Both candidates are current elected members of the legislature. Throughout the debate, Bottoms, who has been a state representative for Colorado Springs since 2023, repeatedly referred to concerns about pedophilia rings but then said he had no way to back up his claims.

“The FBI is checking into all of that,” he said. “There’s no way I can prove this right now because I’m not a federal investigator … but we’ll see.”

Kirkmeyer of Brighton has served in the state Senate since 2020 and has been on the influential Joint Budget Committee since 2022. She leaned heavily on that experience throughout her responses Thursday.

“I’m the better candidate because I have the most experience and I’m qualified and I know how to get the job done,” she said. “I actually govern and run a multibillion-dollar budget in this state.”

During her time in the Democratic-majority legislature, she has, at times, reached across the aisle for policy-making. She during the 2026 legislative session, which ended Wednesday. Many of them were the product of the budget committee’s work and, in keeping with how that body works, included at least one Democratic sponsor.

“You have to work across the aisle to get anything done,” she said.

Bottoms is the lead pastor at the Church at Briargate, a Colorado Springs evangelical church. Bottoms is one of the most conservative members of the legislature. In four years in the Capitol, he has been the primary sponsor on one bill that became law — This year, he had no Democratic co-sponsors on the , and he was the sole representative on four of them. They focused on topics like restricting abortion access and gender-affirming care for minors. His fellow legislators rejected almost all of them after their first committee meetings.

“I don’t shy away from the scary kind of issues,” he said. “I’ve tried to pass many bills that have specifically to do with that leadership, grooming our kids, trafficking kids, parental consent, pedophilia.”

The debate was sponsored by The Denver Post, Denver7 and Colorado Public Radio. Last week, the same outlets also hosted a debate for Democratic candidates Attorney General Phil Weiser and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.

Kirkmeyer, Bottoms or Victor Marx, a third candidate who didn’t participate in the debate Thursday, will take on Bennet or Weiser in the general election. The odds are unlikely that a Republican candidate will win that race, as the state has become increasingly blue in recent years. Gov. Jared Polis defeated Heidi Ganahl by more than 19 percentage points in 2022.

Still, the winner of the Republican primary is significant, in that the victor will show what direction the state’s minority party is headed. The Colorado GOP has had years of upheaval as its members have fought over what direction to take next.

Unaffiliated voters’ participation in primaries

A major point of contention for the state Republican Party has been whether unaffiliated voters should be allowed to participate in the party’s primaries. The candidates disagreed about that issue, among several others, during the debate Thursday.

Bottoms, who filed a lawsuit this month to block the unaffiliated voters said he believes the change would keep the system in line with the Constitution.

Kirkmeyer, who unsuccessfully ran to represent Colorado’s 8th Congressional District in 2022, said she wouldn’t support blocking unaffiliated voters because it would alienate unaffiliated and Republican voters and force the state to use only the caucuses — a system she said many voters aren’t familiar with.

The candidates also disagreed about whether the state’s voting system is secure. Kirkmeyer said she believes the system may need some new rules, like ID requirements, and that voter rolls should be cleaned up. But overall, she said, she believes it is secure. Bottoms said he wants to see lots of changes, including ending the state’s mail-in voting system and requiring IDs to vote.

Alignment with Trump

When moderators asked the candidates how they would differentiate themselves from Trump, the candidates took different approaches. Kirkmeyer said she disagrees with some of the president’s decisions that have impacted Colorado, like declining requests for disaster relief dollars and removing the Space Force headquarters from the state. She added that she would try to find ways to work with the president and remind him “we are all his constituents as well.”

Bottoms praised the president’s work but said he isn’t afraid to stand up to him if he doesn’t agree with his decisions.

“I’m a reformer. I do not mind looking at people in power,” he said.

Kirkmeyer and Bottoms mostly focused on their own experience and opinions throughout the debate but a few times directly clashed with one another. When discussing the state budget, Bottoms posited that widespread corruption is costing the state billions of dollars, adding that if he were elected he would “DOGE” all the departments — referring to the now-disbanded Department of Government Efficiency.

“We have hundreds of millions of dollars right now that are going to illegal immigrant abortions and transgender surgeries,” he said.

