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 conservatismĚý— 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.Ěý

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.Ěý

"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."Ěý

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."

The two-term Republican state representative from Colorado Springs said he hates going to the Capitol every day, “but I know this is what God called me to do.”

Politics for Bottoms, an evangelical pastor and candidate for governor, is a deeply spiritual endeavor, and he regularly infuses religion into campaign speeches, remarks before the legislature and policy briefs. He has referred to Colorado Democrats as “satan” and frequently pitches political differences as a battle between good and evil.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing pastors say, ‘I don’t get involved politically,’ ” Bottoms said in a at Texas’s Nelson University. “They have a problem. We’re losing our children. We’re losing our states. We’re losing our country.”

Bottoms, one of the most conservative lawmakers at the state Capitol, won top billing for governor on the Republican primary ballot at the party’s statewide convention this spring. He’s one of three candidates — along with state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and political newcomer Victor Marx — seeking to return his party to the governor’s mansion for the first time in two decades.

Bottoms, though, has an uphill climb in an ever-deepening blue state that Republican standard-bearer President Donald Trump.

He is the lead pastor at the , an evangelical church in Colorado Springs that and believes a person’s gender is established by God in the womb and “is not subject to personal choice or change.” In sermons, he has , saying, “You’ve got to hate the evil that is Islam.”

He has been the prime sponsor of just one bill in his four years at the Capitol — a to create a new license plate that says “In God We Trust.” Even on that bill, he was not initially a sponsor, but instead was added to the legislation by Republican leadership, who wanted him to get a win.

In an interview with The Denver Post’s editorial board last month, Bottoms said his greatest legislative achievements were providing leadership and helping lawmakers effectively communicate their ideas.

“It wasn’t passing bills,” he said wryly.

Rep. Ken DeGraaf, one of Bottoms’ Republican colleagues in the statehouse, said the pastor is “very smart, very principled, with a strong ethical base.”

“If he tells me he’s going to do something, I would take that as being effectively done,” DeGraaf said in an interview. “He’s going to keep his promises.”

Bottoms has campaigned against what he says is reckless spending, rising crime and failing schools in Colorado. He promised a version of the federal , which drastically cut spending across the government.

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

He maintains that Trump won the 2020 election, despite there being no evidence to support it. He wants to give parents more rights in their children's lives; invest more in oil, gas and coal; repeal state health insurance mandates; and make Colorado a leader in artificial intelligence technology.

"I know I'm gonna be sued constantly as governor," Bottoms told The Post.

The pastor also speaks frequently about pedophilia and protecting children from trafficking. He has repeatedly said state lawmakersĚýare buying children, while offering no evidence to support his shocking assertions.

The candidate claims to be working with the FBI and "private companies" to put offenders in prison, but will not reveal any details.ĚýAn FBI spokesperson would not confirm whether the agency is working with Bottoms.

Pressed by The Post's editorial board, Bottoms admitted that "we haven't found any victims. We really haven't been looking for them." He was unable or declined to answer questions about how he's rooting out this problem.

In a debate earlier this month, Bottoms that he was mistaken when he claimed more than 45,000 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were present in Colorado. He had conflated the total number of Venezuelan migrants who had come to the state, after applying for asylum, with gang members.

With the Republican primary just weeks away, political watchers in Colorado say Marx has become the frontrunner in the race. A last month showed Marx commanding 59.2% of Republican and unaffiliated primary voters. Kirkmeyer received 15.1%, while Bottoms came in third at 6.3%. There have been no other public polls.

Marx has also dominated the fundraising battle, pulling in $2.7 million through late May, compared with $556,000 for Kirkmeyer and about $200,000 for Bottoms.

Both Bottoms and Kirkmeyer have said they won't support Marx if he's nominated, with ."

Dick Wadhams, a veteran Republican operative in the state, said if the party nominates Marx or Bottoms, they will not only lose, but they will take down other Republicans on the ballot.

Wadhams, who's backing Kirkmeyer, said Bottoms' characterization of himself as "God's candidate" simply won't sell in a state where say they believe in a higher power with absolute certainty.

"He is way out of the mainstream in Colorado," Wadhams said.

The Republican gubernatorial candidate has attended only one debate alongside his two opponents. He’s never run for office before and has few prominent Republican officials backing him. His backstory is extensive and full of the sort of bizarre detail that, in a pre-Donald Trump world, would likely have caused his campaign to implode before it left the launchpad.

And after the June 30 primary,ĚýMarx very well may be Colorado Republicans’ candidate for governor.

“This is pretty wild,” he said recently, standing in front of his nonprofit’s indoor shooting range, a handgun holstered in his waistband. “Someone like me, running for governor.”

The comment appeared to come less from bewilderment at how far he’d come than from vindicated confidence. And it belied what has been a thoroughly, carefully atypical campaign — one that has leaned on the 60-year-old’s charm, his direct outreach to voters and his use of the now-familiar pitch of a political outsider who shares voters’ distaste for elected politicians and campaign-speak.

As he’s outraised other Republicans and seized headlines, Marx has also been bombarded with questions about his background from reporters and from skeptical conservatives.

He’s said he was forced to kill a man as a child and, when asked by , he replied, “Does it matter?” He once ran martial arts schools in Hawaii and is a black belt in “Cajun Karate,” a form of martial arts created by his dad, Karl.

He describes himself as a “high-risk humanitarian” who trains law enforcement and provides trauma relief to people in the United States and overseas, including in conflict zones. Another humanitarian confirmed that Marx was in Iraq a decade ago and that, though he was largely behind the front lines, he was present when medical workers came under fire at least twice.

Marx also talks frequently about praying to free people from demons that, , can be attracted by porn or unmarried couples living together. In one 2023 podcast, Marx and that, after his dog identified a supernatural presence in a couple at a pool, he set a woman free from “five demons that had been assigned to her.”

In an interview with The Denver Post, Marx said it didn’t matter if reporters believed him and that he was comfortable with scrutiny of his background, even as it’s drawn .

Voters will decide, he said, arguing that he was qualified because of their support.

“Judge us by the ability to run a campaign,” he said, “and look at the guy who’s never done it, nothing — but stepped into it, was aware of the problem and the need, (and) assessed what needed to be done to win. I have avoided some pitfalls of doing it the old way, but the action I’ve taken has broken records.”

Marx raised $2.67 million through late May, the most of any Republican gubernatorial candidate up to that point in at least 20 years. To get on the ballot, he submitted more than 28,000 signatures, more than any gubernatorial campaign since at least 2014. Those signatures were not verified because Marx earned ballot access through an assembly vote.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who did not return messages seeking comment; musician Ted Nugent; three county sheriffs; and Mark Geist, who defended the U.S. embassy in Libya in 2012. (Marx’s campaign has also paid Geist and his wife for consulting and security work.)

