Nonprofit leader Victor Marx maintained a steady lead over state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer on Thursday with few outstanding votes left to count for the Colorado Republican gubernatorial nomination.
Marx held a roughly 2,000-vote lead throughout the day, an advantage that had not been seriously threatened since he overtook Kirkmeyer on Wednesday evening. As of 6 p.m. Thursday, he led Kirkmeyer 39.8% to 39.4% with more than 515,000 votes counted, according to The Associated Press. State Rep. Scott Bottoms was in a distant third with 20.7%.
The AP had still not called the race by Thursday evening. But with 97% of outstanding votes counted, Kirkmeyer’s path to regain the lead from Marx was vanishingly narrow. Her campaign had hoped late votes from Arapahoe County, the only area with substantial ballots left to tally, would break for Kirkmeyer. Ten percent of the county was still outstanding Thursday evening.
But officials there had reported thousands of ballots earlier in the day, and they had done little to bring Kirkmeyer level.
Marx spokesman Roger Hudson said Thursday that the campaign was confident they would win and that they were waiting on media outlets to declare Marx the winner.
“We know our voters, we knew where they were, and they certainly have delivered,” he said. He pointed to the few ballots outstanding in Arapahoe County. “It would be really difficult for (Kirkmeyer) to find those extra votes.”
Kirkmeyer opened up an initial lead on Marx as early votes were first reported in the hours after polls closed Tuesday. But the lead narrowed as late ballots, which broke for Marx, began to come in Tuesday night and Wednesday. Twenty-four hours after results were first posted, Marx had overtaken Kirkmeyer and, though she stayed close enough to keep the race in place Thursday, she was unable to reestablish herself.
The winner of the race will face Attorney General Phil Weiser, who cruised to the Democratic nomination Tuesday. He beat U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet by nearly 120,000 votes.
