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.”

Colorado Parks and Wildlife had contracted again with Canada for wolves to bring to the state after finding few willing sources within the United States. But a letter sent to CPW by the new head of last month warned that doing so would violate a legal agreement between the two agencies.

The letter was the biggest indication yet of a major change in the federal executive branch’s stance on Colorado’s wolf reintroduction since President Donald Trump returned to office. In fact, it marked an about-face from the Fish and Wildlife Service’s position just last winter — leading several wildlife advocacy groups to say the new position is simply political.

“This is just plain politics and trying to throw sand in the gears of progress,” said Tom Delehanty, a senior attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office.

If CPW cannot use Canadian wolves and cannot find another source for this winter’s releases domestically, the delay would be a win for many of Colorado’s ranching groups. For more than a year, the groups have pushed for a pause in releases to allow the state to implement more conflict mitigation programs.

“That is ultimately our stance — it’s not to end the wolf program, it’s simply to take a breather,” said Erin Spaur, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association.

Before the recent shift, the federal agency had consulted with CPW on the most recent wolf release last winter, as well as on the contract signed this month between CPW and the British Columbia provincial government that would provide more wolves this coming winter, CPW spokesman Luke Perkins said. The agency has complied with all state and federal laws, he said.

Amid the uncertainty, CPW is evaluating all potential sources for this winter’s release, Perkins said. In the past, the agency struggled to find a state in the Western U.S. that was willing to help with the reintroduction program.

CPW and Gov. Jared Polis’ office are talking with the Department of the Interior about the letter, governor’s spokesman Eric Maruyama said.

“The state of Colorado and Colorado Parks and Wildlife are committed to fulfilling the will of Colorado voters and look forward to the continued reintroduction of gray wolves in line with the (management plan) unanimously adopted by the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission,” he said.

Does letter characterize law correctly?

The Fish and Wildlife’s Oct. 10 letter alleges that Colorado is obligated to source wolves for its reintroduction from the areas in the American West where they are not listed under the Endangered Species Act: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and the eastern thirds of Oregon and Washington. The letter cites the original agreement between the federal agency and CPW that gives the state agency the authority to manage wolves here, called a 10(j) rule.

But that’s not what the rule states.

In the document’s section titled “Release procedures,” it says CPW officials “plan to capture wild gray wolves in cooperating States in the Western United States where wolves are federally delisted.” The rule document later states that those areas are the “preferred donor population” but does not implement any requirements or rule out alternate sources.

“The 10(j) rule just doesn’t say what they claim it says,” Delehanty said of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s new letter.

Another document from the FWS also states Colorado can source wolves from other places outside the Rockies. The environmental impact statement that accompanied the 10(j) rule says wolves in the Great Lakes region can be an option if wolves from the Western U.S. are not available, though it doesn’t say anything about international sources.

The state’s wolf plan doesn’t contemplate Canada as a potential source — but it also does not require a specific source. It states that the reintroduction “will be undertaken by CPW in cooperation with Federal agencies, potentially affected Tribes, and the states of Idaho, Montana and/or Wyoming from which wild wolves will be transferred via agreement. … In the event that none of these three states can serve as source sites for wolf donor populations, CPW has also begun to explore an agreement with the states of Washington and/or Oregon.”

More indications of politics

Republican politicians — and some Democrats — have taken up the ranching communities’ opposition to the reintroduction.

Greg Lopez, a former short-term congressman who is running for the Republican nomination in the 2026 Colorado governor’s race, has sent several letters to Fish and Wildlife Service leadership challenging the reintroduction. In September, he and the heads of the Colorado Outfitters Association and the Colorado Wool Growers Association sent a letter to the regional FWS head asking for a pause in the reintroduction.

In October — after CPW had already received the FWS leader’s letter — he and several livestock and hunting organizations sent another letter challenging the importation of Canadian wolves.

The author of the FWS letter to the state agency, Director Brian Nesvik, previously before his confirmation as head of the federal agency in August.

