Now she lives in a Denver House district that has become a chronic Democratic battleground. Smith and her husband receive more mailers on some days than she put out during her entire campaign, which cost $36,700 in today’s money. The race to represent her, in one of the safest Democratic seats in Colorado, has now surpassed $1.2 million in total spending.

The eye-watering total almost certainly means that, heading into Tuesday’s primary, the fight for House District 6 between Rep. Sean Camacho and challenger Iris Halpern is the most expensive House primary in Colorado history.

“It’s scary, right now, to think that we’re going to waste that money, at this time, on these stupid attacks, when there’s so much work that needs to be done,” said Smith, 71, who lives in Lowry.

She sighed, remembering how much her unsuccessful Democratic challenge against Owens, the incumbent state representative and future governor, had cost. “Think about it. What could we have in this district that we don’t have now,” she asked, if the money were spent elsewhere?

When House District 6 was redrawn in the 2022 redistricting effort, it was for Democrats, or any party for that matter. But the seat has been less a comfortable sinecure than the legislature’s most expensive see-saw: In the three election cycles since redistricting, it has played host to three Democratic primary contests.

The district, which extends east from Capitol Hill all the way to the Aurora border, has become a proxy battlefield in an ongoing war between competing financial and ideological interests in the Democratic Party — one where weary voters catch volleys of mailers in the crossfire. The last three primary races in the district, including this year’s contest, have cost roughly $2.5 million in direct and outside spending, the bulk of it coming from dark-money groups backing more moderate candidates.

That’s enough to buy 7.5 million meals through the or a year’s worth of diapers for 3,425 babies through the charity.

That spending is a sign of the times, political experts say. Colorado Democrats have settled into one-party control in Colorado over the past decade, and that has meant more Democrats in the Capitol, more ideological diversity within the party — and more opportunity for infighting.

It has also meant that business interests, which once spent campaign cash in tossup districts, are looking for new places to spend their money and influence policymaking. District 6 is among the priciest of several legislative districts that have been the focus of outside spending this year. In all, roughly $3 million has been spent, largely in seven Democratic legislative primaries, by groups affiliated with One Main Street, a centrist dark-money organization that doesn’t disclose all its donors.

Colorado Labor Action, funded by the state’s major unions, has dropped more than $900,000 against One Main Street’s favored candidates in a handful of races, and other outside groups have poured in further cash.

“There has been a fundamental shift (away) from spending money in the general elections between Democrats and Republicans,” said Alec Garnett, a District 6 resident and a former Colorado House speaker. “And that money is shifting into Democratic primaries because that����ap where these outside interests believe that they can make a difference, in terms of the ideology of the candidates.”

This year in House District 6, Camacho, the incumbent, is a moderate Democrat seeking to fend off a progressive challenger in Halpern, an attorney. Camacho won the seat with nearly 85% of the vote in the 2024 election after beating then-Rep. Elisabeth Epps — one of the most left-wing, and controversial, lawmakers in the House — in the primary.

Epps, in turn, had won the seat two years earlier in an open race after beating a more moderate Democrat.

Why has the district become such a battleground? Part of the answer is circumstantial: The seat was open in 2022, and Epps was a magnet for criticism in 2024. Denver, Garnett said, is also the “headwaters” of the Democratic Party in the state. The voters in District 6 tend to be younger, and it’s home to some of the state’s most prominent politicians, including both U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser, who are now facing off in the Democratic primary for governor. It’s also host to the governor’s mansion and the state Capitol building.

Victory in the primary could provide a springboard for a progressive political leader, as Epps once appeared to be. A win might also help set the tone for a Democratic Party still in search of a defining identity. Epps’ victory in 2022 was part of a wave of progressive wins, and the next legislative session featured debates, with mixed results, about supervised drug-use sites, eviction protections and assault weapons bans.

But Epps’ loss in 2024, after an outburst during a special legislative session that saw her reprimanded by House leadership, came against a backdrop of more moderate victories across Democratic primaries.

For Halpern’s outside–spending supporters, beating Camacho this week would mean putting a more progressive lawmaker back into what they see as a progressive district. It would also knock out one of the leaders of the legislature’s moderate — and much-criticized — Opportunity Caucus, which Camacho co-chairs.

For the groups opposing Halpern, backing Camacho is partially a matter of defending a candidate they’d helped elect two years ago. His voting record, they’d argue, has been in line with Democrats across the Capitol and doesn’t warrant booting him from office.

Their support of Camacho is also part of their ongoing effort to keep pragmatic Democrats in office.

‘Campaign has just become about the money’

But that higher-level reasoning that’s crystallized into an avalanche of campaign literature has not been celebrated by the House District 6 residents who spoke to The Denver Post.

“I’m a pretty engaged person; I’m probably going to vote no matter what,” said Zach Robertson, who lives in Denver’s Uptown neighborhood. He said he had not voted yet but was leaning toward Camacho. “But (the spending) has me more cynical. This campaign has just become about the money — versus about the issues or campaigning on the ground.”

He’d looked at Camacho’s legislative history and his voting record, and they seemed fine for a Democrat. He didn’t buy the attack ads against Halpern, which falsely accused her of being a secret lobbyist.

And he knew there had been a split between different factions in the party, though he said he didn’t understand why it seemed to keep coming to a head in District 6.

It was much the same for William Thompson, a 37-year resident of the district who was once involved in Democratic organizing. He’s also supporting Camacho, and he questioned the integrity of the independent groups putting out mailers — which he felt were coming from interests based outside District 6.

“I can see where some people would be disgusted by the whole process and say, ‘To hell with it, I’m not going to vote,’ ” he said. ” … And I think it hurts the party, too.”

Amid all the noise, Smith, the onetime Owens opponent, said she wanted to hear about policies that would help her and her husband stay in Denver, even as they age and rely on a fixed income.

She said she’d heard both candidates speak in person and that she was supporting Halpern. She didn’t like feeling like she was the intended audience for attack ads from outside groups, especially when she wanted substance.

“Do (they) think we’re stupid?” Smith said. “There’s a part of you that wants to say, ‘OK, alright — now tell me what you’re going to do for us. What is it you’re going to do so that Colorado and HD6, the people here, can afford to live here in a great state, in a beautiful city? What are we going to do to protect that for future generations?’ ”

Drowning in negativity

The primary has been contentious. The biennial conflict’s reignition this year has sparked a mailer and advertising bonanza, most of it focused on critical messages.

Five dollars out of every $6 spent in House District 6 has come from outside groups, not from Camacho’s or Halpern’s campaigns. By law, the campaigns cannot coordinate with the outside groups that spend money in support of them.

In six days, a Post reporter who lives in District 6 received 10 mailers for or against Camacho and Halpern. Garnett said he received four mailers in one day last week.

Most of them have been attack ads: “Every mailer I get is negative,” he said.

As in 2024, Camacho is backed largely by dark-money groups tied to One Main Street, which generally supports “pragmatic” and pro-business Democrats. Halpern has received support from the PAC funded by the Colorado AFL-CIO and the Colorado Education Association.

In an interview, Camacho said he tries to run positive campaigns, including this go-round. But “one of the most frustrating parts” of the deluge of outside money, he said, is that those groups go so negative and threaten to drown out the message the candidates want to share.

He described himself as a “strong labor (and) anti-TABOR guy,” referring to the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which restricts taxes and spending in Colorado. He touted bills he’d run that sought to protect older people from financial fraud and to regulate artificial intelligence-powered chatbots.