Dick Wadhams, a former chairman of the state GOP and critic of Marx, said Marx had run “the strangest campaign I’ve seen in all the years I’ve been involved in this business.”

He argued that Marx’s beliefs about demons and his assertions that he’s helped tens of thousands of women and children — some amount of which he’s claimed to have rescued, alongside more he’s said he’s helped by providing them stuffed animals and trauma support — were so outlandish that they would cost the party in down-ballot races in November.

Kristi Burton Brown, another former state party chair, questioned Marx’s apparent disinterest in policy discussions and debates. His opponents, state Rep. Scott Bottoms and state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, have called him a fraud and a con man; both said they would not support him should he win the nomination.

‘New territory for a political campaign’

But Wadhams and Burton Brown both acknowledged that Marx’s campaign had proven successful, marshalling what Wadhams described as Marx’sĚý base of support and expanding it with direct mail and “very aggressive social media outreach.” Marx’s campaign has spent $725,000 on mailers — nearly what Kirkmeyer and Bottoms have raised combined — and he’s leaned into videos and podcast appearances.

When the moderator of one debate, a conservative talk show host, sent Marx a letter pressing him for specifics on his background, Marx skipped the event and organized a rally instead. His campaign later released photos showing more people had attended his event than the debate.

“We are in such new territory for a political campaign in Colorado — frankly, in the nation,” Wadhams said, incredulous at Marx’s TV interviews.

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

Marx has eschewed dense policy discussions -- an intentional choice, he said, to let voters' eyes adjust to his background.

That hasn't been a concern for his supporters. Marx is likable, which is "gold" in politics, said Jeff Hunt, a conservative activist and radio host. He first met Marx at , where Marx teased his candidacy.

" 'He doesn't have policy chops' -- alright, well, he still outraises everybody," Hunt said. " 'He’s got a unique background' -- well, he’s still driving more people to his events. 'He won't debate' -- he still has energy and big rallies. (His opponents) are trying to figure out an angle. But when you're dealing with somebody who has such a big personality force, it¶¶Ňőap just not landing."

Hunt continued: "I've told him (that) if I was a political strategist, I would not ever have told him to tell the stories he has told or the things he has written about in his book ... That¶¶Ňőap part of the enjoyment I have in this whole process. Alright man, you are 100% yourself."

Marx has said he was the victim of profound abuse as a child. In his memoir, he wrote that his stepfather made him behead a cat at age 3. Marx wrote that at age 7, his stepfather put his hand around his own and forced him to shoot and kill a man. His stepfather, he alleges, then smeared blood on him and buried the man beneath the house.

The sheriff of Simpson County, Mississippi, where the shooting allegedly took place, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

A Marine veteran who moved to Colorado to work for Focus on the Family, Marx founded All Things Possible in 2003 "to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ through outreaches and crusades primarily to youth," according to the group's first tax filing. By 2024, ATP's annual revenue had surpassed $7.6 million.

A closer look at ministry

ATP has done outreach to youth in prisons and focused on "trauma response," Marx said, which includes handing out stuffed animals loaded with recorded prayers and songs. In an email, All Things Possible said the ministry was separate from Marx's campaign. Marx said he and his wife resigned from the group after he announced his candidacy.

But overlap remains: Marx's campaign address is at the ministry's training center outside of Colorado Springs, which is also the home he sold to the nonprofit for nearly $3 million in 2024. His campaign manager was also listed as an ATP board member on its most recent tax returns.

Marx has said he and his group have worked overseas, including in Iraq, Syria, Israel and southeast Asia. Its tax filings show it has spent more than $4.3 million on those efforts in recent years, though those documents also state ATP had no standing personnel or offices in those countries.

Dave Eubank, the American head of the Myanmar-based , said he met Marx in California roughly 15 years ago. He later invited Marx to Myanmar, where Eubank's group supports rebels and civilians caught in that nation's civil war.

The trip served as Marx's introduction to "high-risk humanitarianism."

Within a year, Marx asked if Eubank and his medics would like to go to Iraq to help civilians amid fighting between the Islamic State military group and Kurdish and Iraqi military units. Eubank said Marx's group funded his efforts.

"I think he came to Syria once while we were there, briefly, and then he came to Iraq multiple times while we were there," Eubank said, praising Marx as a friend and ally. "Usually it was during some lull in the fighting, but not always. He was in at least one ... maybe two engagements with us, when we were providing medical care when we came under direct fire."

Marx has also said he called in an airstrike on Islamic State militants. Eubank said he hadn't heard that story before it came up during Marx's 9News interview in late May. When Eubank was working in the Middle East, he said, the U.S. military had dropped smoke at his request to cover escaping civilians. (The Post sought comment on Marx's claims from U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East. In an email, an unnamed representative said military officials "have nothing for you on this.")

Marx said ATP's goal is now to "equip and encourage" law enforcement . In a statement, Colorado Springs Police Lt. Korey Hutchinson, the lead investigator of the Colorado Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, said his department "has not conducted any direct work or formal collaboration" with ATP.

"However, we have heard positive feedback from ICAC units and personnel across the country regarding the assistance and support they provide," Hutchinson said, referring to ATP's "wellness support for investigators of child exploitation crimes."

Marx said his group also helped train law enforcement involved in .

Abigail Meyer, spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service, which led the operation, said that, "according to those who ran this operation," Marx's group was not involved.

Political outsider or not, in the gubernatorial campaign -- audits of the state budget, support for police and immigration enforcement, strict Medicaid work requirements, tax relief, school choice -- will be largely familiar to voters in the Republican primary.

His website's includes a number of questionable statutory and constitutional citations; one statute it references has been repealed, and another purports to link a constitutional prohibition on sex discrimination to homeowner's insurance spikes. He told The Post that the platform was written by an "attorney who did work for Elon Musk."

Marx said he's withholding some plans for the general election. Besides, he argued, the GOP primary wouldn't be decided on policy.

"I don't think Barb or Scott ... are three degrees different on policy positions (from me)," he said, referring to Kirkmeyer and Bottoms. The real difference, he argued, will be who can convince voters they can win.

"And I think, just naturally, I'm comfortable in that arena."

Gas prices are once again on the rise a month after the United States and Israel began bombing Iran, resulting in a severe crimp in the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. And fingers are once again pointing at the party occupying the White House, now led by President Donald Trump.

