Dahlkemper was first elected commissioner in 2018, the same year Weiser won the state attorney general’s office. She has also served on the Colorado Fire Commission and the Ponderosa Mountain Pine Beetle Task Force and was president of Jeffco Public Schools’ Board of Education.

As a county commissioner and chair of the Gateway to the Rockies Opioid Council, she worked with Weiser to distribute part of the state’s $900 million settlement with opioid manufacturers. She also helped lead Jefferson County’s 2024 push under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, known as debrucing. Jeffco voters approved the change in 2024.

During the primary campaign, Weiser said he intended to work on some kind of statewide TABOR reform, though the exact details were to be determined and would depend on how voters decide on a slate of tax measures this November.

Weiser said he wanted a governing partner in his lieutenant governor and highlighted her ability “to take on complex problems.” He also called her a “bridge builder” and “a healer” who could serve rural and urban Colorado alike.

“We’re not getting someone who is going to need a long learning curve,” Weiser said. “We’re getting someone who is seasoned, who knows a range of issues inside and out.”

Dahlkemper said her work with Weiser on the opioid crises “underscored, for me, Phil’s fearlessness and his collaborative leadership style.”

“Like Phil, I take showing up, listening and getting results seriously,” Dahlkemper said.

In addition to her elected roles, Dahlkemper previously worked as a journalist for Colorado Public Radio and owned a communications firm. Her husband, attorney Mike Feeley, is a former state lawmaker who served as the Democratic minority leader in the Senate.

Weiser and Dahlkemper will face Republican nominee Victor Marx in the November general election. Marx has not yet named a running mate. Nominees for governor have seven days after the certification of the primary election to name their running mates. The secretary of state’s office expects to certify the election later this week, giving Marx until roughly the end of the month to name his pick.

The Marx campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Colorado’s lieutenant governor, who is first in the line of succession, becomes acting governor while the state’s top official is traveling out of state. Recent governors have also assigned their lieutenant governors certain responsibilities and tasks.

Under outgoing Gov. Jared Polis, Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera a half-dozen programs, including Polis’ Office of Saving People Money on Health Care, the Office of eHealth Innovation, the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs and Serve Colorado, which administers the AmeriCorps program in the state.

Weiser and Dahlkemper said that should they win the election, the exact scope of her work as lieutenant governor hasn’t yet been set and would be determined by listening to Coloradans. They also did not rule out Dahlkemper collecting an additional salary beyond the position’s official pay, at $106,086 next year. for an extra-pay arrangement.

The survey of 500 voters found remarkable unanimity between voters leaning left or right on the question of AI regulations, with support for some types of oversight or regulation exceeding 80%. The findings come from a poll conducted in May and June by the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland through its , which shared the data with The Denver Post.

“Voters are intrigued by AI, but they have a lot of anxieties as well,” Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation, told The Post. “They agree it’s not enough for the tech companies themselves to regulate AI — they want the government to have a role.”

The goal of the program’s surveying is to identify solutions supported by voters to major public policy issues. It has conducted polls this year both nationally and in more than two dozen competitive U.S. House districts, including Colorado’s 8th, which covers a stretch of the Front Range from Commerce City to Greeley.

Artificial intelligence has in the last few years as the powerful technology has seeped into numerous facets of life, spurring fears of jobs lost to computer automation and the potential for algorithms, instead of human beings, to adjudicate critical healthcare claims and loan application decisions.

And money from tech companies with an interest in AI development has begun to shape and fuel the 8th District race, which pits Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans against the Democratic nominee, state Rep. Manny Rutinel, in November.

“Not only are Democrats and Republicans on the same side of this issue, but the majorities are large majorities,” Kull said of the public perception of AI borne out in the poll. “There’s substantial anxiety about it. Voters think this thing needs to be contained.”

Eighty percent of voters leaning Democrat and 84% of voters leaning Republican in the 8th District said they favored the creation of a new federal agency to oversee the burgeoning technology. Meanwhile, 80% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats in the district want new AI programs to pass a “government-designed test” before being implemented.

Most of the respondents in the 8th District poll were categorized as Democratic or Republican based on either their actual affiliation or, for unaffiliated voters, their lean toward one side or the other.

When it comes to “deepfakes” — video or images that are digitally altered or repurposed to deceive viewers — the poll showed little tolerance from 8th District voters. Eighty-nine percent of voters from both sides of the aisle said AI-generated content on TV or online should be required to carry a label identifying it as such.

The vast majority of voters — again, 89% among those leaning to either side — were even less tolerant of the use of deepfakes in the political arena, saying such content should be prohibited altogether in campaign ads.

“People have enough trouble figuring out what’s true as it is,” Kull said.