“I’m trying to get out my message, but I can’t control what outside groups say or do,” he said. “That’s really concerning, frankly.”

Halpern told The Post that she knew the history of dark money in the district when she announced her candidacy in January. She also knew it’d be hard to outraise an incumbent.

But still, the amount of money — and how vicious the attacks have become — has shocked her.

Her , for example, launched with a video blasting Opportunity Caucus members for attending a private fundraising retreat in the mountains in October. But now it also features a banner at the bottom declaring “False accusations DISMISSED” — a reference to a complaint filed with the secretary of state’s office alleging that she’d illegally worked as a lobbyist.

As her website notes, that complaint . But an anonymous PAC continued to make the accusation in ads to voters. Earlier this month, Halpern sent the group behind it, Denver Progressives United, a cease-and-desist letter.

“It’s getting very dirty,” Halpern said. “There’s no accountability. And voters, and even I, don’t know who is donating to these dark-money groups.”

She and Camacho are both Democrats, and they would likely vote the same on bills that reach the floor of the House. But which bills reach the floor — and in what shape — is the key difference, she argued.

She criticized Camacho for the AI chatbot bill that, she argued, was “a giveaway to the richest companies in the world” because it limited monetary damages. She also knocked him for a vote he cast in committee that helped in mountain communities.

Other money-soaked races this year

If it’s any consolation to House District 6 residents, they’re not alone in being targets of so much spending.

A similar fight is spilling out of mailboxes in nearby Senate District 34, which covers the northwest corner of Denver, including part of downtown.��Also considered one of the safest seats anywhere in Colorado, the District 34 Democratic primary has pulled in a whopping $1.5 million in total spending in the race between Andrés Carrera, who worked for the city of Denver, and Chela Garcia Irlando, who leads an environmental nonprofit.

The majority has come from outside dark-money groups, and most of that from One Main Street-aligned committees backing Carrera. Irlando has received substantial support from the labor PAC that’s supporting Halpern, as well as from Conservation Colorado and others.

Between the two Denver legislative districts, candidates’ campaigns and the outside groups backing them have spent roughly $3 million — enough for 9 million meals or diapers for 4,100 babies — for two seats that will almost certainly elect whichever Democrat emerges from Tuesday’s primary.

The Denver races have been by far the costliest of this primary cycle. But the labor PAC and One Main Street network have also squared off in races in Broomfield and Aurora. One Main Street has also been active in primaries for seats based in Thornton and Summit County.

While Denver’s Senate District 34 won’t have another primary election for four years, House District 6 could host another expensive primary in 2028.

In conversations with The Post, campaign operatives involved in the outside spending who declined to speak on the record expressed a hope — if not quite an expectation — that the tug-of-war over House District 6 might end after this race, regardless of who wins.

Paul Teske, a political scientist at the University of Colorado Denver, said the fighting in the primaries, in that House district and elsewhere, may change only if the money and attention are needed elsewhere.

“I think with such a weak Republican Party statewide — we’ve maybe moved from purple to solidly blue — then the fights that are left are within the blue,” Teske said of Democratic races. “So the money and the attention is going to get funneled there.”

But that might change if Republicans “put together a more competitive set of candidates across the state” that gives them a shot at winning the legislature or the governor’s office, he said.

House District 6 is full of engaged Democrats, said Rep. Steven Woodrow, who represented the seat before the boundaries were redrawn in 2022. He now represents House District 2, which includes Washington Park, and is not running for reelection. He described the primary as a microcosm of the broader moderate-vs.-progressive fight within the party.

“That rift��is somewhat based on policy differences, no doubt, but it’s also largely based in approach and philosophy regarding change and operating within the system that we have,” he said.

Woodrow, who has not endorsed either Camacho or Halpern, said it made sense that outside groups who’d backed Camacho before would defend him now. They fought hard to land Camacho in the seat back in 2024. Why would they pull back the next cycle?

“I don’t begrudge folks for trying to protect the gains they feel they’ve made,” he said.

But the cost has been staggering, and voters have noticed. Two who spoke to The Post pointed out how physically large this year’s mailers have been. Others criticized their mysterious origins.

“What is wrong with us?” lamented Elizabeth Pace, a longtime District 6 resident and Democratic voter. “We have lost (our way), even in this small, liberal, progressive area of town. It����ap very discouraging.”

She supports Halpern but earlier backed Camacho and gave money to Epps’ 2022 opponent, Katie March. She said she resented the crush of attack ads, and she got a knot in her stomach even when she saw negative ads against Camacho.

“It’s negative to the point of, I want to put this down — I don’t want to see this anymore. I will reject the premise on its face,” she said. “That is bad. That is bad for us in this little haven that we call democracy.”

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our dear sister, Lynn Bartels,” her family . “We are heartbroken. We have been overwhelmed by the love that all of you have shared. It will lift us through the coming days and will stay with us forever.”

Bartels became known for her tenaciousness as a political reporter at the Rocky Mountain News, then went to work for The Denver Post after the News closed in 2009. She had undergone surgery to remove a large brain tumor, her family in late April, and her sister Kitty DiMartino said it was diagnosed as glioblastoma. She was 69.

Plans for a memorial service were pending, the family wrote.

“Lynn was a born reporter. Long after she’d left newspapering, she was sniffing out news and passing on tips,” said Lee Ann Colacioppo, The Post’s editor, on Friday. “It was part of her DNA. The Rocky, The Denver Post and Colorado journalism were lucky to have her.”

Bartels spent 22 years working at Denver’s two metro dailies — first at the News for 16 years, then at The Post for a half-dozen more until she took a buyout from the paper’s parent company during a round of staff cuts in 2015.

“She was a delightful human being, and her loss will leave a hole in the universe,” said former Mesa County Commissioner Rick Enstrom, who met Bartels nearly 30 years ago when he served on the Colorado Wildlife Commission under Gov. Bill Owens. “If anyone deserves to lie in state at the Colorado Capitol, it is Lynn Bartels.”

Gov. Jared Polis issued a statement Friday afternoon, saying he had known Bartels for more than a quarter of a century.

“Lynn’s infectious personality and ongoing quest for selfies made her someone that everyone wanted to know, and her sharp wit kept readers coming back for more,” he said. “I know that her passing will impact so many across Colorado, but we’ve all learned something from Lynn that we can carry forward in our lives.”

Bartels regularly spent time with — and wrote about — the luminaries of Colorado politics, including governors, U.S. senators, members of Congress and state lawmakers of all stripes — often holding them to account in blunt and unforgiving ways, but never dismissing their humanity.

“She might grill them on the latest turn of the news wheel, or even openly point out their hypocrisy — citing a month, year and issue when they took the position they were now opposing,” said Todd Hartman, a former colleague of Bartels’ at the Rocky Mountain News. “But in the very same conversation, she would ask about their kids.”

Bartels, he said, “knew their family members, kids, pets and hobbies, and she was sincere in seeing them as just people, flawed and mostly trying their best like all of us.”

Bartels’ influence on political reporting went beyond Colorado.��In 2015, she was named a “longtime stalwart” by The Washington Post blog The Fix in its annual list of best state political reporters, according to . MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow, then a broadcaster on MSNBC, relied on Bartels as “her political attache for the inside scoop on the Colorado midterm elections” in 2014, the story said.

‘She didn’t play favorites’

Kevin Vaughan, an investigative reporter for 9News who sat just feet from Bartels at both The Post and the Rocky for 15 years, said his colleague was fiercely fair in her coverage.

