races, we don’t have to do a deep dive on policy issues to illuminate voters’ choices — Kirkmeyer is the dreaded establishment candidate who has dedicated much of her career to good governance, Bottoms is chasing a criminal conspiracy that could be only an unprovable theory and Marx aggressively seeks donations with tales of saving women and children from sex trafficking but primarily provides lamb and lion stuffed animals that play recorded prayers.
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