Kirkmeyer said his comments were untrue and asked him to directly point to where those items are in the budget. He didn’t directly answer.

“Pretty much everything Rep. Bottoms said is inaccurate,” she said to one of his responses.

The candidates disagreed about whether former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Bottoms said no while Kirkmeyer said yes. Both said Trump isn’t eligible to run for another term.

Bottoms secured the top spot on the primary ballot after he won the most support during the party’s state assembly in April. He won 45% of the 2,145 delegates present, with Marx coming in second. Kirkmeyer landed on the ballot through a signature-gathering process.

The primary will be June 30. The general election will be Nov. 3.

The third candidate on the Republican primary ballot, Victor Marx, didn’t attend but hosted his own livestream at the same time.

Both men will appear on the June 30 primary ballot. Bottoms, who is one of the most conservative lawmakers in the state Capitol, won slightly more than 45% of the 2,145 ballots cast, comfortably beating Marx’s 39% and topping a field of more than a dozen candidates who vied for gubernatorial ballot access. When Marx’s total was announced and Bottoms’ victory assured, the lawmaker’s supporters shouted and jumped around him in the bleachers of Colorado State University-Pueblo’s arena.

“This is our year. This is the year we’re going to do this,” Bottoms, who is in his second term in the statehouse, said in brief remarks earlier Saturday. He promised to work with federal immigration authorities, to build nuclear reactors and to “reclaim safety and security.” He also pledged to “DOGE the mess out of everything in this state,” a reference to billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” which gutted a number of federal programs last year.

State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, who also is running for governor, did not participate in the assembly process and has instead submitted signatures to appear on the primary ballot. Marx also submitted signatures while also seeking the assembly nomination.

The party also nominated state Sen. Mark Baisley for U.S. Senate, former Colorado Libertarian Party official James Wiley for secretary of state, and Fremont County Commissioner Kevin Grantham for state treasurer. All those candidates will be appear on the ballot alone in June, virtually assuring them places on the November general election ballot.

For attorney general, the assembly sent Michael Allen, the district attorney in El Paso County, and attorney David Willson to the primary election in June.

The day was marred by delays, mistakes, long lines and, as afternoon turned into evening, a voting discrepency: About 80 more ballots had been cast than delegates had been credentialed to cast them. The assembly then voted to accept the new ballots as legitimate (the official running the meeting said they likely were).

The winner of the June gubernatorial primary will face off against U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet or Attorney General Phil Weiser, each of whom are seeking the Democratic nomination to replace Gov. Jared Polis next year.

The Republican candidates who emerge from the primaries will face a Colorado Democratic Party that has held all four constitutional statewide offices since 2018. No Republican has won the governor’s office since 2002, and the last statewide win for a GOP candidate was Heidi Ganahl’s win for a University of Colorado governing board seat in 2016.

Repubican contenders repeatedly promised to reverse those trends Saturday. Eighteen gubernatorial candidates initially were slated to speak, although several didn’t turn up and their candidacies did not advance. One candidate — Kelvin “K-Man” Wimberly — appeared to have no supporters present to nominate him. That prompted someone from the crowd to run up to the microphone, gesture to Wimberly and offer to nominate “this guy.”

As party members slowly trickled into the building Saturday morning, campaign volunteers wandered, handing out bags with posters for Marx or walking in slow arcs with signs for fellow chief executive hopeful Robert Moore. Scott Pond, who hopes to take on U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper in November, signed a pair of baseball caps for one supporter. Many attendees — including the conspiratorial podcaster Joe Oltmann — wore “Free Tina Peters” stickers, a sentiment echoed by a banner hanging behind the assembly stage.

Several candidates, including Marx, pledged to free the former Mesa County clerk, who was convicted for orchestrating a plot to sneak a third party into a secure area to examine voting equipment after the 2020 election.

Oltmann briefly ran for governor before declaring his candidacy to become the state GOP’s chairman.

On Friday, former state lawmaker Ron Hanks was nominated to launch a right-wing primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, the freshman Republican who represents the Western Slope’s 3rd Congressional District. Hurd’s previous primary opponent, Hope Scheppelman, dropped out of the contest last month, after President Donald Trump re-endorsed Hurd.