“She didn’t play favorites. It didn’t matter what party you were in, or what issues were important to you — you were fair game,” Vaughan said. “It might mean she’d write a glowing piece about you. It might also mean she’d write a tough one — one you wouldn’t like.”

But she was always willing to face her subject the next day and hear out what they thought of her story, he said.

“It����ap a big reason why she was universally beloved by people across the political spectrum,” Vaughan said. “Some of those people had been punched in the mouth by her in print, and they came to respect and love her anyway.”

Former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican, that Bartels covered him when he was a state lawmaker and later a senator in Washington, D.C. Her work, he wrote, “defined Colorado politics, its leadership and the intrigue of power.”

“And Lynn was there every bit of the way — knowing where the ball was bouncing before any of us had even figured out there was a ball at all,” Gardner wrote. “She was the Grand Dame of Colorado politics and political reporting.”

Bartels, a native of Vermillion, South Dakota, grew up with two brothers and six sisters. She��attended Cottey College in Missouri in the mid-1970s before moving on to Northern Arizona University to study journalism.

Her first newspaper job was with the Gallup Independent in New Mexico. She then moved two hours east to work for the Albuquerque Tribune, where she met John Temple, the eventual editor and publisher of the Rocky.

The year was 1984.

“I made her a columnist at The Tribune and she was incredibly popular,” Temple said. “People could relate to Lynn, which was one thing that made her such a great reporter and columnist.”

When Temple moved north, he hired Bartels as the night cops reporter at the Rocky, where she was charged with covering the shenanigans and hijinks of metro Denver’s after-hours dwellers.

“Nobody could believe it at the time that someone would give up being a columnist to become a night cops reporter, but Lynn loved covering cops, and I loved working with her,” he said.

Temple remembers the uniquely human touch Bartels employed in uncovering the details of a story.

“People trusted her. They would talk to her,” he said. “She was a people reporter. She wasn’t a documents reporter. Nor did she like to write think pieces. Lynn was a true news reporter.”

While she eventually made her name covering state politics, Bartels wanted nothing to do with it at first, Temple said.

“One funny thing, given how much Lynn became part of Colorado political life, was that when we first asked her to go to the Capitol to cover the legislature, she cried,” he said. “She didn’t want to go.”

Remembrances from across the spectrum

Mary Alice Mandarich, a longtime political operative who served as chief of staff for the Colorado Senate Democrats, had known Bartels for 30 years and had her over to her home for backyard pig roasts and Thanksgiving meals over the years.

She remembers Bartels making the trek to Kansas City to watch Mandarich’s son get married, talking easily with people she had never met.

“While being an iconic newspaper reporter, Lynn had an ability to lay that aside and be just small-town Lynn from Vermillion, South Dakota,” Mandarich said. “And I believe that background gave her the ability to engage effortlessly with people in many different walks of life.”

She remembers the two strengths that Bartels had that made her the reporter she was.

“First, she strongly guarded her sources, never betraying a confidence given on background,” Mandarich said. “Second, she immersed herself in the maelstrom of political and government events. She was not one to report off of press releases and press conferences.”

Dick Wadhams, a former Colorado Republican Party chair who managed U.S. Senate campaigns and Owens’ run for governor, said Bartels “knew something was going to happen even before the candidates and campaigns did.”

He recalled a moment in 2004 when he was considering whether to run the senatorial campaign of John Thune of South Dakota, who is now Senate Majority Leader. He kept putting Bartels off when she asked if he would be heading up the effort, not knowing if Thune was even running.

“When my plane landed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on a frigid January evening where I would start Thune’s campaign, I turned my phone on and sure enough, there was a voicemail from Lynn saying, ‘I know you’re in South Dakota. Call me.’

“Of course she knew,” he said.

He said Bartels always wanted to be in the middle of the action.

“Her idea of a good time was going on a bus tour of rural Colorado with a candidate. And because of that, she knew every county, town and wide spot in the road,” Wadhams said.

In a statement Friday, former Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat who served from 2007 to 2011, said: “Lynn was one of the best reporters I’ve ever worked with. I came into public service when she came to Denver. She was hard-working and she had great, top-notch integrity as a journalist. She will be missed terribly.”

Marianne Goodland, the chief legislative reporter with Colorado Politics, regularly crossed paths with Bartels at the state Capitol.

“Lynn was the consummate reporter, and I learned a lot from her — mostly her ability to stand up to the folks in power without hesitation,” Goodland said.

Bartels, she said, would head from the Capitol office to “check the traps.”

“That was code for talking to anyone — lobbyists, partisan and nonpartisan staff, and of course lawmakers — to see what was hot, what was coming,” Goodland said. “I started doing that when I joined Colorado Politics, and it has served me extraordinarily well over the past decade.”

Post-newspaper career

Bartels’ value continued after she left The Post in 2015, Goodland said, when she was a source for Goodland as spokeswoman for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

She worked several years for Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican, after her newspaper career came to an end. She also worked more recently as an aide to state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican.

“I am heartbroken by the loss of Lynn Bartels. I loved that lady,” Kirkmeyer, who’s now running for governor, wrote in a statement Friday. “Lynn was a dear friend, trusted colleague and a buddy who worked alongside me at the Colorado Capitol after an extraordinary career covering Colorado politics.”

Bartels, she said, “brought intelligence, humor and an unmatched passion for public service to everything she did.”

At the secretary of state’s office, Williams said Bartels “transformed government communications, changing it from reactive to proactive and even publishing a blog about Colorado elections and election officials that became famous and revered.”

“She chronicled everything from conferences to elections to the day-to-day grist of the job,” he said.

DiMartino, Bartels’ younger sister by 13 years, called her big sister the “absolute ringleader of the family.” Bartels never married nor had children but she loved her nieces and nephews, she said.

“Lynn was everyone’s favorite sister,” DiMartino said. “She was there for every single birth of her nieces or nephews.”

DiMartino remembers feeling crushed, at age 5, as her sister headed off to college in Missouri. After Bartels’ freshman year came to an end, DiMartino recalled visiting her at her dorm and “running as hard as I could to jump into her arms because I loved her so much.”

Journalism for her sister, she said, became bigger than just a collection of facts to pass along to others.

“It allowed for her to be forever curious, to get to know people and to really know them,” DiMartino said. “And to use those relationships not for personal purposes but to provide information to people on issues that were important in their lives.”

“We have lost an outrageous sister, friend, colleague and human,” she said of her older sister. “Lynn was outrageously funny, outrageously loyal and outrageously talented.”

Yet state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, a Weld County Republican who checks all of those boxes, is millions of dollars behind the leading primary competitor in fundraising. She’s fighting to make the case that her experience — not a biography of bravado or no-compromise, conspiratorial conservatism��— makes her the best person to lead the state.

In a state party frequently consumed by infighting and suspicion toward the establishment, along with anyone who works with Democrats, her resume and record of collaboration have threatened to drag down her candidacy in the June 30 primary against Victor Marx and state Rep. Scott Bottoms.

But according to Kirkmeyer’s supporters, she represents the best chance for the GOP to finally emerge from nearly a decade in Colorado’s political wilderness.

“This governor’s race is going to help answer the question, ‘Is this party serious or not?’ ” Republican analyst and Kirkmeyer supporter Dick Wadhams said.

Wadhams, a former state GOP chairman, served as the campaign manager for Gov. Bill Owens in his first victory in 1998 — when he became the only Republican to win the governor’s office in the last 56 years.��

In an interview, Kirkmeyer described her motivation for running for governor as similar to what drove her to run for the state Senate in 2020.