But this time, the blame game has taken on a distinctly more digital and targeted approach as November’s midterm elections come into view.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee last week an ad campaign targeting Republican incumbents it believes are vulnerable in 44 congressional districts, including U.S. Reps. Jeff Crank in the Colorado Springs-based 5th District and Gabe Evans in the 8th District north of Denver.

The ultrashort six-second video ad with the words “D.C. Republicans Did That!” It’s being “geo-targeted” to people’s Facebook and Instagram feeds when they come within close range of select gas stations in either district.

“Now, when voters fill up at the pump, they’ll have yet another reminder that D.C. Republicans are squarely to blame for the price of gas, and everything else, being too damn high,” DCCC spokeswoman Courtney Rice said.

It’s no surprise that Democrats are taking advantage of elevated prices at the pump to gain political advantage, said Jon Krosnick, a political science professor at Stanford University. He co-authored a 2016 study titled which found that a 10-cent increase led to a 0.6-percentage-point drop in support.

The price for regular unleaded fuel in Colorado sat at an average a day before the war started in late February, according to AAA. On Friday, it averaged Ěý— an increase of just over $1 from a month ago.

While November’s election is not a presidential one, Krosnick said there will very likelyĚýbe crossover in terms of dissatisfaction toward the party in charge of Congress.

“Every Republican running for office should be worried about gas prices going up,” he said.

Gas prices play an outsized role in how people gauge the severity of inflation at any given moment, Krosnick said. On nearly every corner of major thoroughfares throughout the country, giant lighted signs display the price of petrol.

“There’s no other consumer good that is as advertised to consumers like gasoline,” Krosnick said. “Not everybody in the family may be filling up the car, but everyone is driving past gas stations every day.”

Though gas prices were appreciably higher under the Biden administration following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine — reaching a peak of $4.87 per gallon of regular-grade gasoline in Colorado in June of that year, according to — Krosnick said voters care about what’s going on now.

“It’s a present-focused decision,” he said.

A ‘mitigating factor’ in the 8th District?

That was the case for Michael Kondur, a handyman who was filling up his truck last week at a Valero station at West 88th Avenue and Pecos Street in Thornton, in Evans’ congressional district. The price there was a comparatively forgiving $3.69 per gallon for regular.

“It’s the first time I’ve had a full tank in three weeks — and it will be gone in three days,” he said, also using choice words to describe Trump and Republicans in general. “I run my own business with this truck and I don’t have food on my table. Any Republican has got to go.”

Across the street at a Maverik station, where the price for a gallon of gas was nearly 10 cents higher, Carolyn McDowell said she was able to part with only $30 to fill her Chevy Silverado’s tank halfway. Her husband, who works for the delivery service DoorDash, is taking a real hit.

“It’s impacting his ability to make money,” she said.

McDowell said she’s against war in Iran, a stance that is in line with 61% of Americans who also disapprove of the conflict, according to a conducted between March 16 and March 22. The poll also found that 45% of respondents felt the military action was not going well, while 25% felt it was going extremely or very well.

Former Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams, who has run his share of political campaigns, said there is no doubt that gas prices pose a problem for Evans, who’s seeking reelection in Colorado’s most politically competitive district, and Crank, who won comfortably in 2024 but is being targeted by Democrats more aggressively this year.

“The price of gas as it relates to inflation and the cost of living was a big part of Trump beating Harris in 2024,” he said of Trump’s defeat of then-Vice President Kamala Harris. “Democrats will try to make (gas prices) an issue right through November — there’s no doubt about it. The Republicans are in a vulnerable position.”

But there is a “mitigating factor,” Wadhams said, that Evans should be able to use to fight back in the 8th District — which covers a large chunk of Weld County, home to Colorado’s most productive oil and gas field.

“Gabe has a good argument against Democrats that they want to kill the oil and gas industry,” he said.

Two years ago, Democrats in the state legislature floated a bill that aimed to halt the issuance of new oil and gas permits by the end of 2029, a proposal that raised hackles in the industry. Lawmakers eventually .

In December, Republican state lawmakers attacked the Public Utilities Commission’s approval of a “clean heat” plan requiring Colorado’s larger utilities that supply natural gas to homes and businesses to substantially lower emissions over the next decade. The plan, they asserted, amounts to a mandate that forces families to buy “costly heat pumps, retrofits and electric appliances” to switch from gas to electricity.

This month, the influential environmental group Conservation Colorado filed ballot measures with the state elections office that would slap stricter penalties on the energy industry for the pollution and contamination that result from its operations.

In a , the group said it filed the measures to filed by the conservative political action committee Advance Colorado that would enshrine in the state constitution the right of producers to sell natural gas in the state and the right of consumers to use the energy source in their homes and businesses.

A spokeswoman for Evans’ campaign who declined to give her name called the Democrats’ stance on gas prices “hypocritical” in a statement.

“For years, they have pushed radical climate policies and overregulation, banning natural gas for residential heating, eliminating jobs for hardworking families, and handcuffing the very oil and gas workers who ensure reliable and affordable resources for Coloradans,” her statement read. “Now they expect us to believe they care about gas prices?”

Potentially bleak forecast

Republicans don’t just have gas prices to worry about — diesel prices are even worse.

Where a gallon of diesel fuel came in at $3.52 a month ago, , on Friday it hit $4.94.

Twenty percent to 25% of the operating cost for a long-haul trucker is fuel, said Greg Fulton, the president of the Colorado Motor Carriers Association, which represents more than 500 trucking companies in the state.

“This has come at a very difficult time for the industry,” he said of the spike in energy prices. “This is a situation where profit margins are very thin already.”

During the last peak in oil prices in 2022, Fulton said, some of that sticker shock was offset by the fact that more freight was on the road because consumers were buying more goods to accommodate new stay-at-home lifestyles set in motion by the coronavirus pandemic.

“They were able to pass along the increases easier,” Fulton said of his industry.

Trump’s widespread tariffs have made things even more constrained for trucking companies when it comes to trying to keep operating expenses down these days, he said.

“Hopefully this is more of a short-term situation,” he said.

While Iran last week , oil transport through the vital waterway was still badly hobbled by the war. Al Salazar, the director of research at oil and gas analysis firm Enverus, said the longer the strait was choked, the longer gas prices would stay high.

If the Strait of Hormuz were to remain largely closed through the end of May, Enverus projected that Brent crude prices would stay around $95 a barrel through this year and edge up to $100 a barrel in 2027. That’s because it would take time to replenish all the tanks and oil-holding facilities that are being tapped now, Salazar said.

“By the time the flow is fixed, your stocks (of oil) have all drawn down and you’re left at alarmingly low levels,” he said.