He was the head of the Wyoming wildlife agency in 2023 when the state’s leadership forcibly rejected the idea of allowing Colorado to capture wolves there for reintroduction. Nesvik’s tenure also included overseeing a controversial incident where a man ran down a wolf with a snowmobile before taping the injured animal’s mouth shut for posed pictures at a bar.

The man then killed the wolf. Nesvik’s , which as too lenient.

Previous sourcing of wolves

Earlier, Colorado officials struggled to find a state in the Western U.S. that would provide them with wolves for the reintroduction program set in motion by voters through a 2020 ballot initiative.

The first batch of 10 wolves — released in December 2023 — came from Oregon. CPW officials had first asked Idaho, Montana and Wyoming for wolves but were rejected. They also spoke with Washington state wildlife officials, who at the time said they could not provide wolves for the first release but indicated that they were open to further conversations.

CPW in 2024 struck a deal with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington, but the tribes backed out after speaking with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, which has reservation land in Colorado.

The agency then turned to British Columbia, where it captured 15 wolves before releasing them on the Western Slope in January. The wolf management plan calls for the release of 30-50 wolves over a three- to five-year period, and wildlife officials have previously said this winter’s release could be the last.

Twenty-one collared wolves currently roam Colorado, and at least 10 pups were born this summer in the state’s four named packs.

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.

Thus, I will not be endorsing the intelligent, hard-working State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer for Colorado governor. Sensible, principled, and conservative but able to work across the aisle, Kirkmeyer is the best Republican candidate to run for governor in years.

Likewise, I will not be endorsing the smart, affable, and fabulously mustached former president of the State Senate and current Fremont County Commissioner Kevin Grantham for state treasurer. Both of these candidates have solid platforms and neither one raves hysterically on social media, so do not look for my name on their list of endorsements. They have a chance in 2026, albeit a slim one, so I won’t risk it. Although Colorado is solidly blue, weakened support for Democrats and a softening economy may give these two Republicans the chance they need to take a statewide office.

A recent Magellan Strategies poll finds that of those who voted for Kamala Harris last year, 47% now have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. The same poll shows 52% have an unfavorable opinion of Gov. Jared Polis’ job as governor. Forty-four percent disapprove of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and 49% U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper. As a recent Denver Post editorial noted, “After years of enjoying popularity, Colorado’s top Democrats are now showing a remarkable drop in their approval ratings among voters.” Democrats cannot coast through the next election and a strong Republican may have a chance.

Given this possibility and the risks associated with a Kafer endorsement, I will not endorse the strongest candidates but the weakest for the position they are best suited.

I endorse State Rep. Scott Bottoms, who is also running for governor, to play the next Church Lady on Saturday Night Live. Of all his colleagues, he most frequently mentions Satan on the dais. Comfortable as he is with calling everything socialist and Marxist, he could also play Sen. Joe McCarthy in a dramatization for the History Channel, if he shaved his beard that is. Bottoms is an election conspiracy theorist who plans to release former County Clerk Tina Peters from prison if elected. With the Magellan Strategies poll showing 59% disapproval of Trump, choosing a full tilt MAGA candidate is the best strategy for keeping Colorado solidly in the Democratic column.

If that����ap the goal, State Sen.��Mark Baisley, another gubernatorial candidate, would also fit the bill. He once blamed Antifa for the Jan. 6 insurrection and once wrote that having hit their “socialist stride” the Democratic Party’s ultimate goal was “Sharia.” Keep Colorado blue, vote Baisley!

For embodying the axiom “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” I endorse former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez who has run for governor twice and lost twice in the primary. Go for three! Tied with Lopez for the “try, try again” distinction is former State Rep. Janak Joshi who plans to run against Sen. John Hickenlooper who never loses and could probably run from the grave and win. Unfortunately, a solid non-endorsable Republican candidate has not thrown a hat into this race.

Finally, I could endorse Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell for governor, but I’ll need to Google his name and figure out where Teller County is.

All joking aside, it would be better for the party to run great candidates like Kirkmeyer and Grantham who can win not just Republican votes but bring along unaffiliated and even moderate Democrats. As elections in other blue states like Massachusetts and Maryland show, the right Republican candidate can win on occasion. To boost their chances, the candidates I have endorsed should drop out and direct their supporters and funders to a candidate who has a chance.