State lawmakers in 2024 passed a law requiring campaign ads that use AI to disclose that fact. When it comes to broader regulations on AI, the legislature has struggled to reach consensus. It passed a groundbreaking law two years ago that attempted to regulate the use of AI by companies and other organizations in ways that might discriminate against people, but the law was delayed as lawmakers, Gov. Jared Polis and outside interests debated changes.

In May, Polis signed a significant rewrite of the earlier law. At the national level, the Trump administration has threatened to challenge individual state regulations while calling for a national regulatory framework that hasn’t passed Congress.

The Program for Public Consultation poll also asked 8th District voters about the dystopian potential of machine-controlled weapons being deployed one day. That question prompted 80% of voters on the Democratic side and 84% on the Republican side to agree the United States should work with other countries on a treaty to “prohibit the development and use of AI-powered weapons that can fire on targets without a direct human command.”

A majority of district voters — 81% from each party’s leaners — also favored the U.S. signing an international treaty “to regulate large-scale AI programs.”

While the poll did not ask specifically about the recent explosion in data center development, Kull said the cloud computing facilities that have rattled communities with concerns about their environmental impacts — particularly water and electricity consumption — “have become somewhat of a symbol” of the larger AI issue.

Both Rutinel and Evans have weighed in on artificial intelligence and related issues.

Rutinel has sponsored bills in the state Capitol that would place guardrails around the technology, including that required a developer of a “high-risk artificial intelligence system” to use reasonable care to protect consumers from “algorithmic discrimination.” He also was among the sponsors of that rewrote those regulations.

Last month, Evans helped introduce a bill in Congress called the , which would ensure Americans “are not left footing the bill for the grid upgrades and increased energy generation required to develop new data centers.”

“I don’t see significant numbers of voters saying they don’t want anything to do with AI,” Kull said, “but they are looking for candidates who are responsive to public concerns about the downsides of AI.”

And four months out from the November election, Laubacher, a Democrat, held an eye-popping cash advantage over Colorado’s most well-known member of Congress: $3.6 million to $247,000. That’s according to new federal campaign finance reports filed by their campaigns Wednesday night.

But all that money, which accounts for contributions to and expenditures from each’s campaign coffers as of June 30, may add up to a whole lot of nothing in a district as red as the 4th.

Political observers advise against reading too much into Boebert’s fundraising numbers, which are anemic compared to the state’s other Republican incumbents and to her past races. Two years ago at this time, when Boebert, now 39, was running in the 4th District for the first time, she in the bank after fending off several GOP primary challengers.

In 2022, when she was running for a second term in the more competitive 3rd Congressional District on the Western Slope — before she switched to the 4th — Boebert had in cash on hand entering July, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at Colorado State University, pointed to the nonpartisan , which gives Republicans a massive 9-percentage-point advantage in the 4th District, which covers the state’s Eastern Plains and butts up against the Front Range, taking in Douglas County. Cook rates it solidly Republican this year.

“History shows money alone rarely overcomes a 9-point partisan lean in a midterm or general (election) without a perfect storm, like a national wave, a major scandal or a candidate collapse,” he said. “I’d rate the odds of a flip as quite low — Boebert starts as a strong favorite, barring major shifts.”

Political analyst Floyd Ciruli also cautioned that cash alone may not be able to overcome the reality of the district’s political makeup. Republicans have 100,000-plus more registered voters than Democrats.

“I’m not sure that money is the actual issue in this district,” Ciruli said.

But that doesn’t mean a change at the top can’t happen in Colorado’s sprawling eastern district —  because it has. Betsy Markey represented the district for a single term nearly 20 years ago — the only time a Democrat has won the seat in decades.

A ‘lack of enthusiasm’ for Boebert?

The that Laubacher, 57, has reeled in compared to Boebert’s this election cycle is a substantial spread.

Trying to divine why that fundraising discrepancy exists is tricky, Saunders said, though Laubacher’s haul has benefited from extensive online fundraising appeals asking for help taking on the conservative lightning rod. All that money will expand the opportunities to get her messages in front of voters, including through ads on TV and social media.

She ended up unopposed in the Democratic primary after Trisha Calvarese — who lost to Boebert by 11.6 percentage points in the 2024 race — dropped her repeat bid in late March. Boebert was unopposed in the June 30 primary.

“It may reflect some national GOP donor hesitation tied to her controversies, but in practice, it hasn’t hurt her electorally here,” Saunders said of Boebert, referring to unflattering headlines the congresswoman has generated over the years. “Lack of enthusiasm is possible among moderates, but the district’s partisan composition limits its impact.”

Boebert’s thinner campaign purse can also be explained in more innocuous ways, he said.

“Incumbents in safe seats often don’t need to max out (with each donor); they can rely on name recognition, partisan advantage in the electorate and party infrastructure,” Saunders said.

A spokesman for Boebert’s campaign didn’t respond Thursday to questions sent by The Denver Post.

In other federal races that could prove more competitive, this week’s FEC filings show differing relative money positions.