Fresh off her latest stint on the Weld County commission, Kirkmeyer then saw Gov. Jared Polis and the legislature, newly in full Democratic control, as singling out agriculture and the oil and gas industry — and not listening to rural parts of the state.

“I got ticked off, because enough’s enough,” said Kirkmeyer. Earlier, as a commissioner in 2013, she’d played a part in Weld and several other counties asking voters whether they should secede from Colorado — a short-lived movement rooted in the state’s urban-rural divide that she argues was successful in getting state leaders’ attention, at least for a while.

Now, in Kirkmeyer’s view, the problems have only been exacerbated. As Democrats have deepened their control of the legislature, lawmakers regularly need to find $1 billion cuts to the state budget, and opponents can find plenty of surveys that point to rankings and — even as some studies rank Colorado’s and favorably.

“I’ve had enough, again,” Kirkmeyer said. “We’ve had one-party control for the last eight years, and they’ve made a mess out of our state.”

Former gov: Kirkmeyer is ‘the total package’

In the traditional sense, Kirkmeyer is easily the most experienced candidate in the GOP race. She spent 20 years as a Weld County commissioner, served a stint as the acting director of the Department of Local Affairs under Owens, and is now in her fifth year as a state senator. In 2022, she also ran a failed — but close — campaign for Congress in the new, hypercompetitive 8th Congressional District.

Owens, who served two terms between 1999 and 2007, again sees Kirkmeyer as the right person for the job — “the total package,” as he put it.

In particular, that long track record would bring a deep set of contacts for her to tap as governor, he noted. A governor makes hundreds of appointments — not just for people to run individual departments but to serve on policy-making boards like the Public Utilities Commission and the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission.

“She will bring in not only folks with government experience, but a lot of additional expertise in the private sector,” Owens said. “I feel like that’s been lacking in recent years. The bureaucracy has been heavily bureaucratized.”

A quick look at the Colorado governor candidates running in this month’s Democratic, Republican primaries

Since late 2022, the senator has served as one of six members on the Joint Budget Committee, helping to steer state spending and digging as deep as anyone into the nitty-gritty of how state government works. The influence she wields on the explicitly collaborative committee, even as one of just two Republicans, has made her one of the most powerful elected Republicans in the state, or even the most powerful one.

Senate Minority Leader Cleave Simpson, an Alamosa Republican and head of the caucus, heaped praise on Kirkmeyer. As a member of the JBC, Kirkmeyer's been able both to hold the line and, despite being outnumbered by Democrats by a ratio of 2-to-1 on the committee, to claim victories in cutting and defending priority programs, Simpson said.

This past year, Simpson credited Kirkmeyer with putting a time limit on how long the state could lower its reserve requirements to cope with the latest budget crunch. She also worked to limit Cover All Coloradans, the Medicaid-like program for immigrants without permanent legal status that had seen its costs explode.

"She's getting beat up sometimes in the primary world because she's JBC and she is voting for the budget,” Simpson said. “But she's doing everything she can from the minority position. … I give her a ton of credit for that."

Asset or weakness?

That experience, however, has also become a potential vulnerability for Kirkmeyer.

Marx, the fundraising leader in the race -- and a self-described "high-risk humanitarian" who leads a nonprofit — offered a tongue-in-cheek apology at a recent debate.

“An outsider, who no one knows, wasn’t supposed to step into this race and ruin your next step of being a professional politician,” Marx, who has never held public office, said to Kirkmeyer at a 9News-hosted debate in early June.

, an anonymous blog that polices conservatives to weed out so-called “Republicans in name only,” the “Evil Queen of Weld County RINOS” for her work on the state budget and other perceived offenses.��

"What a weird paradigm to be in,” Simpson said. “I've heard commentary on radio that she's just part of the problem from a conservative's perspective. Would you rather not have anyone there making arguments about whether the pendulum has swung too far?”

Despite Democrats' near-supermajorities, Kirkmeyer points to a number of accomplishments under the Gold Dome: She was a sponsor on legislation that eliminated the so-called negative factor that long shortchanged funding for education. She was a lead sponsor of legislation that lowered the state’s property tax assessment rates. And she was a lead sponsor of legislation that helped rural hospitals weather the drop-off in patients covered by Medicaid since the end of the pandemic, among others. All of those bills were bipartisan.

“The only people who like to spin (my experience) as a negative are the people who don’t have a record like I do,” Kirkmeyer said.

She also goes to the mat when she sees her values threatened. As a lawmaker, she was at the forefront of the campaign against Proposition HH, the 2023 legislature-referred ballot measure about property taxes and education funding that went down in flames.

She often leads long floor debates when she feels the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the constitutional amendment that limits state spending growth and requires voter approval for tax hikes, may be threatened.

"I'm willing to work with people, willing to listen to them -- but when push comes to shove, I'll veto them,” Kirkmeyer said, adding that “we don’t compromise on the constitution."

Keying in on state constitution

That fealty to the state constitution also leads to some positions possibly out of line with other conservatives.

In 2024, Colorado voters overwhelmingly adopted Amendment 79, enshrining the right to an abortion in the state constitution. Kirkmeyer, who describes herself as "pro-life," opposed that change. But she says she respects the vote -- while also noting that the amendment does the state to pay for abortion services. That was enacted through a separate law passed by lawmakers.

“I will follow the will of the voters, and I will protect the constitution. That's what my job is as an elected official,” Kirkmeyer said. “But it doesn't change where my heart is on abortion."��

Owens called Kirkemeyer "a conservative's conservative." And just as importantly, he sees her as having the best chance to win.

"It is a fact that sometimes the experienced candidate is someone who actually has a record that can be criticized. But I would take experience in this case, with a record to prove my point that she is a solid conservative," Owens said.

Wadhams, the former party chair and Owens campaign manager, sees a vote for Kirkmeyer as a vote for a serious policy debate this fall. She would still face an uphill general election against a well-known and well-funded Democrat in blue-trending Colorado, but the debate would at least be focused on things like road quality and the state budget deficit, he said.

He said that nominating Marx, who won't say how many people he's killed, or Bottoms, who's made baseless claims of a statewide pedophile ring, would risk a wipeout for Republicans by miring the general election debate in one about background and fitness for office.

"What I've always seen (in Kirkmeyer) is one tough conservative woman who was very effective," Wadhams said. "There are people in my party, unfortunately, who would rather go with this boisterous, loud temperament that repels voters."

On the Democratic side, longtime officeholders U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser are duking it out for their party’s nomination. On the Republican side, state Rep. Scott Bottoms, state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer and Victor Marx are looking to recapture the governor’s mansion for the GOP for the first time in more than 20 years.

Here’s an at-a-glance look at the major party candidates in the June 30 primaries who are looking to lead Colorado for the next four years. They are listed in the order they’ll appear on each ballot. The winners will face off in the November election, where voters will decide who will succeed term-limited Gov. Jared Polis.

Republicans

Scott Bottoms |

A longtime lead pastor of a church in Colorado Springs, in the state House, and he earned top billing on the Republican primary ballot after securing the most votes at the party’s statewide assembly in April.

He’s among the most conservative lawmakers in the state Capitol. His four years in office have been focused on pursuing antiabortion and anti-transgender policies, alongside attempts to lower the income tax. With the exception of legislation to create a new license plate, none of Bottoms’ bills has been signed into law or passed a first hearing vote.