Joe Oltmann, who filed his candidacy paperwork Monday night, now seeks to participate in an electoral system that he has repeatedly tried to undermine.

He is the 22nd Republican actively seeking to earn the party’s nomination in June. It’s the largest gubernatorial primary field for a major party in Colorado this century, surpassing the GOP’s previous records set first in 2018, and then again in 2022 — and it comes as the party hopes to break Democrats’ electoral dominance in the state.

That field will almost certainly narrow in the coming months; four Republicans who’d filed have already dropped out. No more than four are likely to make it onto the ballot — either through the state assembly or by gathering signatures — for the summer primary, said Dick Wadhams, the Colorado GOP’s former chairman.

The size of the primary field doesn’t really matter, he said, because few candidates will actually end up in front of voters. Eighteen candidates filed ahead of the 2022 race, for instance, but .

On the Democratic side, a smaller field of seven active candidates is headlined by Attorney General Phil Weiser and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. Polis is term-limited from running again.

For 2026, Wadhams counted only a half-dozen or so Republican candidates whom he considered “credible,” a qualifier that Wadhams said he used “very, very loosely”: Oltmann, state Sens. Barbara Kirkmeyer and Mark Baisley, state Rep. Scott Bottoms, ministry leader Victor Marx, Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell and former Congressman Greg Lopez.

Wadhams said that other than Kirkmeyer, all of those candidates had either supported election conspiracies or a pardon for Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk now serving a nine-year sentence for convictions related to providing unauthorized access to voting equipment.

Oltmann, of Castle Rock, has repeatedly — and falsely — claimed that the 2020 presidential election was not won by Democrat Joe Biden, while calling for the hanging of political opponents. He previously said he wanted to dismember some opponents to send a message, , before adding that he was joking.

In his Dec. 26 announcement video, Oltmann baselessly claimed that Democrats, who have won control of the state amid demographic shifts and anti-Trump sentiment, were in power in Colorado only because of election fraud.

He said Polis and Secretary of State Jena Griswold, along with 9News anchor Kyle Clark, were part of a “synagogue of Satan.” Polis and Griswold are both Jewish.

In his announcement, Oltmann painted an apocalyptic picture of the state and said he hoped that three of its elected leaders — Polis, Griswold and Weiser — would all be imprisoned. He pledged to eliminate property taxes, to focus on the “have-nots” and to pardon Peters, whom President Donald Trump has also sought to release by issuing a federal pardon that legal experts say can’t clear Peters of state convictions.

Oltmann’s decision to join the field is an example of “extreme candidates” from either major party “who file to run but will go nowhere,” predicted Kristi Burton Brown, another former state GOP chair. She now sits on .

She said the size of the Republican primary field was a consequence of Republicans’ difficulties winning statewide races in Colorado. Democrats have won all four constitutional elected offices for two straight election cycles.

Burton Brown said it “might be a good idea moving forward” to require candidates to do more than just submit paperwork to run for office. That might include a monetary requirement: She said she didn’t support charging candidates significant sums but thought that “requiring some skin in the game” could prevent “unreasonable primaries.”

The 2026 election comes as state and national Democrats search for a path forward after Trump’s reelection last year.

Approval polling for leading Colorado Democrats has sagged this year, and voters here hold unfavorable views of both the Democratic and Republican parties that are roughly equal, .

Wadhams said that the odds were “very difficult” for any Republican gubernatorial candidate next year. While approval for Polis and other Democrats has declined, support for the Republican standard-bearer — Trump — is far lower in the state. In last year’s election, Colorado was a largely blue island in a broader national red wave.

To have a real shot of winning in 2026, Wadhams argued, the GOP needed to nominate someone for governor who could sidestep anti-Trump sentiment and press on the issues driving voter discontent. Running more divisive candidates in a blue state, he warned, would risk harming Republicans’ chances in down-ballot races the statehouse or in races for Congress.

“There seems to be an opening for Republicans we haven’t seen for a while,” he said. “But that opening will only exist if we have candidates who won’t get pulled into this conspiracy stuff and this Tina Peters stuff. Because those are nonstarters. They’re sure losers.”

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¶¶Ňőap 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¶¶Ňőap 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.Ěý

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.

Mertz, his wife and a daughter are voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s presidential election, while another daughter and son support former President Donald Trump. Despite the intrafamily schism, Mertz, 75, says they all agree on one thing.

They can’t wait for the election to be over.

“I’m really tired of the political ads. They’re so frickin’ negative,” said Mertz, who lives in Arvada. “I will be extremely happy when it’s done.”

That sentiment is one that longtime Democratic strategist Andy Boian is increasingly hearing from voters bombarded by this campaign season’s steady stream of attack ads, angry political memes, and over-the-top rhetoric and insults — including the use of terms like “scum,” “garbage,” “racist,” “low-IQ” and “fascist.”

Add to that the surprising, the unexpected and the occasionally unsettling events that have marked this election like no other in recent memory, making many voters eager to put it in the rearview mirror.

Boian has worked on the last seven Democratic presidential campaigns, dating back to Bill Clinton’s in the 1990s.

“This one by far was the most bruising,” he said.

Since Trump announced the launch of his third run for the White House nearly two years ago, he rose to the top of a field of nearly a dozen GOP rivals to clinch the nomination in March. Two months later, he was convicted of 34 felonies — a first for a former president — in one of .

In July, a gunman tried to kill Trump during a political rally in Pennsylvania. Two months later, in Florida, authorities arrested a man who was allegedly planning to assassinate the former president as he golfed.

On the Democratic side of the aisle, President Joe Biden was pressured by his party this summer to drop his reelection bid — a first in modern American politics at such a late stage — after a disastrous debate performance against Trump in late June raised serious questions about his mental acuity.

Closer to home, Colorado’s elections have been marked by unexpected turns, too.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert late last year switched congressional districts in an attempt to salvage her political future, scrambling a pair of the state’s U.S. House contests in the process. And the state’s Republican Party descended into internecine warfare that landed warring factions in court and led to an unsuccessful attempt by some party members to oust chair Dave Williams less than three months before the election.

All of that has led to Colorado voters “feeling a good amount of fatigue” as Election Day dawns, said Robert Preuhs, a political science professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

“By any measure, this election is unprecedented in modern times,” he said.

Democracy a top concern

Elaine Little, an 86-year-old Republican who lives in Denver, agreed that Tuesday couldn’t arrive soon enough.

“I’ll be happy when it’s over,” she said. “I think our election process is way too long.”

