Assembled under the banner of Courageous Colorado, a group of veteran political operators and election reformers is preparing a multi-year effort to take a sweeping look at how Colorado’s elections are run. That includes supporting local efforts to institute and commission. It may include working to change when municipal elections, like those in Denver, are run, or how candidates qualify for the ballot.

Ultimately, it will also likely mean ballot measures related to Colorado’s partisan primaries, perhaps to replace them with a contest where all candidates appear on one ballot, akin to the system used in California.

“I think you should expect work around the open primary over the next few elections, both at the legislature and at the ballot,” said Landon Mascareñaz, Courageous Colorado’s CEO, though he and others cautioned that no concrete plans have been set. “You should expect work around ranked-choice voting, campaign finance reform and election timing.”

The need for those reforms, Mascareñaz and others have argued, is clear: Americans are worried about democracy. At a downtown luncheon for the group late last month, speakers used soaring rhetoric to describe the history of America’s democracy and the perilous times in which it finds itself. Former Gov. Bill Ritter quoted a famous W.B. Yeats poem about anarchy let loose upon the world.

“It’s greater than partisan politics, it’s greater than democratic reforms, it’s greater than ranked-choice voting, it’s greater than open primaries,” Terrance Carroll, a former Democratic speaker of the state House, told the luncheon. “It’s about the questions of whether we continue to be true to the words first articulated in this nation’s Declaration of Independence.”

The group argues there are practical reasons for reforms in Colorado, too. Because of the state’s blue hue, many elections are settled on primary day in June, not in the general election in November. And while unaffiliated voters, who make up more than 50% of the state’s registered electorate, can vote in a Democratic or Republican primary, they have to choose only one to participate in each cycle.

It’s a similar argument to the one made by the campaign in 2024, when a relatively small group of individuals and groups, led by Colorado’s Kent Thiry, backed a proposal to open the primaries to all voters and institute a ranked-choice system for the general election. That campaign lost by nearly 7 points.

Courageous Colorado’s bipartisan supporters include many veterans of the Proposition 131 campaign like Carroll; Dick Wadhams, the former state GOP chairman who has become deeply critical of his party’s Trump-ward shift; Deep Singh Badhesha, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America; and former Republican Congressman Ken Buck.

Amber McReynolds, the leader of the governing board for the Postal Service and a former Denver elections official, also spoke at the luncheon; she chairs Courageous’ board. Former Fort Collins Mayor Jeni Arndt leads the group’s political arm. (Fort Collins and Boulder both use ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank multiple candidates on a ballot.)

The group has learned lessons from the failure of Proposition 131, Mascareñaz and others said. The proposal was sweeping, top-down and complicated; it also found opponents across the political spectrum. This time, Courageous supporters have already undertaken one listening tour and plan more direct outreach this fall, using new technology from Change.org to gather input. They’re meeting with local officials and backing smaller-scale initiatives, like a ranked-choice ballot measure in Longmont and a Boulder County proposal to expand that county’s elected commission.

That local outreach helps find partners for reforms at a local level while building coalitions and educating voters ahead of any future ballot campaigns.

“Having these conversations early and not just trying to do this within a confined time frame” is important, McReynolds said in an interview. “Build early, have conversations statewide, do it in a cross-partisan way.”

They also want to involve the legislature, McReynolds and Mascareñaz said. Had it passed, Prop 131’s implementation would have been slowed after skeptical lawmakers slipped some speed bumps into state law. Now, the group is sounding out lawmakers to test what could be done in the Capitol, Mascareñaz said.

“It’s important for us to get involved in some of that,” McReynolds said.

There is another notable difference: Thiry. The millionaire ex-DaVita CEO was the face of the Prop 131 campaign, and he’d also successfully backed prior ballot measures that reformed the state’s elections. But he wasn’t present at the luncheon and is not a member of the group’s board. Wadhams, the former GOP chairman, said Thiry “really has not been a part” of Courageous’ meetings.

During the Prop 131 campaign, Thiry was both chief cheerleader and the primary financial supporter. But he also became an easy target for criticism. Asked if Thiry was intentionally taking a step back this time, Mascareñaz defended him as a patriot who was committed to protecting the nation’s democracy.

“And,” Mascareñaz added, “this movement is bigger than one person.”

Thiry isn’t entirely absent: Jason Bertolacci, a close Thiry aide, and Travis Berry, the lobbyist for one of his groups, were both at the lunch. Thiry’s foundation is also one of Courageous Colorado’s backers, as is Unite America, an electoral reform group that he funds and co-chairs.

A spokesman for Thiry declined an interview request.

Proposition 131 was opposed by both the Democratic and Republican leaders, as well as by lesser parties, like the Green Party. Critics argued variously that the measure was complicated, unnecessary, sweeping and backed by wealthy interests.