Fundraising in the El Paso County-based 5th Congressional District has favored Democrat Jessica Killin, who has collected nearly twice as much money as first-term Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank in this cycle. The former U.S. Army captain, who won the Democratic primary, had as of June 30 compared to Crank’s . While the district has long been a Republican stronghold, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added the 5th to its list of targeted seats in February.

In the 3rd District, Boebert’s successor, Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, reported nearly $1.8 million in his account entering July compared to Democratic nominee Dwayne Romero’s $84,200 after Romero won a hard-fought primary.

In Colorado’s most competitive congressional district, U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, a Republican, had more than six times the cash on hand as his Democratic opponent, Manny Rutinel, as of the end of June. Rutinel had to to spend through November in the race for the 8th Congressional District, which includes northern Denver suburbs and Greeley. But Rutinel had to fend off two Democratic opponents in a very expensive primary.

In Colorado’s U.S. Senate race, incumbent Democrat John Hickenlooper was crushing his Republican opponent, state Sen. Mark Baisley, in the fundraising game despite facing his own primary opponent. Colorado’s junior senator had in his bank account on June 30, compared to for Baisley, who was unopposed in the GOP primary.

In all, Hickenlooper has raised nearly $8.9 million in this election cycle to Baisley’s nearly $105,000. The Cook Political Report rates the Senate race as “solid Democrat.”

Laubacher’s strategy

In the 4th District, Taylor Gillespie, the campaign manager for Laubacher, said raising money was “only one part of building a winning campaign.”

Laubacher, she said, “has spent her entire career putting her life on the line for our country and is running to put a stop to the self-dealing in Washington by putting in place term limits and age limits, banning insider stock trading by politicians and putting a stop to reckless, out-of-control debt.”

Laubacher can pound themes on the campaign trail that are particularly salient to the largely agricultural district, Ciruli said, like high fuel and fertilizer prices in the midst of the U.S. war with Iran and added costs for farmers due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

“You have to convince the farmer in Sterling or in Fort Morgan that they’re not getting enough representation and they need to move to a Democrat,” he said.

Saunders said Laubacher would have to execute a “flawless ground game” and target unaffiliated and “soft GOP voters in suburban growth areas” (like Douglas County), “emphasizing her service, moderation and putting people over politics.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s unpopularity in the country on the November ballot. Boebert has created some distance between herself and the president in recent months, criticizing Trump for his veto of a water project that would benefit her district and calling on his administration to release files on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

But Saunders said Boebert can stray only so far from the White House.

“In a safe district of any partisan flavor, loyalty signals often matter more than policy nuance,” he said. “So, her survival will likely rest on keeping the base fired up without alienating enough suburban and independent voters.”

Marx is the sort of character Carl Hiaasen might have conjured if he took mushrooms and wandered into a Pentecostal church. He’s the son of a man named Karl Marx — really — who invented a form of “Cajun karate.” (Victor apparently holds a seventh-degree black belt.) The younger Marx calls himself a “high-risk humanitarian” and tells stories of charging into war zones to perform acts of Christian rescue. At one point, his website claimed he’d saved more than 40,000 women and girls from sex trafficking, though under scrutiny, he amended that figure to “more than one and less than a bunch.” Reporters have also been unable to find evidence of his purported childhood homicide, which he says he committed at the insistence of an abusive stepfather.

These discrepancies haven’t stopped Marx from building a brand out of action-movie evangelicalism. Charlie Kirk wrote the foreword to his 2024 book, “The Dangerous Gentleman.” Marx’s website reportedly used to sell a $99 guide to spiritual warfare, teaching users how to cast out demons. He and his wife were involved in what appears to be a multilevel marketing company hawking vitamins. And now he has become the latest political outsider to catapult past party gatekeepers and win a nomination for an important office.

Marx’s close victory in a three-way primary has some Colorado Republicans despairing. Given how blue the state has become, the GOP never had much hope of winning the governorship, but Republicans told me that having Marx at the top of the ticket could put some statehouse and congressional races in danger. “He’s going to do absolute destruction to all the candidates downballot,” said Darcy Schoening, a former Moms for Liberty activist and a state party delegate who runs an anti-Marx website. His campaign has divided the Colorado right, leaving relationships in tatters. “This election season, most people probably lost more friends than they ever have in any other cycle,” Schoening said.

The elevation of Marx is, in part, a story about the right-wing revolution eating its own. Two years ago, I wrote about the schisms among Colorado Republicans as MAGA forces took over the party, making fanatically anti-gay Dave Williams party chair. When I first learned about Marx, I assumed he was part of the same faction as Williams, but I was wrong. Jimmy Sengenberger, a conservative columnist for The Denver Gazette, told me that much of Williams’ camp lined up behind Scott Bottoms, a hard-right state legislator who is, like Marx, a pastor, though one with a lower profile. “Those who are involved in the party, they really want to have control over the party,” said Sengenberger. But they seem to have lost it; in the primary, Bottoms came in third.