A Trump backer, Little is not always enamored of how the former president speaks or the name-calling he engages in. But the way Democrats have been characterizing him in recent weeks is irresponsible, she said.

“I don’t think he’s Hitler. I don’t think he’s a dictator,” Little said. “All these things the Democrats are saying are not true.”

Not that Tuesday will necessarily be the end of anything. Colorado State University political science professor Kyle Saunders said there will be no shortage of lawyers from both sides. They will be making sure all vote counting goes according to the book, especially with the potential that the winners of close races may not be known for days.

“The attorneys have all been retained and are in place in every competitive state and will be deployed by both sides at the slightest transgression — of that I have no doubt — as is their right in our legal system,” he said. “I believe in our institutions. However, those institutions are about to be challenged. And I believe they will endure that challenge.”

The 2024 election’s potential effect on American democracy greatly concerns Marsha Peterson, a Loveland Democrat who moved to Colorado from Minnesota four years ago. Peterson, 73, is one of more than 7,200 people who responded to the statewide survey, in which The Denver Post took part.

Survey results show democracy and good government as the top concern among respondents. That’s Peterson’s top issue, too, and she worries about what Trump might do if he retakes office in January.

“He didn’t care about democracy. He didn’t care about law and order,” Peterson said, referencing the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by Trump supporters. “We must have a president who reveres our Constitution, our Bill of Rights and the history of our country.”

Former Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams, now a political consultant, has long condemned Trump’s insistence — without evidence — that the 2020 election was stolen from him. And he’s wary of what could happen in the days and weeks following Tuesday’s election.

“I’m fearful that there could be chaos and charges of vote stealing and fraud that will be unsubstantiated,” Wadhams said.

But it’s not automatic that it will be Republicans making false post-election charges, he said.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democrat who faced off against Trump in the 2016 presidential election, that Trump was an “illegitimate president” and that the election she lost “wasn’t on the level.” That same year, she told an audience in California that she had been warning candidates for the 2020 election that they could run a great campaign — even clinch the nomination — and still

“It’s important to remember that the stolen election stuff started with Hillary Clinton in 2016,” Wadhams said.

The big difference, he said, is that Clinton’s denials of the validity of the election results didn’t lead to an insurrection.

“It would be good for whoever wins (this time) to win it by a wide margin so we don’t have to go through what we did in 2020,” Wadhams said.

“Let’s not talk about it anymore”

As of 2 p.m. Tuesday,, which lags the number of cast ballots at the same point in the election cycle four years ago. About 28% were from Democrats, 26.4% from Republicans and nearly 44% from unaffiliated voters. Women were outpacing men in voting in every age group.

Colorado is considered safe for Harris — a trio of polls from September showed her with a double-digit percentage-point lead over Trump. But nationally, the race is a nail-biter, with a one-point lead for Harris in the popular vote in its polling average.

The spread between the candidates across the seven swing states that are likely to decide the election is , with Trump leading in five of them — mostly by a whisker — as of Monday, according to the Times’ state polling averages.

Preuhs, the Metro State political science professor, said that while today’s sharp divisions within the American electorate can result in increased levels of anxiety surrounding elections, it’s also indicative of a new and exciting level of engagement and interest in the democratic process.

“Political scientists 30 years ago were concerned about apathy and lack of interest among voters,” he said. “And those things have changed.”

And negotiating political disagreements in 2024 within a household is different for every Colorado family.

For Mertz, of Arvada, his family’s strategy is to “avoid the subject.” For Little, the Denver Republican, she knows her vote will be the opposite of her 93-year-old partner’s. And there’s no need to take it any further than that, she said.

“I voted, you voted,” Little said. “I canceled you out — so let’s not talk about it anymore.”

The Eastern Plains district, on paper, is the most Republican-leaning in the state. In 2022, U.S. Rep. Ken Buck won reelection by nearly 24 percentage points, about in line with given the 4th’s partisan makeup.

But like all things concerning U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert¶¶Ňőap political career, this is not a typical election year — especially as she looks to represent the sprawling district that’s geographically opposite from the one that put her in federal office. Her switch has drawn money and attention to the 4th well beyond its usual level.

Boebert headed to Congress to represent the Western Slope after taking out a Republican incumbent in an upset primary win in 2020. Two years later, after a controversy–laden first term, she pulled off a razor-close win in her reelection bid that left her looking vulnerable.

When she announced in late December that she would move to the eastern Colorado district — which includes great expanses of farmland from Wyoming to Oklahoma as well as suburban Denver’s Douglas County —Ěý she upended the race to replace Buck, who’d announced he wouldn’t seek reelection.

Sensing, or perhaps hoping, that Boebert’s general election weakness from 2022 could linger, those looking to unseat Boebert in the Nov. 5 election have given millions of dollars in recent months to her main opponent, Democrat Trisha Calvarese. Calvarese is on pace to raise 10 times what the last Democratic nominee there did, analysts predict, and she hopes to prove conventional wisdom wrong about how deep the 4th District’s partisan divide is.

It all leads to a make-or-break election for Boebert — and for those looking to oust her from Congress.

A convincing victory would cement her place in Colorado politics and affirm her ascendancy among Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. But a lack of incumbency in her new district, along with Boebert¶¶Ňőap recent scandals, give Calvarese hope that she can find a path, slight as it might be, to stop that from happening.

Boebert, 37, has fended off other competitors this year.

She won three times as many votes as her next-closest rival in the crowded Republican primary this summer, showing that her reputation as a conservative fighter carried just as much weight there as in her previous home.

On the same day as the June primary, Calvarese lost a separate special election — by a margin of 24 percentage points — to Republican Greg Lopez to fill out the rest of Buck’s current term after he stepped down early.

For the next term, the November ballot also includes Frank Atwood, of the Approval Voting Party; Hannah Goodman, of the Libertarian Party; and Paul Noel Fiorino, of the Unity Party.

Sparring over Boebert’s past

Despite the 4th District’s clear Republican advantage, Calvarese, 38, calls the race against Boebert “absolutely winnable,” and she points to finding Boebert underwater in favorability with her new district’s voters.

Calvarese has so far turned the influx of cash she’s received — more than $2.3 million in donations since the June primary — into TV ads seeking to further define Boebert for voters who may have only watched her from afar, while also introducing herself to the district.

At a recent meet-and-greet with Democrats in Loveland, Calvarese mostly focused on her own biography: Working with the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, she helped push key parts of President Joe Biden’s agenda. Through work with the U.S. National Science Foundation, she focused on boosting manufacturing in the country.

Her parents’ cancer diagnoses brought her home from Virginia last year to provide them with end-of-life care. She said her late parents, lifelong Republicans, both urged her to give everything she could to help her community. Calvarese now lives in Highlands Ranch, where she grew up.