Bottoms is a U.S. Navy veteran who has promised to ferret out corruption and “DOGE” state government — a reference to Elon Musk’s agency-gutting Department of Government Efficiency at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Victor Marx |

Marx is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and nonprofit leader. A political newcomer from Colorado Springs, Marx’s eclectic background includes claims to be the world’s fastest gun-disarmer, a mixed martial artist, a podcaster, an author and a “high-risk humanitarian” working to help women and children in conflict areas.

He has said he was physically abused beginning at an early age and that his stepfather forced him to murder a man when Marx was 7. He joined the military, ran mixed martial arts schools in Hawaii and later founded his nonprofit, All Things Possible Ministries.

Marx has significantly outraised his GOP opponents, avoiding debates and focusing instead on traditional conservative media and direct outreach to contact voters.

Barb Kirkmeyer |

Kirkmeyer, a longtime Weld County resident, served as a county commissioner between 1992 and 2000 and then between 2009 and 2020. In between, she served in Gov. Bill Owens’ administration as the acting executive director of the Department of Local Affairs. In 2020, she was elected to the state Senate.

She later joined the powerful Joint Budget Committee, a six-member group of lawmakers that drafts the state budget each year. In 2022, she unsuccessfully ran for the newly created 8th Congressional District, losing a narrow race to Democrat Yadira Caraveo.

Kirkmeyer is a representative of the GOP’s more traditional wing and is respected in a Democrat-dominated Capitol. She has been a frequent critic of Democrats’ spending and policy priorities, while holding at arm’s length the more right-wing elements of her own party.

Write-in candidate

The Republican primary ballot has a write-in option for governor, since candidate Kelvin “K-Man” Wimberly — part of the initially large GOP field last fall — filed a write-in candidate affidavit.

Democrats

Phil Weiser |

Weiser first won public office as part of the 2018 blue wave that landed Democrats in all of Colorado’s top offices. Before his election, Weiser served in the Clinton and Obama administrations and as the dean of the University of Colorado Law School.

His tenure as AG has included landmark consumer protection lawsuits, ongoing negotiations about the future of the Colorado River and an antagonistic stance toward the Trump administration, particularly in the president’s second term.

Weiser was the first Democrat to announce his candidacy for the governor’s office in what was expected to be a crowded field. Now, he’s just one of two candidates remaining.��He has pivoted his campaign to one of an upstart as he tries to overcome Bennet’s decades in the public eye. He argues Colorado is best served by its senior senator remaining in Washington, D.C.

Michael Bennet |

Bennet entered public office in 2009 with an appointment by then-Gov. Bill Ritter to fill a Senate vacancy. He wasn’t new to public life, having served as the superintendent of Denver Public Schools and as then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s chief of staff, after a stint working on corporate mergers for Phil Anschutz. But he was new to elected office.

He won his first election in 2010 in a relative nail-biter, winning 48% of the vote to Republican Ken Buck’s 46%. His vote share has increased in both reelection campaigns since then, most recently with a 56%-to-41% romp of Republican businessman Joe O’Dea in 2022. Bennet ran for president in 2020, though he dropped out of the race early in the Democratic primaries.

He has made cost of living a central theme in his gubernatorial campaign and calls Trump’s presidency a symptom of that larger economic problem. One of Bennet’s marquee accomplishments as a senator was expanding the child tax credit and sending it out as direct checks to families. That expanded credit lasted only a year, but it helped cut childhood poverty by nearly half nationwide, .

Other candidates

Besides the major parties, the Unity Party of Colorado for governor on its June 30 primary ballot: Paul Noël Fiorino and Jeff Peckman.

Other third parties have nominated candidates for the November election. Unaffiliated candidates who are gathering signatures to make the fall ballot include Greg Lopez, who served a short stint in Congress in 2024 and earlier dropped out of the Republican race for governor.

Unfortunately, by cheerleading more taxpayer-funded industrial logging than we’ve seen for nearly a century in Colorado, they’re projecting their own mistakes on those with whom they disagree.

Indeed, with wildfire prevention measures, we have yet another example of when story and status compete against science and substance.

Industry and government, funded by your tax dollars to log forests in the name of wildfire prevention, are using status (former governors) to push a story (logging saves homes and lives) to dismiss the science (evidence that logging is ineffective or counterproductive at protecting communities) and ignore substance (“hardening” every home in Colorado).

Last month, many of the elected officials, agencies, and nonprofits exploited their status to pressure our state legislature to axe a bill that would’ve directed some “wildfire mitigation” funding towards what the consensus of peer-reviewed science agrees is the most effective action for protecting communities: home hardening.

Instead of mentioning this, Owens and Ritter opined, “Every year we delay needed work, we increase the odds that the next fire will burn hotter, spread faster and do more damage.”

In this case — likely due to being misled by those who benefit most — these high-status players are making claims that don’t meet the burden of proof.

The best argument for “fuel reduction” is that it can sometimes, somewhat reduce the severity of lower-intensity fires already easily contained by firefighters, the very fires agencies insist we must return to the landscape, not the (ecologically crucial) weather and wind-driven higher-intensity ones. Even if you ignore harm to ecosystems, wildlife, watersheds, and climate, that����ap not much bang for the cost of thousands of bucks per acre.

Not only is cutting forests ineffective at preventing the spread of fire, but that����ap not even its purpose. As this Forest Service study endorsing “fuel reduction” admits: “fuel treatments are not designed to prevent or stop fires but to moderate fire behavior. However, there is a frequent misconception that fuel treatments should facilitate suppression and limit the size of wildfires.”

To the contrary, abundant science — including the same Forest Service study — reveals that: “Reduced canopy bulk density can lead to increased surface wind speed and fuel heating, which allows for increased rates of fire spread in thinned forests.”

We now have proof that some of those promoting story are abusing status to not only “cherry pick” science but falsely accuse anyone sharing left-out evidence of being “cherry pickers” themselves.

Colorado Forest Restoration Institute at Colorado State University is the state’s leading entity researching “fuel reduction” in the name of wildfire.

In a 2024 email exchange obtained through a Colorado Open Records Act filing, CFRI’s director told a U.S. Forest Service district ranger (overseeing the second largest logging project in Colorado history) that “I’m concerned the Wildfire Crisis Strategy overpromises what forest density redx (reduction) can actually accomplish vis-à-vis the lofty objective of saving homes and communities from catching fire. What additional density redx could have reduced the impacts of the Marshall Fire?”

CFRI’s director advised, “There are numerous studies demonstrating both effectiveness and lack of effectiveness of forest density reduction (“forest thinning”) projects on altering fire behavior and effects. Engaging in toe-to-toe trench warfare with competing science papers would result in stalemate – and win for the opponents.”

Yet still to this day in Colorado, anyone who questions logging is at best censored, at worst publicly defamed as a liar.

Owens and Ritter are right when they say, “Every year we refuse to confront reality, we make future losses more likely and more expensive.”

But the only way we’re going to snap out of the delusion and protect homes and lives from wildfire is by valuing science and substance over story and status.

Josh Schlossberg lives adjacent to the Roosevelt National Forest in Boulder County and works as Colorado Advocate for Eco-Integrity Alliance.

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Re: “Let’s bring data centers to state on our terms,” May 8 commentary

Since Bill Owens favors the building of data centers in Colorado, be sure to place one near his home. Any portion of the increase in my monthly bills assessed on the electric or water side may be charged to him as well.

Jobs? Ha! Not once they’re built. Also, instead of listening to crickets on warm summer nights and chirping birds in the morning, residents with properties nearby can hear the hum from the data center. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

I won’t take up more newsprint at this time to discuss the dangers of AI. Needless to say, there’s no room or resources for data centers in my Colorado.