It����ap easy for liberals like me to feel smug about this Republican fiasco. But the ridiculous rise of Marx is the product of trends that, having transformed the Republican Party, are beginning to show up in Democratic primaries as well. When I asked Republicans how Marx had won, they described his charisma and social media reach as well as voters’ contempt for professional politicians. “Victor Marx did a very good job of marketing himself as an outsider, as an answer to some of the angst Republicans have in Colorado,” said Chuck Broerman, a Republican official in El Paso County. “He has a great social media following,” Broerman added, and there was a bandwagon effect online. Marx, he said, “created a vehicle for people to focus their emotional energy.”

Speaking to Broerman, it was hard not to see at least faint parallels to emerging dynamics in parts of the Democratic Party. In Texas, antisemitic sex therapist Maureen Galindo made it into a runoff for a congressional seat and, even after she proposed imprisoning Zionists, got more than a third of the vote. New York socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier beat out aging progressive Adriano Espaillat, and though not nearly as toxic as Galindo, other Democrats still had to answer for her outré positions, including her refusal to say that murderers should be imprisoned.

Schoening said some in Colorado are comparing Marx to Graham Platner. I would never go that far; Platner’s faults required digging, while Marx’s unfitness should have been evident from his public pronouncements. Still, Marx demonstrates what can happen when voters, feeling apocalyptic, disdain concerns about expertise and electability and let themselves be guided by their id. Many of us have welcomed the rise of a Democratic Tea Party, in no small part because the Tea Party was very effective at moving the country in its ideological direction. But once started, the process of voter radicalization isn’t easy to modulate.

If Democrats have taken a step or two down this road, Republicans have been racing down it for years. That����ap part of the reason Marx hasn’t received as much national attention as his eccentric biography might warrant. It scarcely counts as news when Republicans nominate a con man who claims to have God on his side while fetishizing violence. In “The Dangerous Gentleman,” Marx emphasizes that despite all his escapades, he’s just an ordinary guy. “In the very near future, there will be thousands of people like me around the world,” he wrote. You might take that as a warning.

Michelle Goldberg is an opinion columnist for where this article was originally published.

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That is roughly how much was spent on all of Colorado’s competitive primaries for statewide and federal office — and almost all of it went to influence Democrat-vs.-Democrat contests as voters picked who would represent the party in November’s election, according to an analysis by The Denver Post. Millions more went to down-ballot races, such as local legislative races.

The rain from the proverbial storm of cash poured down in the form of candidate mailers, door knockers, and TV and digital ads, and in less apparent campaign infrastructure and polls. The vast majority of the money went directly to campaigns and supported direct messaging, staffing and other expenses of running for office.

But more than a third — almost $25 million — flooded the races through super PACs and other outside groups that approach politics with different levels of opacity.

The money also didn’t do much to predict eventual winners. Four of the most-monied candidates seeking statewide or federal offices won their primaries. Four others lost.

Paul Teske, a political scientist at the University of Colorado Denver, said it can be tough to tease out how much of a difference money can make in a campaign, especially if spending between candidates is in the same ballpark. But the amount this time also seems striking, even if there isn’t an immediate apples-to-apples comparison to prior election years.

“People realize this is a way to influence policy that can be effective — if it’s the right place, at the right time, in the right way,” Teske said.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appears to have been the single largest player in Colorado politics in the June 30 primaries. The billionaire pumped $5 million in cash into a state super PAC backing U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet����ap failed bid for governor against Attorney General Phil Weiser. Weiser ended up winning the race by more than 13 percentage points.

The race for the Democratic nomination for governor by far outstripped every other race in the primaries, with more than $24.5 million spent by either the super PACs backing the candidates or by the campaigns themselves.

That money was almost evenly split between the super PACs and the campaigns, though that number is skewed by the super PAC backing Bennet, Rocky Mountain Way. That political action committee spent nearly $11 million, almost twice as much as Bennet����ap official campaign spent.

The Republican side of the governor’s race saw a relatively paltry $4.1 million spent through June 29, the cutoff for the most recent batch of campaign data. Nonprofit leader Victor Marx, who had more than $3.2 million of that money backing him either directly or through a state super PAC, narrowly secured the nomination Thursday over state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer and third-place state Rep. Scott Bottoms.

On the federal side of the ledger, the money becomes even more opaque — though there was less of it. Campaigns’ federal reports cover fundraising and spending through June 10, though outside groups had to file more frequent spending reports in the lead-up to the election.

State Rep. Manny Rutinel benefited from the most outside money, $5.5 million, in his successful campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 8th Congressional District. By comparison, Shannon Bird, the former state representative who lost to Rutinel, saw $1.7 million spent to buoy her.

