Greg Lopez, a former Republican congressman and repeat gubernatorial candidate, has qualified for the 2026 ballot for Colorado governor as an independent candidate, state officials said Tuesday.
Lopez and his running mate, lieutenant governor hopeful Taralyn Romero, submitted 11,948 valid signatures, surpassing the state’s requirement of 1,000 from each of Colorado’s eight congressional districts. Lopez can now join Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser and Republican newcomer Victor Marx on the general election ballot in November.
Lopez did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.
A former mayor of Parker, Lopez’s independent run is the latest turn in his decades-long quest to serve in higher office in Colorado. He’d twice mounted unsuccessful GOP primary campaigns for governor before this election cycle. He also ran for U.S. Senate in 2016 but dropped out.
After then-U.S. Rep. Ken Buck resigned in 2024, Lopez was appointed to represent the 4th Congressional District for six months ahead of that year’s general election. He also served as the Colorado director of the Small Business Administration and later paid a $15,000 settlement after he was accused of trying to “improperly influence actions of the SBA in violation of federal law,”
This year, he’d initially filed to run for governor as a Republican, but then he announced that he’d left the party and would run as an unaffiliated candidate instead.
Should Lopez run through November, his candidacy will likely further complicate the narrow path to victory for Marx, the first-time political candidate who won the GOP nomination earlier this month and has struggled initially to pull together the disparate wings of the party.
Lopez was not popular enough among Colorado Republicans to win the party’s gubernatorial nomination when he ran in 2018 or 2022. But he still earned more than 292,000 votes in the later contest, and given Colorado’s decidedly blue hue, Marx will need every conservative and unaffiliated vote he can get if he hopes to pull off a seismic upset against Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser in November.
Marx’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The gubernatorial race also echoes the 2010 gubernatorial contest, when former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo mounted a third-party bid against Republican nominee Dan Maes and Democratic candidate John Hickenlooper.
, with Tancredo pulling in more than 36% of the vote. Maes finished a distant and dismal third, with just over 11%.