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

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That snapshot in the 8th Congressional District — reflecting activity before former Rep. Yadira Caraveo jumped in this week — was among early data that emerged this week in several federal and state races that are beginning to take shape. Candidates who’ve begun raising money for statewide office and for Congress had campaign finance reports due Tuesday.

Rutinel, a state representative, reported raising nearly $1.2 million in the first quarter of the year, through March 31. Evans raised about $810,000, about a third of which was from joint fundraising committees associated with Republican leadership.

But the balance flips when it comes to their war chests, as Rutinel spends more rapidly to launch his campaign. He began April with about $658,000 on hand, while Evans had about $755,000, according to their filings.

The 8th District has been among the most competitive in the nation since it was established following the 2020 census. Caraveo won it in 2022, then lost to Evans in 2024. In each case, fewer than 2,500 votes separated the two major-party candidates. The district stretches from Commerce City to Greeley.

Caraveo announced on Tuesday that she hopes to recapture the seat. Her initial finance filing shows her spending about $4,000 in startup costs and bank fees, with only a few hundred dollars in cash on hand this month — all figures bound to change as the campaigns kick into high gear.

Here’s a look at two of the statewide races:

Governor’s race

Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat who’s term limited in his current office, has a clear and massive head start on fundraising over all of the potential Republican nominees for the governor’s office, according to state campaign finance records. He reported raising more than $1.9 million through March 31, including a transfer of nearly $158,000 leftover from his attorney general campaign, and had $1.7 million still on hand.

But how his war chest stacks up to that of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, won’t be clear for a few more months.

Bennet announced his campaign Friday. The next fundraising filings are due July 15. One note: Bennet has about $400,000 on hand in , but don’t allow transfers of federal campaign funds to a state candidate committee.

On the Republican side, state Sen. Mark Baisley and state Rep. Scott Bottoms reported raising about $9,000 and $5,000, respectively, since the beginning of the year.

Former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez, who won a special election for a short-lived stint in Congress last year, also announced this week that he will run for the governorship again. His announcement was outside the reporting window, also.

Attorney general’s race

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty reported raising about $155,000 since he launched his campaign for attorney general in February. It’s more than four times what Crisanta Duran, a former speaker of the Colorado House and fellow Democrat, reported raising in this fundraising window for the office.

But Dougherty’s total is about a third lower than than what term-limited Secretary of State Jena Griswold — who announced her campaign April 7 — initially hauled in for the AG’s race, according to her campaign Wednesday.

Griswold raised that money outside the official reporting window. Her campaign boasted of raising more than $230,000 from more than 1,100 contributors in the first 48 hours of its launch.

No Republican has reported raising any money for the race.

In a video announcement, Lopez spoke about putting “people over politics” while hitting on Republican red-meat issues like “government overreach,” cutting taxes and regulations, and referencing conservative concerns about public education.

“People over politics means cutting through the government red tape, making life more affordable and putting families first,” he said in the video. “This movement is about listening, not dividing.”

Lopez is the highest-profile Republican to join the 2026 gubernatorial field seeking to succeed term-limited Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat who has served since 2019. Lopez is set to compete in the GOP primary next year against at least two state lawmakers, Rep. Scott Bottoms and Sen. Mark Baisley, as well as Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell.

Last week, Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet unveiled his long-anticipated campaign for governor, catapulting himself to the front of small Democratic field previously dominated by Attorney General Phil Weiser.

In June, Lopez won a special election to represent the Eastern Plains’ 4th Congressional District for roughly six months after former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck stepped down early. Lopez didn’t pursue a full term, and the seat was later won by U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who switched from the 3rd Congressional District.

Lopez’s stint in Congress was the second shortest of any Coloradan, behind William E. Burney’s two-month stretch in the early 1940s. Lopez previously told The Denver Post that it was an “honor and a pleasure” to have worked in Congress, even if he felt like an exchange student.