More than $3 million of outside help for Rutinel came from the Latino Victory Fund and the associated Latino Victory Project. Those groups have received money from Opportunity Forward Alliance, a dark-money group that describes itself as backing business-friendly policies, and 5000 Broadway Productions, the production company founded by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

He also benefited from almost $1 million spent by You Can Push Back, a super PAC supported by . And $1.2 million backing Rutinel’s campaign came from the SOMOS PAC, a super PAC that was backed by the nonprofit Advocacy Action Fund. That nonprofit has been linked and has a history of giving to self-styled progressive and abortion-rights advocacy groups.

That 8th District race — expected to be one of the most competitive in the nation, again — will almost certainly draw a gob-smacking amount of money and attention as the November general election nears. In 2024, the candidates and outside groups spent more than $40 million on the election that saw U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, a Republican, win the seat. It was among in the country and is seen this time as key to whichever party will hold the House majority next year.

Now Evans is running for reelection in the 8th District, which stretches from the north Denver suburbs to Greeley.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who was on the wrong side of the primary night’s biggest upset in Colorado, was the second-largest beneficiary of outside money, largely as part of a last-minute surge to preserve her office. More than $2.3 million flew into that race to defend DeGette, whose 1st Congressional District mostly covers Denver.

Of that, more than $1.5 million came from the Pro-Choice Majority Action PAC, which in turn receives money from the EDW Action Fund, a pro-Democratic women’s group that is , or AIPAC.

By comparison, now-Democratic nominee Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist who beat DeGette by 13.4 percentage points, had just over $500,000 in outside spending support her campaign against the 30-year incumbent. Kiros’ campaign also spent less than $600,000 directly, or less than half of DeGette’s total campaign spending.

Colorado Republicans have spoken: First-time political candidate Victor Marx will lead the ticket as the party’s gubernatorial nominee in November.

The Associated Press called the race for Marx on Thursday, more than a week after the June 30 primary election. His closest opponent, state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, took an initial lead and then stayed close to Marx’s heels for more than a week. The religious nonprofit leader finally sealed his narrow win in the three-way race after final vote totals came in.

While Marx, 61, steadily gained ground and seemed to be the frontrunner in the final weeks of the race, the result was still remarkable for a party whose institutional leaders had coalesced around Kirkmeyer. His once-unlikely victory, powered by his direct outreach to voters and disinterest in traditional campaign tactics, laid bare the party’s still-unresolved internal struggle between more traditional and insurgent, conservative candidates.

Part of Marx’s appeal has been that he is not a politician. But in the coming months, he may have to act like one as he tries to unite his party — and appeal to voters beyond it in what’s become a firmly blue state. He’ll face Democrat Phil Weiser, the state’s attorney general, as his chief rival in November.

Colorado election results for the 2026 primary

And Marx will also almost certainly face more questions about his extensive and eye-popping personal history, which includes stories of hunting demons, high-risk humanitarian missions and a backwoods forced killing when he was a child.

Here's what to know about those claims and about the Republicans' gubernatorial nominee.

What is Marx's backstory?

The most scrutinized, questioned and difficult-to-verify part of Marx's candidacy is his extensive personal history. A Louisiana native, Marx has said he was the victim of profound abuse as a child. He has said he beheaded a cat as part of a voodoo ritual at age 3 and that he killed a man at age 7, both at the behest of his then-stepfather. (The sheriff in the Mississippi county where Marx says the killing took place has not returned messages seeking comment.)

Marx later joined the Marines, and toward the end of his time in the military, he reconnected with his birth father, Karl Marx. That, in turn, inspired him to embrace Christianity, which would later animate his campaign. He has said he is a black belt in "Cajun karate," a form of martial arts invented by his dad, and the younger Marx taught martial arts at schools in Hawaii.

He moved to Colorado Springs to work for Focus on the Family, a conservative ministry, and in 2003, he founded All Things Possible Ministries with his wife, Eileen, and supporters in Texas.

Marx is deeply religious and has said that he has freed people from demonic forces, which he's said can be brought on by pornography and unmarried couples living together.

What has his ministry done?

When it was founded, All Things Possible Ministries' goal was "to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ through outreaches and crusades primarily to youth." Marx visited prisons and held speaking engagements elsewhere, where he sometimes demonstrated his claim to being . His group has provided trauma support to people, including through the distribution of stuffed animals loaded with prayers and songs.

After traveling to work with a former Special Forces soldier in Myanmar, Marx branched into what he's called "high-risk humanitarianism." He says he traveled to Iraq and Syria during conflicts with the Islamic State militant group, and he funded medical teams working with the Burma group to come and treat civilians caught in the crossfire.

Marx primarily played a support role there, though he was present at least twice when medics came under direct fire. His nonprofit's tax forms indicate the groups has spent more than $4.3 million in overseas efforts in recent years, though those records also indicate the group has no offices or staff in those countries.