She didn’t shy from digging at Boebert at the Loveland event. She highlighted her opponent’s removal from a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” last year in Denver, where security cameras recorded her vaping, apparently groping her date and flipping off staff. Calvarese also highlighted Boebert’s vote against a bill to expand health care coverage for veterans who were exposed to toxic burn bits.

The latter, including Boebert heckling Biden as he discussed the program during his State of the Union speech, is the subject of Calvarese’s first TV ad. Boebert’s campaign says her no vote was over concerns about funding for the program, and she previously said the heckling was about the 13 soldiers killed as U.S. forces pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021.

“(Voters in the district) want representation,” Calvarese said, calling the interest in her campaign “electric.”

“They are hungry for it,” she added. “And unlike Boebert, I didn’t ditch one district for another one after embarrassing myself at ‘Beetlejuice.’ ”

Boebert: New district “has liberated me”

Boebert switched districts after winning the 3rd Congressional District in 2022 and in the aftermath of a contentious divorce from her husband. She moved to Windsor, in the northern Interstate 25 corridor.

Speaking to a gathering of Elbert County conservatives on Wednesday night, Boebert pinned the move explicitly to family matters and called it “one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever made,” but also one of the best when it comes to her children.

Still, she acknowledged the political benefits of the move.

“We’re not taking our heavy R advantage for granted,” Boebert said of her political affiliation. “We either run unopposed or like we’re 10 points behind. However, being in a more Republican district … has liberated me to help Republicans statewide. So every day isn’t an in-the-mud fight. I am able to stand strong for far more than I ever would have anywhere else.”

The Republican advantage in the district can’t be understated, political analysts say.

Dick Wadhams, a Republican consultant and former state party chairman, called it “virtually unlosable for a Republican candidate.” Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at Colorado State University, echoed the sentiment, calling it “the safest Republican district in Colorado.”

Boebert, too, been a strong fundraiser, though she hasn’t disclosed more recent totals yet. New reports are due from both candidates this week.

Boebert¶¶Ňőap speech Wednesday, at a rented church, weaved between sermon and politics as she invoked scripture and the Founding Fathers.

She likened the nation’s recent elections to Moses and the Israelites running into the Red Sea, facing the obstacles thrown up by Biden’s policies. To part that sea, voters must have faith — and vote — this November, she said.

She said that under former President Donald Trump, who’s again the Republican nominee, the country had a booming economy and a secure U.S.-Mexico border.

“This isn’t a Christian nationalist story here,” Boebert told the crowd, directly referencing a 2022 Denver Post story about her close ideological alignment with the movement. “This is about life and peace and personal freedom. Not the immorality of our national debt … this is about securing our nation and securing our people. Securing our freedoms that are not given to us by dirty, corrupt, greedy politicians.

“They are given to us by God and secured in our Constitution.”

In an interview, Boebert also highlighted specific local legislation she’s championed as part of the key stakes in the race, including a bill to help Pueblo transition following the closure of a chemical plant there that was approved as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. Another was a bill to give small Colorado communities unique ZIP codes.

Chance to “restore honor to our district”

Calvarese likewise highlights the hyper-local issues on the minds of district voters: How to spur local manufacturing of the pesticides that farmers rely on and research on better crop yields, as well as how to help people get into tech fields through training with large language models (the basis of artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT). She also mentions the health care needs of the district and her parents’ struggles in finding care in Douglas County.

But in the big-picture stakes of the race, Calvarese returns to her opponent.

The election is a chance to “restore honor to our district” and “dignity” to Coloradans caught in the crossfire of Boebert’s public incidents, she said.

“When you are a person from Colorado and you meet other people from other states — or even around the world — the first thing you don’t want to hear is, ‘Oh my God, Lauren Boebert: that embarrassment,’ ” Calvarese said. “So I think it¶¶Ňőap a real opportunity for us. Not just Colorado, but the whole country.”

Asked to respond to Calvarese’s comment about dignity, Boebert said she was proud of her dignity. She also highlighted Calvarese’s own relatively recent return to the district and her work on the Inflation Reduction Act. Boebert characterized the IRA as raising the national debt in order to push “the Green New Deal” championed by some progressives.

“To me, that is not dignity at all,” Boebert said. “That is deception at its finest — lying to the American people about the policies that you were pushing and (which are) obviously costing Americans each and every day.”

The results of the race could last longer than just this election cycle.

Wadhams, the Republican consultant, called Boebert’s 2022 nail-biter the result of “extraordinary circumstances” following a term in office that left many voters there unhappy. Chief among them: a perception that Boebert was more focused on national attention than on serving the district.

This race gives her a chance to reset — and if she focuses on the needs of the district, he said, it could be hers for the long haul.

It¶¶Ňőap a sentiment echoed by Saunders, the CSU professor. Though the race has drawn a lot of attention and Democratic money, both could dry up after a decisive win next month. With longevity — and political safety — would come the opportunity for Boebert to build even more influence in the Republican Party.

“You can always lose,” Saunders said. “But she could be in that seat for 20 years, very easily.”

But state Rep. Gabe Evans, a first-term Weld County Republican whose Colorado House district largely overlaps the 8th, thinks he not only can narrow Caraveo’s margin but reverse it in his favor this November.

“I span that urban-rural divide,” said Evans, a former Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot and Arvada police officer who runs a small cattle operation on 17 acres near Fort Lupton. “I was a big city cop and I’ve lived that urban lifestyle. Now I live in Weld County — and I grew up rural.”

But first, Evans must defeat fellow Republican Janak Joshi in the June 25 primary to win the GOP nomination. The 8th District runs from the northern Denver suburbs in Adams County through the farms and oil and gas fields that stretch north to Greeley. On the Democratic side, Caraveo is unopposed.

Joshi, a former state lawmaker who served three terms in the Colorado House in the 2010s, is a retired physician. He did not provide answers to questions from The Denver Post and did not respond to several attempts to talk about his campaign.

During a primary debate at the Grizzly Rose in Denver earlier this month, Joshi said he was running for Congress “because I have to pay back my dues” for the opportunities he received in becoming a U.S. citizen. He’s an immigrant from India who has lived in Colorado for more than four decades. He said his experience with immigration and the health care sector, along with the legislature, mean he’s ready to hit the ground running in Congress.

“We need somebody who can start from Day One,” Joshi said.

Eric Sondermann, a Denver-based independent political analyst, said that in his appraisal, the June 25 election is “Gabe Evans’ primary race to lose.” He bases that on the fact that Joshi has lived in the 8th District for less than half a year, compared to six years for his opponent.

