Two years after an unsuccessful attempt to overhaul Colorado’s election systems, a new collection of familiar faces is laying the groundwork for another go.
Assembled under the banner of Courageous Colorado, a group of veteran political operators and election reformers is preparing a multi-year effort to take a sweeping look at how Colorado’s elections are run. That includes supporting local efforts to institute and commission. It may include working to change when municipal elections, like those in Denver, are run, or how candidates qualify for the ballot.
Ultimately, it will also likely mean ballot measures related to Colorado’s partisan primaries, perhaps to replace them with a contest where all candidates appear on one ballot, akin to the system used in California.
“I think you should expect work around the open primary over the next few elections, both at the legislature and at the ballot,” said Landon Mascareñaz, Courageous Colorado’s CEO, though he and others cautioned that no concrete plans have been set. “You should expect work around ranked-choice voting, campaign finance reform and election timing.”
The need for those reforms, Mascareñaz and others have argued, is clear: Americans are worried about democracy. At a downtown luncheon for the group late last month, speakers used soaring rhetoric to describe the history of America’s democracy and the perilous times in which it finds itself. Former Gov. Bill Ritter quoted a famous W.B. Yeats poem about anarchy let loose upon the world.
“It’s greater than partisan politics, it’s greater than democratic reforms, it’s greater than ranked-choice voting, it’s greater than open primaries,” Terrance Carroll, a former Democratic speaker of the state House, told the luncheon. “It’s about the questions of whether we continue to be true to the words first articulated in this nation’s Declaration of Independence.”
The group argues there are practical reasons for reforms in Colorado, too. Because of the state’s blue hue, many elections are settled on primary day in June, not in the general election in November. And while unaffiliated voters, who make up more than 50% of the state’s registered electorate, can vote in a Democratic or Republican primary, they have to choose only one to participate in each cycle.
It’s a similar argument to the one made by the campaign in 2024, when a relatively small group of individuals and groups, led by Colorado’s Kent Thiry, backed a proposal to open the primaries to all voters and institute a ranked-choice system for the general election. That campaign lost by nearly 7 points.
Courageous Colorado’s bipartisan supporters include many veterans of the Proposition 131 campaign like Carroll; Dick Wadhams, the former state GOP chairman who has become deeply critical of his party’s Trump-ward shift; Deep Singh Badhesha, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America; and former Republican Congressman Ken Buck.
Amber McReynolds, the leader of the governing board for the Postal Service and a former Denver elections official, also spoke at the luncheon; she chairs Courageous’ board. Former Fort Collins Mayor Jeni Arndt leads the group’s political arm. (Fort Collins and Boulder both use ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank multiple candidates on a ballot.)
The group has learned lessons from the failure of Proposition 131, Mascareñaz and others said. The proposal was sweeping, top-down and complicated; it also found opponents across the political spectrum. This time, Courageous supporters have already undertaken one listening tour and plan more direct outreach this fall, using new technology from Change.org to gather input. They’re meeting with local officials and backing smaller-scale initiatives, like a ranked-choice ballot measure in Longmont and a Boulder County proposal to expand that county’s elected commission.
That local outreach helps find partners for reforms at a local level while building coalitions and educating voters ahead of any future ballot campaigns.
“Having these conversations early and not just trying to do this within a confined time frame” is important, McReynolds said in an interview. “Build early, have conversations statewide, do it in a cross-partisan way.”
They also want to involve the legislature, McReynolds and Mascareñaz said. Had it passed, Prop 131’s implementation would have been slowed after skeptical lawmakers slipped some speed bumps into state law. Now, the group is sounding out lawmakers to test what could be done in the Capitol, Mascareñaz said.
“It’s important for us to get involved in some of that,” McReynolds said.
There is another notable difference: Thiry. The millionaire ex-DaVita CEO was the face of the Prop 131 campaign, and he’d also successfully backed prior ballot measures that reformed the state’s elections. But he wasn’t present at the luncheon and is not a member of the group’s board. Wadhams, the former GOP chairman, said Thiry “really has not been a part” of Courageous’ meetings.
During the Prop 131 campaign, Thiry was both chief cheerleader and the primary financial supporter. But he also became an easy target for criticism. Asked if Thiry was intentionally taking a step back this time, Mascareñaz defended him as a patriot who was committed to protecting the nation’s democracy.
“And,” Mascareñaz added, “this movement is bigger than one person.”
Thiry isn’t entirely absent: Jason Bertolacci, a close Thiry aide, and Travis Berry, the lobbyist for one of his groups, were both at the lunch. Thiry’s foundation is also one of Courageous Colorado’s backers, as is Unite America, an electoral reform group that he funds and co-chairs.
A spokesman for Thiry declined an interview request.
Proposition 131 was opposed by both the Democratic and Republican leaders, as well as by lesser parties, like the Green Party. Critics argued variously that the measure was complicated, unnecessary, sweeping and backed by wealthy interests.
The leaders of the state GOP, Craig Steiner, and Colorado Democrats, Shad Murib, did not return interview requests sent through spokespeople. But after the luncheon, to castigate Courageous Colorado as “another grift by the corporations hoping to undermine our election system to cater to the highest bidders.”
Keith Laube, the chief of the state’s Libertarian Party, said he was supportive of ranked-choice voting reforms. But he was opposed to a fully open primary, in which candidates from all parties appear on one ballot and a select number from each race advance to the general election regardless of party.
He said he’d read Courageous Colorado’s website and praised the work they’d undertaken. But he said the primary reforms that the group is floating would lead to longer and more expensive campaigns by candidates trying to ensure they make it to the general election.
Some critics had also charged that Prop 131 was intended to generate specific electoral outcomes. Thiry had denied he wanted one brand of politician to win under the system he envisioned, though he also made no secret of his displeasure with right- and left-wing politicians. (The Yeats poem that Ritter quoted includes a lament that “the centre cannot hold.”)
Wadhams, the former state GOP chairman, told The Post that he wanted the reforms to lead to political moderation in the state. He pointed to criticism from within his own party.
“People are just fed up. They don’t want to participate in the process anymore; they’re just tired of the dominance of the far right and also of the MAGA stolen-election conspiracy crowd,” he said, adding that he’s talked to Democrats with similar concerns.
Mascareñaz acknowledged that some in the Courageous coalition want electoral reforms to serve as a moderating force. But he said he had no such goals.
“I really believe that the goal is open democracy. And itap an open democracy that includes everybody and gives everyone a fair shake and representation in sharing governance and sharing power,” he said. “There are people on my board that come to it for moderation. There are people that come on to my board because they want universal access for people.”