The leaders of the state GOP, Craig Steiner, and Colorado Democrats, Shad Murib, did not return interview requests sent through spokespeople. But after the luncheon, to castigate Courageous Colorado as “another grift by the corporations hoping to undermine our election system to cater to the highest bidders.”

Keith Laube, the chief of the state’s Libertarian Party, said he was supportive of ranked-choice voting reforms. But he was opposed to a fully open primary, in which candidates from all parties appear on one ballot and a select number from each race advance to the general election regardless of party.

He said he’d read Courageous Colorado’s website and praised the work they’d undertaken. But he said the primary reforms that the group is floating would lead to longer and more expensive campaigns by candidates trying to ensure they make it to the general election.

Some critics had also charged that Prop 131 was intended to generate specific electoral outcomes. Thiry had denied he wanted one brand of politician to win under the system he envisioned, though he also made no secret of his displeasure with right- and left-wing politicians. (The Yeats poem that Ritter quoted includes a lament that “the centre cannot hold.”)

Wadhams, the former state GOP chairman, told The Post that he wanted the reforms to lead to political moderation in the state. He pointed to criticism from within his own party.

“People are just fed up. They don’t want to participate in the process anymore; they’re just tired of the dominance of the far right and also of the MAGA stolen-election conspiracy crowd,” he said, adding that he’s talked to Democrats with similar concerns.

Mascareñaz acknowledged that some in the Courageous coalition want electoral reforms to serve as a moderating force. But he said he had no such goals.

“I really believe that the goal is open democracy. And it����ap an open democracy that includes everybody and gives everyone a fair shake and representation in sharing governance and sharing power,” he said. “There are people on my board that come to it for moderation. There are people that come on to my board because they want universal access for people.”

The state’s newest district — covering a Front Range area spanning from Greeley down to the northern suburbs of Denver — has seen only two elections. The first went to a Democrat, the second to a Republican. And both victories hinged on very thin margins.

The Republican victor in 2024 was Gabe Evans, of Fort Lupton, who is hoping to turn his freshman term in Congress into at least two more years in office. His challenger, fresh off a resounding victory in the Democratic primary last Tuesday, is state Rep. Manny Rutinel of Commerce City.

And in the middle of it all are the political prognosticators and party operatives, desperate to decipher what voters’ choices this November in Colorado’s most competitive congressional race might say about future trendlines in the electorate at large.

“There’s no doubt this is a race that will attract national money,” said Erin Covey, who analyzes congressional races as U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report.

Cook lists the 8th District among .

While the typical campaign issues will likely be prominent in the race — immigration, healthcare and economic well-being among them — there are additional complications for the candidates to navigate this fall.

For Evans, 39, it’s President Donald Trump, a Republican whose . The president is particularly disliked in Colorado.

Cost of living continues to be a pressing issue, despite the fact the president campaigned on bringing down prices that spiked under his predecessor. And both Trump’s foreign policy — especially the war in Iran — and his immigration enforcement tactics have alienated voters across the political spectrum.

The more Democrats can link Evans to the president, the better for his opponent, said David Boian, a Democratic political strategist.

“Gabe Evans has been right there with Donald Trump — arm in arm,” he said. “That’s a huge liability for him.”

Rutinel, 31, can expect attempts to place him within the surging left corner of the Democratic Party, exemplified by the stunning primary victory Tuesday of democratic socialist Melat Kiros over 15-term U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the congressional district that covers Denver.

There is no doubt, said former Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams, that campaign ads will highlight comments Kiros has recently made about 9/11, Israel’s legitimacy as a nation, and the deadly firebombing attack on Jews and others demonstrating in Boulder last year — an act she refused to call antisemitic.

Those statements, which drew rebukes from ��and even some , could be used in an attempt to taint Rutinel’s campaign if he doesn’t sufficiently disavow Kiros. She’s one of a handful of far-left candidates who have toppled Democratic members of Congress in recent primaries.

“Her anti-semitism is palpable,” Wadhams said. “Everything she says will reflect on the Democrats statewide.”

Asked for Rutinel’s thoughts on Kiros, his campaign sent The Denver Post a statement from the candidate: “I believe that no terrorist attack is inevitable, whether that is 9/11 or the attack in Boulder,” Rutinel said. “Israel has a right to exist, and the Boulder attack was an antisemitic act of terrorism, and antisemitism has no place in this country.”

Challenges on the trail

Boian’s advice to Rutinel would be that he “keeps his distance from Kiros,” given that the political composition of the 8th Congressional District — which was drawn by an independent commission to be competitive — is a far cry from that of deep-blue Denver. The candidate, he said, needs to focus on the voters in the district who have grown tired of Trump and his administration’s policies.

“The key to winning this race is unaffiliated voters,” Boian said.