Map: Where did the votes come from in the Colorado primary races for governor?

He has said his nonprofit, the annual revenues for which recently topped $7.5 million, now focuses on training law enforcement, and a police official in Colorado Springs said the group provides trauma support for officials investigating crimes against children. Marx said during the campaign that he and his wife had stepped down from the nonprofit.

What are some of his unsubstantiated claims?

Marx faced scrutiny during the primary campaign for several claims connected to him and the organization he co-founded. In an interview with 9News, he for a website claim that he'd rescued more than 45,000 women and children. Another humanitarian, with whom Marx worked in Burma and in the Middle East, confirmed to The Denver Post that Marx had traveled and worked in those countries, and the humanitarian said Marx played mostly support, funding and training roles.

Marx has said he called in an airstrike on Islamic State militants and that he entered Israel and Gaza shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas. The U.S. military, the Kurdish government in northern Iraq, and the Israeli military did not respond to messages from The Post seeking to verify Marx's claims. The humanitarian with whom Marx worked in Iraq was unfamiliar with his claims about an airstrike.

He also attracted attention for his refusal to answer when asked by journalists how many people he'd killed as an adult. "Does it matter?" he replied in the 9News interview.

Marx's political history and role in the GOP

Marx has never run for office before this race. He previewed his candidacy at a Charlie Kirk memorial last September and announced his run shortly after. Prior to his entry into the race, he hadn't donated money to any political causes in Colorado, according to state campaign finance records.

During the primary, he received few endorsements from institutional Republican voices, other than U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert and a handful of county sheriffs. Indeed, he was largely eschewed by the state's old-guard Republican officials. Both Kirkmeyer and state Rep. Scott Bottoms, who came in third in the primary, said they would not support his candidacy should he win. Dick Wadhams, a political consultant and former chair of the Colorado GOP, has sharply criticized Marx.

Marx, meanwhile, has embraced the opposition from what he's described as the political establishment, and he ran his campaign as a political outsider. He raised more money than Kirkmeyer and Bottoms combined.

His policy positions

Though he has shrugged off policy discussions, Marx has largely adopted policy positions familiar to Republican voters.

He has called for a reduction in the income tax, for audits of state agencies and for Medicaid work requirements that are stricter than those already passed by Congress. He said he would require state officials to cooperate with federal immigration authorities (which would require a change to state law), and he has generally called for supporting law enforcement and strengthening criminal penalties.

He has said he would issue a full pardon to Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk and election denier whose prison sentence was commuted by Gov. Jared Polis. Marx later softened that position in comments to the Colorado Sun. He has said he supports reducing "red tape" to make it easier to build housing, and he indicated to the Sun that he thought the state should provide support for pregnant women who are immigrants without permanent legal status.

Shimon Blau, a pain management physician and Israel supporter, on Thursday turned in signatures required to get on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate — and he did so just an hour before the deadline after a rush to collect signatures this week.

“Dr. Blau turned in petitions at 4 p.m.,” Colorado Secretary of State’s Office spokesman Jack Todd said Thursday. “I cannot speak to how many signatures Dr. Blau turned in, or whether his petition submission will ultimately be deemed sufficient or insufficient.”

Blau must submit 1,500 valid voter signatures from the 1st Congressional District, which for the most part covers Denver, to make the November ballot. Election officials have until July 30 to review petitions for unaffiliated candidates, Todd said.

Kiros, who defeated the 15-term DeGette in the June 30 primary, also faces Republican Christy Peterson, who according to Federal Election Commission records had raised no money for the race through the end of March. She didn’t file a more recent campaign finance report.

Blau, who is Jewish, launched his long-shot congressional bid on Sunday, that he was “saddened and alarmed” by Kiros’ victory a few days earlier.

Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist, has been criticized for comments she 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.

“I am particularly concerned by what I view as Ms. Kiros’s anti-Semitic rhetoric and her refusal to meet with leaders of Denver’s Jewish community to address their concerns,” Blau wrote in his launch announcement.

Both Blau and Peterson may face a tough time trying to beat Kiros this fall, given Denver’s heavily Democratic skew.

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.”

It was a phone call that secured her support — and not even one that Lang received herself. She’d met someone at a May Day labor rally who had a transgender child. The otherwise stranger told Lang about calling the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to express worry about the Trump administration’s for children like hers.

Weiser — the elected attorney general since 2019 — responded, Lang said, by calling that constituent personally to promise he would use his office to protect those rights.

“That’s an example of governing — it’s not about political power, it����ap about being here to serve the people,” said Lang, a 37-year-old Denverite. “That really spoke volumes to me.”