The Colorado Republican Party has endorsed Joshi, something that could work in his favor — or could be a liability, given aimed recently at chair Dave Williams, Sondermann said. The outcry among Republicans intensified this month after the party sent an anti-LGBTQ+ email to supporters timed for Pride Month.

In the meantime, Evans has received the blessing of former President Donald Trump — despite Joshi, , trumpeting: “Only Janak Joshi proudly backs Trump.” Evans also Joshi more than 3-to-1 in contributions, reporting nearly $650,000 in receipts as of June 5. The majority of Joshi’s nearly $200,000 raised has come from loans he made to his campaign.

Matchup: Doctor versus cop

Joshi, 74,Ěýmade a political name for himself representing the Colorado Springs area in the statehouse, but he failed in his bid for a City Council seat in Colorado’s second-largest city in 2017.

Joshi was a physician for 30 years, specializing in internal medicine and nephrology. His website states that he owned medical clinics and dialysis centers and employed as many as 50 people. He is married with two daughters and has lived in Colorado for 45 years; he relocated to Thornton just before entering the primary.

“My underlying philosophy of conservative common sense is shaped from a strong family, from my experience being welcomed to America, and from a core belief that we all have a God-given right to make as much of our lives as possible,” he wrote on his website.

Joshi’s medical career has come under fire in the race, with Evans asking him why he continues to represent himself as a doctor when he permanently surrendered his medical license in Colorado 16 years ago. State medical authorities had determined that Joshi failed to properly evaluate and adequately treat a patient.

At a recent debate, Joshi called the circumstances behind the surrender of his license “frivolous” and compared his situation to the legal troubles faced by Trump.

“Tell me how that plays against a Democrat who does have her (medical) license,” Evans told The Post, referring to Caraveo’s career as a pediatrician.

Joshi stakes out a more conservative position than Evans on several issues.

On immigration, he supports a “deport-them-all” strategy while Evans, the 37-year-old grandson of an immigrant from Mexico, says deportation should be prioritized for the “ones who are committing crimes” in the United States.

The two men also diverge on the extent to which the country’s national security agencies need reform.

During the Grizzly Rose debate, Joshi claimed that agencies like the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had been “weaponized” and were “abusing their power” against conservatives, most notably Trump. He advocated largely dismantling the national security apparatus and rebuilding it.

“We need to defund them and start all over again,” he said.

Evans called such a move foolhardy, saying: “You can’t abolish the intelligence agencies, especially when we have a wide-open southern border where we have terrorists and terrorist sympathizers coming through.”

Just last weekend in three U.S. cities, federal officials arrested eight men from Tajikistan with potential ties to the terrorist group ISIS. The men all crossed the southern border into the country, .

“You can always have more accountability from the federal government, but you can’t just wholesale get rid of it all,” Evans told The Post on Tuesday in an interview at Petrocco Farms in Brighton, where he addressed a group of women farmers at a luncheon.

Joshi has said he would join the hard-right House Freedom Caucus if elected in November. Evans said he would not. Both men would extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, saying the nation’s $34 trillion debt is due more to out-of-control government spending than a lack of taxpayer revenue.

Joshi has attacked Evans for the backing he’s received from Americans for Prosperity Action, a conservative advocacy group tied to billionaire Charles Koch that threw its support to former Trump rival Nikki Haley during the GOP presidential primary.

The group has reported spending more than $290,000 in support of Evans, . No outside spending has been reported in support of Joshi.

Heavily Latino district

Evans long lived in and around metro Denver, starting out in Aurora and moving to Elbert County, Arvada and finally Weld County, where he and his wife are raising two young sons, in 2018. Evans showed his first calf when he was 12.

Despite his Latino heritage, he said he isn’t as fluent in Spanish as he would like to be. The 8th District is the most heavily Latino district in Colorado, with , and that segment of the electorate proved critical to Caraveo’s slim victory in 2022.

But with the Democratic Party’s somewhat in recent months, Evans thinks there’s an opportunity to connect with Latinos along more traditional lines.

“They’re about hard work, they are about building a better life for their families, they’re about faith,” he said. “Their story is my story.”

The state GOP, in , said in an email to party members that he “has a 100% record in defending taxpayers against out-of-control government spending while also being a leader to secure our border, finish the wall, protect the unborn, and defend the Second Amendment against weak Republicans and radical Democrats like Joe Biden and Yadira Caraveo.”

The party also said that, in its estimation, Joshi has a “higher likelihood of defeating the incumbent Democrat in the general election.”

But in this month’s primary, former Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams gives the edge to Evans.

“Gabe is a young candidate who has a military background and was a police officer and he lives in Weld County on a farm with his wife,” Wadhams said. “Crime is a big issue in the 2024 election — his background lends well to what voters are concerned about.”

Sondermann said incumbency gives Caraveo an instant advantage over whichever Republican wins the primary.

Eighteen months ago, when Caraveo defeated state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, she “was able to beat as good a Republican as you’re going to get,” he said. But the race was so close that a Libertarian candidate may well have been a decisive factor. Richard Ward’s tally — 9,280 votes — was nearly six times the leading candidates’ margin.

That closeness is spurring Republicans’ hopes to flip the seat in 2024. rates the 8th Congressional District race as a toss-up in the fall, though the at the University of Virginia categorizes it as “leans Democratic.”

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Huerfano County Republican leadership in southern Colorado this week “immediately resign his position,” while state lawmaker and congressional candidate Richard Holtorf said the same.

In an Eastern Plains stronghold, Yuma County Republicans the state party for endorsing certain GOP candidates as a move that “undermines the electoral process within our party.” The endorsees include U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in her run for the 4th Congressional District, after she secured the top line at the assembly.

Still others expressed alarm after party officials ejected a Colorado Sun political reporter from the party assembly in Pueblo on Saturday because of Williams’ belief that the reporter’s coverage of Republicans had been “very unfair.” He that he would’ve prohibited The Denver Post and 9News from covering the assembly, too.

In the face of all the criticism, the party under Williams has doubled down.

On its official account on the social media platform X, the state GOP went after Republican officeholders and candidates who criticized Williams, 4th District congressional candidate Deborah Flora a “dishonest, say-anything” politician after the party’s removal of the reporter from the venue. State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, a prominent figure from Brighton, caught fire from the party on the same issue.

“What¶¶Ňőap disgusting is your shameless boot licking of the corrupted fake news media that pushes propaganda for Democrats,” read the state party’s to Kirkmeyer’s X post.