— Mariann Storck, Wheat Ridge

Congress needs to pass a ‘moral budget’ that ‘promotes the general Welfare’

Re: “House advances $390B farm bill,” May 1 news story

As Congress develops a budget for the next fiscal year, I am very concerned about lawmakers’ priorities.

In a country as rich as ours, we should not have people needing assistance in buying food, many millions needing access to health insurance, and a housing assistance program that only reaches of those who are qualified.

At the same time, the “” passed by Congress last July provides for millions in tax cuts to billionaires.

This is not a moral budget. Congress needs to make reducing poverty a high priority. The preamble to the Constitution says that one of the purposes of our government is to “promote the general Welfare.” We must demand a more moral and responsible federal budget from our representatives in Congress.

Congress dismantled the nation’s most effective protection against hunger while providing tax cuts to wealthy Americans and corporations. Congress must repeal these devastating cuts to SNAP or delay them for all states, not just a few. We must urge Congress to repeal or delay the state cost-sharing policy from H.R. 1 in any farm-related bill this year. We can start by asking Sen. Michael Bennet and Sen. John Hickenlooper to delay cuts to SNAP benefits in the 2026 Farm Bill.

— Martha J. Karnopp, Aurora

Extending child care credit is good for business

Running a small business and raising children is all the more complicated when navigating a broken child care system. My productivity and budget have been hampered by strict cutoffs and lengthy waitlists. As a small business owner, I can’t grow my business and provide for my family without affordable care options.

That����ap why I support to extend the Child Care Continuation Tax Credit for 10 years and generate $60 million annually for child care providers across the state. Without this tax credit, it would be even more difficult for child care providers to serve their communities.

Child care is an absolute necessity for working parents and a key player in Colorado’s small business landscape. I urge Colorado policymakers to extend the tax credits that make child care accessible and affordable for small business owners like myself.

— Samantha Allbritton, Centennial

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As someone who has had the privilege of leading the state of Colorado, I take our economic competitiveness and leadership very seriously. I fought to ensure our state was open for business — a place where entrepreneurs would want to locate, bringing jobs and investment with them. We are also a state with a long tradition of balancing growth with stewardship.

Over the decades, Colorado has experienced extraordinary growth and faced transitions that reshaped its economy and infrastructure. We are a hub for countless major industries from aerospace and energy to health care and manufacturing, driven by a talented workforce, smart policies, and our own pioneering spirit. Oil and natural gas development and the growth of clean power each brought opportunity alongside challenges.

The question is not whether change will come, but whether Colorado would help shape it on its own terms or react to decisions made elsewhere. Experience taught us that the best outcomes and lasting opportunities come neither from rushing ahead without proper protections in place nor from standing still, but through thoughtful and collaborative planning. This is the opportunity I believe we have with — the chance to lead again.

In order to remain in our position at the forefront of innovation, we should take steps toward powering our future by bringing data center investment and jobs to the Centennial State. House Bill 1030 will do that by providing a targeted state (not local) sales tax exemption to attract data center development to communities hoping to benefit, but ensures that we bring them here on our terms.

Data centers operate behind the scenes as the digital engines that power our daily lives and support the key industries that fuel Colorado’s economy. Many states raced to attract data centers, hoping to benefit from the thousands of jobs, critical infrastructure, and economic growth they bring with them. However, some states did fail to put guardrails in place.

But in Colorado we can learn from these early mistakes and protect consumers and our environment. We can then leverage data center development to create thousands of jobs, strengthen our grid and infrastructure, boost our renewable energy industry, support the state’s thriving tech sector, and provide needed economic investment and tax revenue for communities devastated by the loss of power generation, mines, plants and oil and gas.

Data centers support employment throughout their entire lifecycle, from initial construction to daily operations and ongoing community involvement. Developing these facilities relies on a wide range of skilled workers — including electricians, engineers, technicians, and other trades. Just six new data centers could bring 1,500 construction jobs over a period of up to three years, with average annual wages exceeding $140,000 per worker. Each center also typically supports up to 100, high-paying, permanent roles. These are good jobs and real money, especially in our rural communities that are full of skilled workers just looking for an opportunity.

Data centers also make major investments to our infrastructure by funding improvements to roads, utilities, broadband networks, and water systems that benefit entire regions. They play a key role in strengthening the power grid by financing new transmission upgrades and advanced energy technologies that increase reliability and capacity for everyone.

It����ap no secret that data centers use a lot of energy, but House Bill 1030 provides strong, enforceable ratepayer protections that ensure rates don’t go up and data centers pay their own way. This includes making large and critical infrastructure upgrades to our aging power grid. Data centers can also power our clean energy economy. Colorado is a national leader in clean energy and is uniquely positioned to create data-center policies that help us reach our ambitious energy goals.

Finally, while data centers are the digital backbone for Colorado’s thriving tech industry on the Front Range, they can also offer a lifeline for communities on the Western Slope and Eastern Plains that have suffered from the loss of power generation and other industries. They bring stable jobs, modern infrastructure, community investments, and long-term tax revenue that funds schools, public safety, and other essential services.

There is a reason other states are working aggressively to attract data centers – and it����ap to the tune of billions. Far from “corporate welfare,” the incentives provided to bring data centers to Colorado will be dwarfed by what they bring in in real wages, property taxes, infrastructure investments, and economic growth. Nationally, data centers generated $162.7 billion in revenue for communities. Colorado currently captures only 2% of that investment and has actually lost data center jobs.

Other states moved too quickly, and Colorado can and should learn from their experiences. However, we have a history of crafting the strategic, forward-thinking policies that prove that economic strength and environmental responsibility can advance together and that other states will follow.

That same approach is needed now. The policy choices we make around data centers today will influence Colorado’s economy, workforce, and infrastructure for years to come, and we don’t want to be left behind. Our state has never shied away from hard conversations about growth, resources, and responsibility. Colorado can shape the digital future – if we choose to lead with House Bill 1030.

Bill Owens is a former governor of Colorado.

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Those experiences stay with you. They also teach a simple lesson: when it comes to wildfire, denial, delay and ideology come at a very high cost.

That is why wildfire awareness matters. May is not just a marker on the calendar. It is the beginning of wildfire season. It is a warning. In Colorado, this is the moment to prepare for the dangerous months ahead and to be honest about what real prevention requires — proactive forest treatment prevents the worst.

Wildfire is not only a forest issue. It is a public safety issue. It is a health issue. It is an economic issue. Lives are put at risk. Homes, businesses and ranches are destroyed. Watersheds are damaged. Entire communities are left to recover for years. Even far from the flames, smoke can turn the air hazardous, especially for children, seniors and those with respiratory conditions.

Colorado has learned these lessons the hard way. We know wildfire cannot be eliminated. But we also know the severity of these disasters is not simply something we are powerless to address. There are practical, science-based steps we can take to reduce risk. The problem is that for too long, too many people have treated active forest management as too invasive rather than absolutely necessary.

That needs to change.

We should say clearly what too often goes unsaid: healthy forests do not maintain themselves, and neglected forests do not become safer with wishful thinking. In many high-risk areas, doing nothing is not conservation. It is complacency and it is dangerous.

For years, there have been loud voices opposing the very tools that can help reduce catastrophic wildfire risk — strategic thinning, fuel reduction, forest clearing where appropriate, and prescribed burns when conditions allow. Too often, these arguments are dressed up as environmental virtue. In reality, blocking responsible management can leave forests less healthy, communities more vulnerable and firefighters facing even greater danger.