Voters like her helped propel Weiser, 58, to a stunning victory on Tuesday over U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet — a man who had previously won three statewide elections by ever-increasing margins, lined up a who’s who of Democratic endorsements before his campaign even launched, benefited from $11.4 million in super PAC support backing his candidacy, and enjoyed, polls long showed, a massive edge in name recognition.

But Bennet’s advantages didn’t always break through to voters — and there were also harder-to-gauge intangible factors that can vary from voter to voter, like which candidate comes across as more personable or more trustworthy.

Lang said she read the news daily, particularly after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election “catalyzed” her. She knew Weiser had sued the Trump administration repeatedly; she couldn’t place Bennet or what he had done.

The surprise delivered by Tuesday night’s primary result wasn’t necessarily Weiser’s victory itself. He had campaigned himself into striking distance in the final month of the race, while Bennet����ap support seemed calcified. Most political observers, by then, saw a world where either man could become the Democratic nominee.

The surprise was the thoroughness of Weiser’s victory — more than 13 percentage points as of Thursday evening, with most ballot-counting complete.

“Weiser ran an amazing campaign,” Colorado State University political science professor Kyle Saunders said. “He didn’t have the name recognition six months ago. He didn’t have the backing. And this wasn’t some squeaker you can explain away with turnout.

“There’s no doubt, to my eye, that Weiser was helped by anti-incumbent sentiment. But this was a shellacking.”

‘Discontent among the Democratic base’

From the time Bennet announced he was running in April 2025, three months after Weiser entered the race, the senator was dogged by questions about why he’d want to leave Washington, D.C. — and why he needed to give up one of the most powerful political positions in the country to make a difference for Colorado.

While not a true incumbent, Bennet nonetheless faced the drag of an anti-incumbent year as he sought another office.

And now, instead of being able to move back to Colorado full time, Bennet will remain in Washington, with more than two years left in his Senate term — while Weiser faces the Republican nominee who emerges from a primary race that was, as of late Thursday, still too close to call. In increasingly blue Colorado, the Democrat will go into the fall general election campaign as a heavy favorite.

A pair of polls by the bipartisan Colorado Polling Institute, from September and April, pointed to that broader discontent with incumbents, especially among Democrats frustrated with the Trump administration — and with what their elected officials were doing to fight it.

The April poll found Bennet’s favorability among Coloradans had dropped from the prior year’s poll results, from 45% to 40%. His unfavorable rating had risen, from 31% to 39%.

“CPI had been picking up on discontent among the Democratic base throughout the past year, and the primary became the release valve,” said Kevin Ingham, a principal from the Democratic polling firm Aspect Strategic, which works with CPI. “Every race is different, but the data was all pointing towards a uniquely difficult environment for any longtime Democratic incumbent.”

That sentiment was apparently most stark in Denver. Voters in the Democratic primary there ousted longtime U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in favor of attorney Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist who’s now the nominee. Denver was also where Weiser did best, winning almost two votes for each one cast for Bennet. And it’s where Bennet’s Senate counterpart, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper — who still won the Democratic nomination for reelection Tuesday — trailed his challenger, liberal state Sen. Julie Gonzales, by nearly 9 percentage points.

Map: Who’s leading in the Colorado primary race for governor?

Amy Kenreich, a 46-year-old Denverite, said she saw Weiser as more progressive overall than Bennet, with values that she shared. But as much as she supported Weiser, she was driven just as much by an antipathy for Bennet that stretched back to his time running Denver Public Schools nearly 20 years ago.

She accused him of using his time there to bring “the privatization movement to education in Denver,” and she saw him as likely to do the same as governor.

The flood of outside money into the race, including $5 million from New York City billionaire Michael Bloomberg to support Bennet, only reinforced that feeling.

"Once people understand what's going on, see what's going on, it's disgusting — and they're outraged,” Kenreich said. “People are more likely to take action if they're angry about something, and they're angry about billionaire influence for sure."

Making personal connections

Danielle Varda, an Arvada volunteer for Weiser’s campaign and a Democratic candidate for the Colorado House of Representatives, said she saw the election as a rejection of an "ivory tower of election-knowers.”

“We just saw how slick your mailer is, and how many go out," Varda said. "It����ap the difference between authenticity and a gimmick. I think Bennet was relying on the machine, the way everyone tells you you’re supposed to do it. And times are just changing.”

She contrasted that with Weiser. She described him as someone who, “when he meets people, he looks them in the eye and remembers their name.”

Varda had her own moment like that about a year ago. Weiser had already made it clear he wouldn’t issue endorsements in state House races. But when they both attended an event, he made sure to talk with her and get her phone number.

“He made that one little personal connection, and I felt seen,” Varda said. “I felt like he cared who I was. … If you multiply that by a million, that����ap Phil Weiser.”

From there, the two politicians' networks overlapped. Varda didn’t have an opponent in the primary, having won out at the local assembly, but that moment with Weiser motivated her to use her connections to campaign on his behalf.