Kirkmeyer, who holds a powerful post on the Joint Budget Committee, said in an interview that Williams was being a “bully.”

“You shouldn’t be trying to intimidate people,” she said. “We’re supposed to be trying to include people in our party, not trying to push them out.”

Former state GOP chair Dick Wadhams said the turmoil at the top of the party — and the internecine warfare within — was “unprecedented.”

He placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of Williams, who took the helm of the state GOP in March 2023 for a two-year term. Wadhams called Williams, a former state lawmaker who’s now running for Colorado’s open 5th Congressional District seat, “amoral and corrupt.”

“He’s only concerned about one thing — and that’s his personal ambitions,” Wadhams said. “We’ve never seen this before. I can’t believe it. We have a cesspool in the leadership of the Colorado Republican Party.”

Williams didn’t respond to several questions sent to him by The Post this week.

But state Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican, thinks Williams “has done a pretty good job as state party chair.”

“He’s raised money,” Soper told The Post. “He has definitely been the thorn in the side of Democrats, which is what a state party chair has to do.”

Party fundraising has lagged at times under Williams, and this year Colorado Democrats have crowed that their fundraising in January and February dwarfed that of the GOP by at least a factor of two.

The intraparty criticism of Williams comes at a time when the Republican Party has for years lagged in state elections up and down the ballot, resulting in today’s Democratic dominance in Colorado. Democrats hold the governor’s office and wide majorities in the state legislature while occupying most seats in the state’s congressional delegation.

Soper served with Williams in the House, where Williams “was probably one of our most skilled bomb-throwers,” he said. That willingness to frustrate, insult and tweak is Williams’ “great strength,” in Soper’s view.

Williams’ weakness, though, “is himself” and his tendency to “march forward until he gets the answer he wants.”

“I guess from Dave Williams’ perspective, pushing out certain members within the party is OK because you’re kind of cleaning house,” Soper said. “I feel like when we’re this far in the minority, that¶¶Ňőap challenging to do. My whole plea to the state party is (that) I need help — I need more Republicans down here in the trenches fighting for us. At the end of the day, I don’t really care how we do it.”

Soper, too, came in for the party’s scorn earlier this week, after his disagreement with barring the reporter from the assembly on X. The party’s account replied: “The fake news media won’t like you more if you suck up to them, Matt.”

Campaign finance complaint filed

For Kelly Maher, a longtime Colorado Republican strategist, the objections go beyond Williams’ conduct at the Pueblo assembly last weekend, where some in the party also took issue with policy and platform votes that went Williams’ way.

Last week, Maher filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Williams, alleging he improperly used state party monies to help his congressional campaign.

Specifically, she claimed that Williams spent more than $16,000 in state party funds in February to produce and mail a flyer to voters in El Paso County targeting a primary opponent in the 5th District race, Jeff Crank. Maher’s complaint called the mailer a “poorly veiled” attack on then-presidential contender Nikki Haley but noted that the piece mostly targeted Crank and a political action committee that had endorsed him — a move she said violated federal campaign finance laws.

“He will burn the Republican Party to the ground in his singular goal of getting to Congress,” Maher said in an interview. “He cannot accomplish his goals without cannibalizing everyone else.”

Four years ago, Colorado’s unaffiliated voters — by far the largest chunk of the electorate — backed President Joe Biden by 25 percentage points over then-President Donald Trump, according to an exit poll taken at the time.

That gulf means Republicans can ill-afford to be training their ire on each other, said Kristi Burton Brown, Williams’ predecessor as GOP chair.

“When we are attacking our own conservatives, the goal of growing the party is really hard to achieve,” she said.

Burton Brown also said the endorsement of GOP candidates during the primary season — Trump received his own blessing from the state party back in January, ahead of the Iowa caucuses and Colorado’s March 15 presidential primary — is potentially counterproductive.

“It’s supposed to be a neutral body that opens up election pathways for Republicans,” she said of the state party. “Anytime the party picks and chooses candidates in a race, it gives voters the appearance of backroom deals.”

Holtorf, the state representative from Akron who is running for former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck’s seat, lashed Williams for the party’s endorsement of Boebert this week in the crowded GOP primary race and called for him to step down.

Holtorf made the June 25 primary ballot on Wednesday after state election officials deemed that he had gathered enough signatures in the district, as did another Republican contender, state Rep. Mike Lynch. Boebert and Flora had qualified for the primary ballot via petition last month, and other contenders could make the ballot, too.

“My vision of the Republican Party is (that) it¶¶Ňőap the Republican Party of the Reagan era,” Holtorf said. “It¶¶Ňőap a big tent. The purity test … that¶¶Ňőap being promoted by the papacy of the Republican Party under Dave Williams’ leadership is not the direction we need to go. We need to rebuild our party. We need to welcome everybody back.”

“Becoming Republican again”

Williams has also run into criticism from fellow Republicans for his desire to close GOP primaries to all but affiliated party voters, a stance Wadhams calls “dumbfounding.”

The state party sued Secretary of State Jena Griswold last summer in federal court, seeking to invalidate a ballot measure passed by voters in 2016 that opened up Colorado’s political primaries to unaffiliated voters. A judge rejected the party’s claim in February. The party’s central committee has failed to clear the high threshold needed to opt out of primaries — despite continuing pressure from Williams and others in the party, .

Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican, said his job is to counter the Democratic surge in Colorado by supporting Republicans in swing districts and conservative districts.

“I’m trying to attract as many people to the Republican brand as possible,” Lundeen said. “That includes conservatives and unaffiliated. (Williams is) gonna do what he’s gonna do.”

And Williams doing what he does is exactly whatĚýRep. Scott Bottoms, a Colorado Springs Republican, wants to continue seeing.

“For quite a few years, we have just been getting more and more liberal and more and more middle of the road — more of an establishment mentality — and it was hurting us,” said Bottoms, a freshman lawmaker who’s among the most conservative in the Capitol. “Just because they have an ‘R’ after their name doesn’t mean they’re Republicans. We’re starting to see those (voter) rolls turned back around to where people are becoming Republican again.”

When he first ran for office two years ago, Bottoms said, he was told to tone down his anti-abortion beliefs. He praised Williams for embracing his position on the issue from the party chair position.

But Wadhams, the former party chair, said the anemic turnout at the Republican assembly in Pueblo — just 2,100 or so delegates out of 3,500 invited showed up, he said — was a flashing red light that new leadership was needed.

There is no way to build a “winning coalition” by alienating people, Wadhams said, especially from within the party.

“It is a hollowing out of the party,” he said. “The Democrats have a stranglehold on the state like they haven’t had since the 1930s.”

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