Unaffiliated voters in the 8th District outnumber both Republicans and Democrats combined — by a factor of more than 2-to-1, according to state election data.

Covey, with the Cook Political Report, thinks Trump might be a bigger problem for Evans than Kiros might be for Rutinel, namely because he is the president and has a far greater impact on voters’ lives.

“Trump is going to be a real anchor on Evans,” she said.

For his part, Evans has attempted to create some daylight between himself and the president. He has , which have an outsized impact on farmers and ranchers. He also joined GOP lawmakers last year in expressing concern to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about whether it was still prioritizing the deportation of criminals.

Whether that will be enough to allay concerns among voters in the 8th — Colorado’s most heavily Latino district, with roughly 40% of voters identifying that way — is yet to be seen. But nothing will go either candidate’s way without a big megaphone and the money to keep it sounding.

While Evans has the advantage in fundraising — with $3.5 million cash on hand as of June 10, nearly four times as much as his opponent — Rutinel’s success in attracting cash is notable, Covey said. It helped him fend off primary challengers, one thing Evans lacked this time around.

But it’s the outside money that could well have the most impact on the race. It factored big in the Democratic primary — with more than $8 million poured into the race either on behalf of or against Rutinel and his opponent, former state Rep. Shannon Bird. Rutinel defeated Bird by about 30 percentage points.

Already, the pro-Republican super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund has to the Denver media market for advertising in this fall’s election cycle. On the other side, the House Majority PAC plans in Denver market ad buys on behalf of Democratic House candidates this fall.

Because Rutinel is the newer face on the national stage, his challenge will be solidifying his image before others do it for him. He’s off to a rough start, Wadhams said, after on several issues on which he used to stand farther left.

In an interview with a five years ago, Rutinel called animal agriculture a “horrific, exploitive industry.” He doesn’t say that anymore. Rutinel also once opposed fracking, a position he said in a May primary debate he no longer held.

Agriculture and ranching, along with oil and gas development, are major pillars of the 8th District’s economy outside its urban areas.

“To attack the very nature of the 8th District — it goes beyond just adjusting his position,” Wadhams said. “He’s gone from being a vegan to loving beef. He’s a chameleon.”

Boian, the Democratic strategist, said voters aren’t going to focus on candidate positions that may have evolved over the years.

“I think where the race is going is strictly to people’s pocketbooks,” he said. “Can they get to the store and get food for their kids?”

Evans has his own background story “to clean up,” Boian said, referencing an published last summer into multiple generations of Evans’ family, in which the publication alleged that Evans had misrepresented his family’s immigration story.

Compelling personal stories

Ultimately, Wadhams said, both candidates have “very compelling” personal stories to tell.

Rutinel is the son of a single mother who immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. The candidate often talks about having to help her fill out applications for food assistance and Medicaid benefits when he was young.

Previously an economist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rutinel, who’s also an attorney, was appointed by a vacancy committee to the Colorado House in 2023 to represent a portion of Adams County and Commerce City. He was elected to his seat the following year.

Evans is the grandson of Mexican immigrants, and his grandfather became a U.S. citizen through his military service in World War II. He served a dozen years in the U.S. Army as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, then nearly a decade as an Arvada police officer.

For Joe Petrocco, who helps run his family’s farm in Brighton and serves as president of the Colorado Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, his vote will go to Evans in November.

Petrocco, 55, likes the Republican’s support for efforts to keep farmworkers’ wages in check. Past increases in federally mandated wages for H-2A workers, who are foreign nationals working in agriculture, have made it impossible for farms like his to compete with countries like Mexico, where he says workers are paid “not $20 an hour but $20 a day.”

“He’s helping make us profitable again,” Petrocco said.

He also credits Evans for helping introduce the bipartisan last year. The bill seeks to reform the country’s asylum system and provide a path for workers who are in the country unlawfully to obtain legal status.

“He’s a Latino man and he respects his heritage,” Petrocco said.

Abby Hicks, a physical education teacher who lives in Mead, said Rutinel is the “real deal.” His rags-to-riches story appeals to her, and she appreciates his focus on bringing costs down — something he addressed as recently as Tuesday night at his election watch party in Commerce City.

Hicks, 44, said many of her students at Mead High School don’t see themselves represented by the older generations that still dominate politics in Colorado.

“He’s different from all the other politicians you meet,” she said of Rutinel. “He’s so eager to listen and learn — in today’s politics, we’re missing that.”

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."

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 lawmakers��are 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.��An 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,��Marx 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’s�� 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����ap 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����ap 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 ��— an increase of just over $1 from a month ago.

While November’s election is not a presidential one, Krosnick said there will very likely��be 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����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.

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����ap 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 —�� 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����ap 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����ap 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����ap 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����ap 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.”