Earlier, Lopez served as the mayor of Parker. He ran for governor in 2018 and 2022, losing in the primary race each time. In 2016, he briefly ran for a U.S. Senate seat. A former director for the Small Business Administration, with the Trump administration’s Department of Justice in 2020 to resolve allegations that he’d violated conflict-of-interest policies.

Last month, the bipartisan Upper Colorado and San Juan River Basins Endangered Fish Recovery Programs Reauthorization Act became law, on the Western Slope. President Joe Biden signed it as part of the larger National Defense Authorization Act.

And over the weekend, the Democratic president signed the , a Boebert-led bill that directs the Bureau of Land Management to sell to Mesa County a 31-acre parcel in Clifton for economic development.

“These were all bipartisan efforts that may not have grabbed the national spotlight, but they will make a major impact on the health of our state and that’s what is most important to me as a legislator,” Boebert, a Republican, wrote in a statement to The Denver Post.

The two-term congresswoman was sworn in Friday to represent Colorado’s eastern 4th Congressional District in the 119th Congress. That happened just over a year after she announced she wouldn’t stand for reelection in the 3rd District, which covers a huge swath of mountainous western Colorado, stretching from Craig to Cortez to Pueblo on the Front Range.

Boebert, 38, lost her luster in the district she had represented since 2021, making the wrong kinds of headlines for controversial statements and questionable behavior. She nearly lost her first reelection bid in 2022, despite the 3rd District being heavily Republican.

More unwanted coverage exploded nearly a year later, when Boebert was removed from a musical at Denver’s Buell Theatre after engaging in inappropriate behavior, including vaping and groping her date. Several prominent Republicans in the state went on the record withdrawing their support for her.

Boebert switched to the reddest district in the state — the 4th — at the end of 2023. She won a June primary and then the November election.

It took Boebert until nearly three years into her congressional tenure to see her first bill pass — the Pueblo Jobs Act — in December 2023. The law aims to create 1,000 jobs in Pueblo following the closure of the Army’s Pueblo Chemical Depot. Another bill to assign unique zip codes to communities in the country without one — including the 4th District communities of Lone Tree, Castle Pines and Severance — passed the House last month but did not get through the Senate.

But Boebert’s fish recovery bill — designed to protect the beleaguered humpback chub, bonytail, Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker — made it into law. For Melvin Baker, chairman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, the legislation was important.

“As stewards of the earth, the tribe supports the recovery of the endangered fish populations and the protection of the waterways to support the endangered fish,” he said.

With both chambers of Congress now controlled by Republicans, Boebert is sanguine about her ability to push through more legislation than she could under a politically divided Congress. But she said she’d look back wistfully at the part of Colorado that made her a household name in the first place.

“More than any one place, I will deeply miss representing the people of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District as they supported me as a business owner and an activist before I’d ever run for office,” she said in the statement. “And while it may seem like a small thing, I will miss the gorgeous sunsets in Rifle.”

After less than half a year representing the 4th Congressional District, Lopez will step aside as the second-shortest-serving member of Congress in state history — behind only , who filled a vacancy in Colorado’s then-3rd District from Nov. 5, 1940, to Jan. 3, 1941.

Lopez, a Republican who was , said his congressional stint was an “honor and a pleasure,” if a bit discombobulated. The former mayor of Parker and a two-time Colorado gubernatorial hopeful rented 14 places on short-term leases to serve as home during his six months of service in Washington, D.C.

“I was like that foreign exchange student — I showed up in the middle of the year and missed the yearbook picture, but everybody liked me because they didn’t know that much about me,” he told The Denver Post last week, as he picked up pozole in Aurora for Christmas dinner with his wife of 37 years, Lisa.

Despite the truncated term, Lopez played a small but notable role in what became a convoluted electoral chess game centered on the political survival of U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, boosted GOP billing among Colorado’s congressional delegation and, ultimately, solidified Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the upcoming Congress.

“The amount of coordination and the little bit of luck to get this to come together is something I will be teaching in class for a while,” Colorado State University political science professor Kyle Saunders said. “It’s a political story, it’s a campaign story and it’s a candidate story.”