Colorado needs a more mature conversation, especially as we deal with prolonged drought, warming temperatures, pine and Ponderosa beetles, and other threats to forest health. Stewardship is not abuse. Forest management is not the enemy of healthy ecosystems. If anything, refusing to use proven tools in fire-prone landscapes is its own kind of recklessness.

We should be working closely with the United States Forest Service and the Colorado State Forest Service and local governments to accelerate projects in areas already designated as high wildfire threat. We should prioritize the places where fire risk, community exposure and forest conditions demand action most urgently. We should support mechanical thinning, hazardous-fuel removal, and controlled burns when science and on-the-ground expertise indicate they make sense.

And yes, when and where appropriate, responsible access and carefully managed resource activity can be part of healthier forests and stronger rural economies. That should not be controversial. It should be common sense.

None of this means every acre should be treated the same way. It means decisions should be driven by science, local knowledge and public safety — not by rigid ideology or pressure from groups more interested in stopping management than solving problems.

Colorado’s forests protect water supplies, support wildlife, provide recreation, sustain local economies and define the character of our state. If we want those public benefits to endure for generations to come, we have to be willing to manage these lands responsibly.

The costs of inaction are simply too high. Every year we delay needed work, we increase the odds that the next fire will burn hotter, spread faster and do more damage. Every year we refuse to confront reality, we make future losses more likely and more expensive.

Coloradans deserve better than another season of hand-wringing followed by disaster. They deserve leaders willing to act before the emergency, not just speak solemnly after it.

We have both seen wildfire from the seat of state leadership. We know the fear, the destruction and the heartbreak it leaves behind. We also know Colorado has the expertise and the tools to do better.

Learn to Live Wildfire Friendly with less ideology, more science; less obstruction, more stewardship; less talk, more action.

Because when wildfire threatens Colorado, doing what works is not optional. It is our responsibility.

Gov. Bill Owens is a Republican who served from 1999 to 2007. Gov. Bill Ritter is a Democrat who served from 2007 to 2011.

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Much of that won’t be directed by the campaigns, either.

More than $4 million has been raised by outside committees already in the Democratic primary for governor between U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser, offering a preview of what’s to come.

Independent expenditure committees, colloquially known as state super PACs, can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money so long as they don’t coordinate with the campaigns they’re supporting. While the committees often report the names of contributors, the donors are sometimes cloaked in anonymity, either through obscure business entities��or separate nonprofits that don’t need to disclose their donors.

That’s true of some of the money flooding into the independent committees in the Bennet-Weiser race. While some large checks have been cut by big names like New York City billionaire Michael Bloomberg and figures well known in the local or national business worlds, others have come from deep pockets that are harder to identify.

The vast majority of the super PAC money in the primary, $3.6 million, has gone to Rocky Mountain Way, the committee supporting Bennet����ap bid. About $563,000 has gone to Fighting for Colorado, the committee supporting Weiser’s candidacy.��

Bennet and Weiser have largely cleared the field on the Democratic side of the race, which also has several declared lesser-known candidates. On the crowded Republican side, where there are 20-odd contenders, there’s been little fundraising by independent expenditure committees so far. The GOP field also lags significantly behind the Democratic side in direct campaign fundraising. Coloradans have elected only one Republican as governor — Bill Owens, who won in 1998 and 2002 — since the 1970s.

The outside cash backing them likely represents the tip of the iceberg this year, observers said — especially in the first competitive Democratic governor’s race in over a decade where one candidate doesn’t promise to steamroll the competition’s spending with self-funding.

In 2018, Democrat Jared Polis spent more than $22 million of his own money on his way to winning the governor’s office. Polis is now term-limited from running again.��

Differing rules for direct, outside donations

Statewide races can cost tens of millions of dollars to organize and get a campaign message across. But Colorado candidates can raise only $725 from an individual donor for each leg of the race, or $1,450 combined for the primary and general elections.

That, in effect, caps wealthier donors at a fraction of what they might want to give directly to candidates.��

In the Democratic primary alone, 34 individuals and organizations have cut checks of $10,000 or more to the independent committees. The single largest donor, Bloomberg, has contributed $1.25 million to the committee backing Bennet����ap bid — a sum more than 860 times greater than what he’d be able to give to Bennet����ap campaign directly.

The lack of limits on donations or spending by outside groups that operate independently of campaigns , which found such spending was protected as free speech.

��“Because direct campaign contributions in Colorado are capped at $725 per individual, these independent expenditure groups are really key for building cash at scale,” said Aly Belknap, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, a government watchdog group.

Add in the ability for other nonprofits to donate to the committees, she said, and “this effectively washes the money and obscures the original donors, and creates a lack of transparency for the public and the voters about what kinds of special interests are contributing to the campaigns.”

(Common Cause is also a nonprofit that is not required to disclose its donors. Belknap said the organization has a policy of disclosing who give more than $2,500 automatically, and of making the smaller donor list available for inspection at its Denver office.)

Ian Silverii, a Democratic political strategist, said the independent expenditure committee arm’s race is an “ironic” side effect of state campaign finance reforms. Silverii worked on the Weiser campaign when it was first starting up last year but has since stepped back from the race.��

The caps on campaign contributions didn’t stop big money from pouring into races. They merely shift where the big checks go and how they get spent, Silverii said.

The separate pot of money also comes with its own drawback.

Candidate campaigns get favorable ad rates from TV stations and other outlets compared to independent expenditure committees, meaning direct donations go further.

When it comes to candidate fundraising, Bennet’s campaign has directly raised about $3.5 million and started the year with about $1.6 million in the bank, according to the most recent campaign finance reports that cover activity through the end of December. The Weiser campaign has directly raised about $4.6 million and started the year with about $3.5 million in the bank.��

Lack of control over message

Since candidates legally can’t coordinate with the independent committees, they thus lose the ability to control the story they want to tell when the money goes to outside groups. That can result in candidates sustaining collateral damage if they end up tied to messages or messengers that repel voters.��

Silverii used ultrabillionaire Elon Musk’s on last year’s Wisconsin state Supreme Court election��as an example. Voters associated the Republican candidate with Musk as overall views of the billionaire ��amid his involvement in Trump administration initiatives, and his preferred candidate lost by .

“It is probably always better to have more resources to tell your story than it is to have fewer resources, but there is also a risk of your support being a liability,” Silverii said.

Case in point: Each of the gubernatorial campaigns, asked to comment generally on the outside money sure to flood the race, attacked the other’s third-party support while highlighting its candidate’s own direct donor base.

“The momentum behind Phil’s campaign is surging, so it����ap no surprise that out-of-state billionaires and special interests are dumping millions into this race to try to stop him,” Anna Huck, Weiser’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “Phil isn’t beholden to special interests, corporations or out-of-state-billionaires — he’s powered by the people of Colorado, with more in-state donors, more local endorsements and more than double the cash on hand than Michael Bennet.”

Jordan Fuja, a campaign spokesperson for Bennet����ap campaign, highlighted contributions to third-party committees that supported Weiser’s prior campaigns. She claimed Weiser had “a clear conflict of interest” because of donations from attorneys and people with ties to the oil and gas industry that may have business before the attorney general’s office.

She also singled out support for the Weiser-backing independent expenditure committee from Blair Richardson, a private equity CEO who donated to President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, though he has also contributed to Democratic causes.