She recalled meeting with Democratic groups in Golden — typically thought of as a more moderate enclave of metro Denver, Varda said — and found people eager for a fighter. Weiser would go on to win Jefferson County with 57% of the vote.

Bennet declined media interviews after a show-of-unity Democratic Party event on Thursday that drew many candidates and officials. But during a speech congratulating Weiser (and after chuckling about Weiser’s unofficial slogan: “Phil Weiser for governor; Michael Bennet for Senate"), he praised his opponent����ap work.

“It����ap hard to start in the position Phil was in, and knock on every door and make those calls and get out to every single community and win this race,” Bennet said. “I was amazed to watch the work that he did and to see the loyalty of the team that he built all over the state of Colorado, from the very beginning.”

Weiser, for his part, emphasized lessons he learned from past governors, including Roy Romer and Hickenlooper, and from former U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter.

“If you’re knocking on doors, you’re there to listen and learn,” Weiser said. “... You shake every hand. You honor every voter. You’re there to serve, and you do it with a smile because this work is about the people of Colorado."

Throughout the day Thursday, Marx held Kirkmeyer at arm’s length as the final batches of votes, largely from Arapahoe County, began to filter in. His advantage stood at 2,028 by 6:10 p.m., with an estimated 97% of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press, which had still not called the race by early Thursday evening.

Marx had 39.8% support to Kirkmeyer’s 39.4% — a razor-thin margin with more than 515,000 votes tallied so far, , though the margin was well above the state’s automatic recount threshold. Rep. Scott Bottoms, a conservative pastor from Colorado Springs also seeking the GOP nomination, was in third, with 20.7%.

Roger Hudson, Marx’s spokesman, said late Thursday that the campaign was confident Marx’s lead would not slip and that they were eagerly awaiting a final call from media outlets.

“There’s never been any contraction in the momentum of this race,” he said. “We know our voters, we knew where they were, and they certainly have delivered. … It would be really difficult for (Kirkmeyer) to find those extra votes.”

Laurel Boyle, a spokeswoman for Kirkmeyer, said Thursday afternoon that Kirkmeyer remained hopeful and that the campaign was waiting on the last batch of ballots from Arapahoe County. The county still had roughly 10% of its ballots to count, according to the AP.

Kirkmeyer had led for nearly 22 hours after the polls closed, seemingly built by people who voted earlier in the run-up to Election Day. But Marx steadily gained ground on the veteran lawmaker as late votes filtered in from around the state. By early evening Wednesday, he had overtaken Kirkmeyer, and she did not make up much ground on him as Thursday wore on and the number of outstanding ballots dwindled.

Marx’s campaign had said earlier Wednesday afternoon that it felt confident that trend would hold and be enough to push the nonprofit leader from Colorado Springs into first place.

Early evening updates came within minutes of each other from El Paso County, where Marx has led, and Denver, where Kirkmeyer has led, among others. Those election offices had spent the day processing tens of thousands more ballots, and they resulted in an overall shift in Marx’s favor when they landed.

Hudson had said Wednesday that he felt more confident in Marx’s chances than he had Tuesday night, when Marx told supporters that he could still overtake Kirkmeyer.

“It’s more proof of the fact that those late voters, in-person voters, are Victor Marx voters,” Hudson said.

It was unclear when AP would call a final winner. The state’s automatic recount law would be triggered if the margin between Marx and Kirkmeyer is less than 0.5% of the leading vote-getter’s total. Currently, that’s a little more than 1,000 votes.

In an interview late Wednesday morning, Kirkmeyer said she remained confident, pointing to ballots that were outstanding at the time in Larimer, Arapahoe, Boulder and her native Weld counties. She led in all of those places, though Marx had pulled ahead in Adams County, maintained a lead in ruby-red El Paso County and comfortably won Mesa and Pueblo counties.

She said that if she could maintain and pad out her support along the Front Range, then those counties “are going to help carry me through to a win in this election.”

“We thought it would be a competitive race,” she said. “I was in session until the middle of May. I couldn’t do a lot of campaigning.”

But as many of those ballots were counted into Thursday, Marx was in the lead.

Map: Who’s leading in the Colorado primary race for governor?

Hudson said that concerns around mail-in voting, which have taken hold among conservative voters amid President Donald Trump's repeated and baseless claims of election fraud, likely spurred more hardline Republican voters to cast their ballots in person on Election Day. Those would then be among the last votes to be counted.

That trend would make sense for the candidates: Kirkmeyer is a more traditional, fiscally conservative and moderate Republican. Marx has played more to the base, eschewing policy debates in favor of social media outreach and wearing his controversial personal history -- which has attracted extensive public scrutiny -- on his sleeve.

Whoever wins will take on Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Democratic nominee, in November, after he crushed U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in their primary contest Tuesday.