Lopez, 60, won a special election in late June to fill out the term of Ken Buck, the longtime representative of the Eastern Plains district. Buck had abandoned his seat in March — nine months before his term was up. His retirement, announced in late 2023, set in motion a switch by Boebert, who was facing tough reelection prospects in her Western Slope district, to politically friendlier territory on the other side of the state.

The plan worked: Boebert won a hard-fought 4th Congressional District primary in a crowded Republican field and went on to win election easily in November. On the same night, Republican Jeff Hurd defeated his well-funded Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, in the district Boebert had departed less than a year prior, and two years after Frisch nearly toppled her in the midterm election.

“It led to the Republicans holding both of these seats,” Saunders said of Boebert’s move.

Lopez, chosen by the 4th District����ap central committee in late March to run in the special election, made it clear from the outset that he wouldn’t run in the June 25 primary against Boebert and nine other GOP hopefuls.

Boebert, in a statement, praised Lopez as having represented Colorado “in a principled manner” as she scraped her way to becoming his successor. The 4th District seat represents agricultural communities across a large expanse of land but also well-populated suburban Douglas County in south metro Denver.

“While his time in Congress may have been quick, Congressman Lopez absolutely made the most of it and gave a voice to Colorado’s 4th District that his constituents had been without for too long,” she said. “He consistently went above and beyond his duties, from speaking up for his district in internal meetings and on the House floor to being an eager collaborator on the issues we agreed on, like cutting wasteful government spending.”

The nation’s mounting debt was a chief concern for Lopez while he was in Congress. In his final vote as a congressman, he opposed a continuing resolution to fund the government, saying on Dec. 20 that he could not “accept a bill that does nothing to address our $36 trillion debt.”

In September, he introduced a bill requiring a tally of the national debt to be listed on ballots in elections for federal office.

The next month, he introduced a bill touting a “Red Card” system to allow private businesses to hire immigrant workers who enter and live in the U.S. to work “under strict government oversight.” The arrangement, which would be critical to the 4th District’s labor-hungry agricultural sector, would not provide those workers a path to citizenship.

At the time that concern about Venuezelan gang activity and arrests in Aurora was making national headlines in September, Lopez introduced a measure that called on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to detain and deport people in the country illegally with known gang affiliations.

None of his bills made it to the House floor for a vote, but Lopez said he was glad to have a voice in the Congress.

“I went in there knowing I was going to be there a short time,” he said. “It’s not often you get a chance to serve the people at that level.”

It wasn’t all work and grind in Washington. Lopez, during the interview, reminisced about the September day he was chosen MVP at the congressional flag football game against the Capitol Police.

As for the future and where politics might fit into it, Lopez said he was “keeping all my options open.”

“It’s been a great six months,” he said, “and maybe at some point I’ll write a book about it.”

“We must always resolve our differences peacefully at the ballot box — not through violence,” Rep. Steven Woodrow said in a statement Monday morning. “I know people are hurting, and (I) apologize that my words caused additional pain.”

Shortly after a gunman injured Trump and killed an attendee at the former president’s Pennsylvania rally Saturday night, Woodrow — a frequent X user who has regularly criticized Republicans on the platform — posted that the “last thing America needed was sympathy for the devil but here we are.”

He immediately drew criticism for the post, and later that night he deleted his X account. Colorado Democratic Party chair Shad Murib Woodrow’s post.

In his statement Monday, Woodrow condemned the attempt on Trump’s life and said that his post, “inarticulate as it was,” sought to convey that “acts of violence like this are awful and only make it more likely that Trump now wins” the election.

Other Colorado politicians denounced the attack, which killed retired fire chief and father Corey Comperatore and left Trump bloodied after he said a bullet damaged his ear; two rally spectators also were injured.

Gov. Jared Polis said in a Saturday statement that he was glad Trump was doing well and that “violence is never acceptable.” He also for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a move echoed by others that on Monday. Democratic U.S. Reps. Brittany Pettersen, Joe Neguse, Diana DeGette, Yadira Caraveo and Jason Crow all issued similar statements.

So, too, did U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet and an array of local and state elected officials.