The appeal by the 2,700-student district southeast of Denver is part of a broader effort supported by at least three conservative groups, including one led by former Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl, to raise money to defend the district against the lawsuit.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado against the district in December, alleging that the Elizabeth school board’s vote to remove 19 books from school libraries violates federal and state free speech protections. The books, which are now back on shelves because of , are primarily by or about LGBTQ people, people of color, or both.

While school district fundraisers for things like classroom supplies or field trips are common, asking parents and the public for money to pay lawyers is not. The heading on the donation page hosted by Ganahl’s group reads “Save Elizabeth School District,” with buttons underneath suggesting donations ranging from $250 to $10,000.

It isn’t clear from publicly posted district financial records how much the Elizabeth School District has spent on the library book lawsuit. District officials declined to answer that question.

The plaintiffs in the case include two district students, a chapter of the NAACP, and the Authors Guild, a professional organization for writers. Their lawyers argue that the removal of the books violates federal and state free speech protections. Among the titles removed were “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, and “It����ap Your World — If You Don’t Like It, Change It” by Mikki Halpin.

Lawyers for the district argue that the books were removed because of concerns they weren’t age-appropriate, lacked educational value, and included sensitive content such as graphic violence, explicit sexual references, extreme drug or alcohol use, and self-harm ideation.

Elizabeth Superintendent Dan Snowberger declined a telephone interview with Chalkbeat, but wrote in a text that the district����ap finances are sound and that the lawsuit����ap genesis is what����ap unusual about the situation.

“It����ap unusual for a behemoth organization like the ACLU with a major financial war chest to come after a small rural district,” he wrote. “We will not allow them to impact the educational opportunities for our children in the district, and will do everything necessary to mobilize outside forces to protect our children.”

The Elizabeth School District has portrayed its legal fight against the ACLU as a . On social media and in board meetings, some community members have supported the district����ap decision to remove the books and its fight against the lawsuit. A common objection to the books is that some passages are too graphic for students, such as those that describe sexual assaults.

Other community members oppose both the book removals and the fundraising campaign.

Jessica Capsel, an Elizabeth resident whose son attended school in the district until she switched him out last year, said she believes the time and money district officials are spending on the lawsuit are distracting them from educating kids.

“That pop up [window] begging for money pops up every time you change a page” on the district����ap website, said Capsel, who won a lawsuit against the district over open meeting violations last spring but is not directly involved in the library book lawsuit. “So clearly that����ap where their priority has been.”

Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, said by email that the organization didn’t “come after” Elizabeth. Instead, he said, district students and families wanted the district to comply with the Constitution and stop banning books that have content or viewpoints with which board members disagree.

“Fighting for the constitutional rights of students in Colorado is how we protect children; violating their constitutional rights is not protecting children,” he wrote.

Elizabeth’s legal costs and fundraiser totals are opaque

It����ap unclear how much money the Elizabeth district has spent fighting the book removal lawsuit in the 10 months since it was filed.

Financial records on the district����ap website suggest modest spending on the two primary law firms representing the district. Only about $6,500 was paid to First and Fourteenth, which has a location in Colorado Springs, and nothing was paid to Mitchell Law, located in Austin, Texas, during the first six months of 2025.

The district spent about $57,000 in that same period on a third firm, Miller, Farmer, Carlson Law. That firm typically handles routine matters for the district but is also listed in court documents as representing the district in the book removal case.

It����ap also unclear much money has been raised to cover legal fees for the district����ap lawsuit and where that money is going.

Ganahl, whose conservative news outlet Rocky Mountain Voice is running the online donation page titled “Save Elizabeth School District,” didn’t respond to Chalkbeat questions about how much her group has raised and whether the money is being sent to the school district.

She sent a statement that said in part, “Our fundraising assistance supports the board in exercising its authority to curate age-appropriate library content, responding to parental concerns about sensitive themes like explicit content or divisive topics.”

Julian Ellis, one of the district����ap lawyers from First and Fourteenth Law, also didn’t respond to emailed questions about how much money he’s collected. The district����ap website lists Ellis as the person designated to receive paper checks — payable to an Alexandria, Virginia, group called the — to help cover the district����ap legal costs.