��“Michael is honored to have the grassroots support in this race with more supporters, more contributions, and a lower average donation than any other candidate in this primary,” Fuja said in a statement. “Phil Weiser, on the other hand, publicly condemns billionaire money while quietly taking it himself — including millions in donations from billionaires in past races.”

In a statement, the director of Rocky Mountain Way, Sarah Andrews, said the committee exists to bolster Bennet’s story and “is focused on ensuring voters understand Michael Bennet’s long history of steady leadership and real results for Colorado.”

“This effort is about making sure Coloradans hear clearly about the proven leadership that delivers for hardworking people and provides more opportunity for Colorado families,” Andrews said.

Attempts to reach representatives from the committee supporting Weiser and some of the largest donors to both committees — including Bloomberg and Paramount President Jeff Shell on the pro-Bennet side and Richardson and investor Tom Ray on the pro-Weiser side — were unsuccessful.

But the gathering was enough to underscore the wide-open nature of the race for an office the GOP hasn’t won in 23 years. That’s a contrast to the Democratic side, which has quickly shaped up as a race between two heavyweight candidates.

Over the next nine months, each Republican will look to carve out a lane apart from the many others looking to do the same, with 19 declared GOP candidates as of Friday. Some of those at the Denver Press Club’s forum on Thursday night explicitly acknowledged the prevailing agreement in the room when it came to cutting taxes and shrinking government, and all sought to help themselves stand out.

Among the nine participating candidates, state Sen. Mark Baisley laid out a vision of a government that does “very little … but what we do do, we should do well.” Political newcomer and U.S. Army veteran Joshua Griffin pitched “running the state like a business.”

And state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer called for a governor, such as herself, “who believes the state’s best days are ahead of us — not behind us.”

Greg Lopez, a three-time candidate for governor who briefly served in Congress last year, warned that “Colorado has been turned into the ugly twin sister of California by single-party rule.” Lawyer Will McBride decried “government tyranny disguised as public service” and declared “a movement to reclaim what is ours.”

In an aside, McBride alluded to a challenge Republicans likely face, whoever’s the nominee: “No Republican has raised more than (Democrats) have spent” on the race so far, he said. “So I think it����ap a big problem that no one really believes a Republican can win.”

Another 10 candidates, including state Rep. Scott Bottoms, Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell and Colorado Springs pastor Victor Marx — who’s newly declared — weren’t at the forum. How far any of the campaigns end up going — dependent on money, willpower and support — will play out over the next eight months, through the Colorado Republican Party’s state assembly in the spring and then the primary election in June.

The eventual winner likely will face either U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet or Attorney General Phil Weiser, the two Democrats leading that nominating race.

“It’s going to be competitive, the Republican primary,” Republican analyst Dick Wadhams said. “There’s no juggernaut.”

But Wadhams, who ran a campaign for the state’s last Republican governor, Bill Owens, added that several of the candidates at the top of the field seemed locked in the right wing of the party. He said that conspiracy theories asserting the 2020 presidential election was stolen; calls for the pardon of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted of breaching voting machines in search of fraud; and a push to end Republican participation in the state’s semi-open primary elections will make for a “minefield” when trying to court the most fervent Republicans without alienating the general electorate.

Polls show the Democrats now in control of the state — with the governor’s office (where Jared Polis is term limited) and near-2-to-1 majorities in each legislative chamber — as vulnerable as they’ve been in a decade, Wadhams said.

If the eventual Republican nominee can navigate the party base’s potentially alienating issues and appeal to the mainstream, he said, the person will have a shot. He said he thinks Kirkmeyer best fits that bill.

“While Republicans still face a drag from the anti-Trump attitudes in Colorado by unaffiliated voters,” Wadhams said, “for the first time — I think since probably 2018 or before — voters might seriously consider a Republican candidate for governor who talks to them about the issues they’re concerned about. They’re not going to be blinded by this opposition to (President) Trump.”

Most back Peters’ release

Nearly all of the candidates at the Thursday forum expressed some level of support for releasing Peters, who is in prison serving a nine-year sentence for her felony convictions. Trump has highlighted her case repeatedly, including with a recent threat of “harsh measures” if the state officials don’t release her.

Most supported an unconditional pardon without additional comment. Griffin said he’d consider commuting her sentence. Bob Brinkerhoff, a former state trooper, said “absolutely,” but he’d want to see if “she got the same kind of trial that Donald Trump did in New York,” referring to the president����ap felony convictions.

Kirkmeyer didn’t say no to a pardon, but she answered with a considerable hedge: “If faced with new facts, I’d consider.”

Against a backdrop of unified Democratic control of state government for the past near-decade, moderators asked which laws the Republicans would wipe away if they could. Nearly every candidate said something different.

Brinkerhoff and Griffin targeted gun laws, with Brinkerhoff singling out this year’s Senate Bill 3, which adds requirements to buy certain semiautomatic firearms, and Griffin targeting “anything that infringes on our 2A rights.”

Lopez specified a piece of the legislative process, known as the safety clause, in wihch lawmakers can determine a bill “is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety,” and enact it immediately upon the governor’s signature — versus giving the public time to petition against its enactment.

Baisley, in the only mention of abortion during the forum, said he’d erase the , which codified a right to abortion in state law. Voters have since adopted similar protections in the state constitution.

“It puts government in the position of the creator,” Baisley said.

Kirkmeyer, later echoed by Brinkerhoff, named a law that was passed in the spring, . That law explicitly protects transgender people from being “deadnamed,” or misgendered, in certain places, including schools and workplaces. It also makes it easier for people to change their gender identity and name on government documents.

Kirkmeyer called the bill part of “the war on parents.”

Concern about Trump’s call for troops in cities

On Tuesday, before a rare and rapidly assembled gathering of the nation’s top military leaders, Trump claimed the country was “under invasion from within” and suggested using “some of these dangerous cities as .”

Trump has already unilaterally sent National Guard units and active-duty U.S. Marines to help with . On the same day as Trump’s speech, one Republican governor, Louisiana’s Jeff Landry, bolstered that effort by to some of his state’s cities.

The GOP field on Thursday, however, said they wouldn’t invite the Pentagon to send troops to Colorado cities — though some had some caveats.

Jason Clark, a West Point graduate and financial professional who dons a red hat emblazoned with “Make Colorado Great Again” in many of his campaign videos, offered a blunt “F-bomb no” — a bit of self-censorship at a moderator’s request — to the idea.

Griffin, who served 16 combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, said he “would never put one of our people in the city, because we are trained to kill, not to police.” But he was open to deputizing National Guard members to help police, if necessary.

Several of the Republicans echoed Griffin. They’d call up the National Guard if necessary, but in a support role and only in emergency circumstances, or if local law enforcement was failing to keep residents safe.

“I’m very nervous about the idea of using our military domestically. However, I support our folks in blue a lot,” Baisley said, noting he’s run several failed bills recently to lift the state’s restrictions on local law enforcement working with immigration officials.��

He said he’d invite military help, but only to augment local law enforcement. Allowing independent military operations in Colorado would be “a little bit dangerous,” he said.

Declared Republican candidates for governor

• State Sen. Mark Baisley
• State Rep. Scott Bottoms
• Bob Brinkerhoff
• John Brooks
• Jason Clark
• Brycen Garrison
• Stevan Gess
• Jon Gray-Ginsberg
• Joshua Griffin
• State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer
• Former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez
• Victor Marx
• Will McBride
• Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell
• Robert Moore
• Alexander Mugatu
• Jim Rundberg
• Daniel Thomas
• Kelvin “K-Man” Wimberly

Source: Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.