Republican U.S. Reps. Doug Lamborn and Greg Lopez both posted on X that they were praying for Trump’s recovery.

Crow told CBS on Sunday that “violence could spiral out of control” and that “leadership requires that we all step back. Enough is enough. We cannot do this.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert expressed support and prayers for Trump on X, while blaming Biden for the attack and reposting social media messages that explicitly — and baselessly — blamed Democrats for attempting to kill the former president.

The gunman has been identified as a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man; for opening fire on Trump.

State Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican, posted on X that Biden should be investigated for “criminal incitement of violence.” He wrote that he “would expect” Woodrow to resign over his comment, though he told that he understood getting caught up in an emotional moment. (Soper clarified to The Denver Post Monday evening that he wasn’t calling on Woodrow to resign.)

Patrick Neville, a former Republican lawmaker and one-time minority leader in the state House, that he didn’t agree with Woodrow’s comments. But he suggested that the Denver Democrat and his family had received threats since Saturday and that those threats “are more deplorable than what (Woodrow) said.”

Calls for softening inflammatory rhetoric are not new to Colorado’s state legislative leaders, who have long struggled with lawmakers’ social media postings.

Republican state Reps. Brandi Bradley and Ryan Armagost both criticized Woodrow on X over the weekend, too. Earlier this year, Democratic lawmakers criticized both Bradley and Armagost for repeatedly using social media to accuse their colleagues of supporting pedophiles. Democratic legislators said they received death threats as a result of those postings.

The number of individuals who have served in the House of Representatives throughout the history of our nation is around 11,000. I consider it an honor and a privilege to be one of them.

If you had told me as a young boy, that I would be one of those chosen for that high honor, I wouldn’t have believed you. My parents, like most Hispanics of their generation, were not actively involved in politics because they believed that elected officials did not care about the struggles of Hispanic families and our way of life.

Fast forward to today, and I am a true testament to what is known by many as the American Dream. Immediately after high school I joined the U.S. Air Force and was stationed at Holloman AFB where I met my beautiful wife, Lisa, of 36 years. We have two grown children who currently live in Colorado.

I’ve served as Mayor of Parker, owned small businesses, and have established many meaningful friendships. I’ve been incredibly blessed.

The question I’ve been asked many times over the last two months of campaigning goes something like this: “You’ll only be there for six months, what can you actually get done in that short amount of time?”

It����ap a fair question. While I certainly hope to have the opportunity to vote on bills that would secure the border, protect our communities, and bring jobs to Colorado’s Fourth District, I don’t know that those opportunities will arise–especially during the last few months of an election year.

But here’s what I can promise I’ll do. I will work tirelessly to restore the trust and integrity of Congress. Congress is broken and the American people know it. Regularly Congress polls below a 15% approval rating. Politico once reported that more Americans preferred root canals than Congress.

To correct this sad reality, I pledge:

Not to buy, sell, or trade individual stocks.

Not to miss a single vote.

To put people over politics.

None of these commitments are mandated by Congress or required by the Constitution, but each of these commitments seem like the bare minimum for those who represent us.

The buying and selling of individual stocks has been abused by both parties, as members of Congress regularly beat the SPY average. In fact, one study found that 86% of Americans want to prohibit members from trading stock in individual companies. I couldn’t agree more, so that����ap exactly what I’ll do.

In addition, most Americans may not know that members of Congress will skip votes on important pieces of legislation. Sometimes, they miss many votes. I commit to making sure that my constituents are represented in every single vote.

Finally, it seems like members of Congress are more divided than ever. Although this is more difficult to quantify than the previous two commitments, we all can see it. While in Congress, I will focus on building up, instead of tearing down. I’ll prioritize policy above virality, civility above acclaim, and accomplishments above attention. In short, I’ll put people over politics.

It����ap true, I’ll only be in Congress for six months. But in those six months, I promise to serve with honor and dignity. I will keep these commitments and, God willing, I’ll make the over 748,000 constituents I represent proud.

Greg Lopez lives in Elizabeth and was selected in a special election Tuesday night to replace U.S. Rep. Ken Buck as representative for Congressional District 4.

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