Lori Gimelshteyn, executive director of the parents rights group Parents United America, which for Elizabeth’s legal costs, didn’t respond to Chalkbeat questions about how much her group raised and where the money is going.

A fourth partner in the Elizabeth district����ap legal fee fundraising effort is Citizens Defending Freedom, based in Mulberry, Florida. The group last Thursday held a “Protect Our Children” fundraiser for Elizabeth at a Colorado Springs church, with the ticket proceeds going to Ganahl’s group. A said the cost ranged from $100 for a single ticket to $2,000 for the “platinum” package, which included 10 tickets, VIP seating, and a private reception with the four speakers.

A spokesperson for Citizens Defending Freedom referred a question from Chalkbeat about fundraising totals to Bonnie Wallace, one of the event speakers. Wallace, a legislative liaison for Recovering America, an organization that promotes Biblical values in public policy, did not respond to multiple emails from Chalkbeat.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Kirk, who founded Turning Point USA, died Wednesday, Sept. 10, at an American Comeback Tour event at Utah Valley University and was scheduled to continue the tour at CSU Thursday, but Turning Point USA hosted the vigil instead at the stadium, located at 751 W. Pitkin St. in Fort Collins. Speakers included Will Witt, Heidi Ganahl, Isabel Brown and Andrew Wommack.

Before the vigil started, hundreds of people lined Pitkin Street in front of the stadium, many wearing red, white and blue, America-related and President Donald Trump merchandise. Matt Johnson, who was among some of the first in line, said that he hopes Kirk’s passing is a wake-up call for people to stand up for what they believe in.

“Too many are scared to be harmed by saying I’m on the right or this or that,” said Johnson, who is a Weld County resident. “This has given people time to stand up and say, ‘You know what? I actually believe this and I’m not gonna hide anymore.’”

Archibald Allison, a pastor at Emmaus Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fort Collins who decided to attend the event after Kirk died, said many of the young people at his church were fans of Kirk.

“They want to talk about what happened. They want to do something,” Allison said. “They want to feel for the family and so many people across the country that are affected.”

A small stage with three images of Kirk in front of a podium and flowers sat vacant as people chanted “U-S-A” waiting for the event to begin. Nearly a fourth of the stadium was filled with CSU students and members of the public by the time the event began.

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl described Kirk as a changemaker for young people, noting Turning Point USA’s chapters and events across college campuses.

“He was a warrior for free speech, unshackled by censorship, for small government, unbowed by a bureaucracy, and for crushing the creeping shadow of collectivism that threatens the American dream today,” she said.

CSU alum Isabel Brown told the audience about how she found Turning Point USA through a targeted Facebook advertisement.

“I was alone, I was isolated, and I was desperate for an outlet to connect with others who shared my Christian conservative worldview,” said Brown , who is also a conservative creator with a Daily Wire show called the Isabel Brown Show and is also the president of CSU’s Turning Point USA chapter.

Following the event at the stadium, the organization National Ground Game on its own Unf–k America Tour hosted a “Prove Me Wrong” style debate, which Kirk was known for and planning on hosting ahead of the evening event at CSU.

Members of National Ground Game, which was created to counter the efforts of Turning Point USA, have been debating Kirk since April, said Executive Director Zee Cohen-Sanchez, and were planning on debating him Thursday. Cohen-Sanchez added that the organization took a lot of inspiration from Kirk and what she called his ability to marry the media with the “ground game” (filming and posting debates on social media).

“I really believe that Charlie was one of, if not the best, political operative of our generation,” she said. “I think that as Democrats, we haven’t put the footwork in to deserve that … hopefully we’ll see the results of that in the next election.”

Ed Ledezma-Moncada, one of the creators on the tour, said that although he never agreed with any of Kirk’s beliefs, he hopes people on both sides of the political spectrum will condemn political violence, including Kirk’s assassination.

“We’re not going to move forward with the country if only one side is condemning it, the right needs to condemn it as well,” he said. “It����ap sad what happened to Charlie … I never thought he deserved to die.”

Unfortunately, if Proposition 131 to establish ranked-choice voting passes in November there is a chance your ballot won’t count if you refuse to rank candidates who don’t pass your test. It will be tossed out.

Proposition 131 would replace our current voting process in most races. Here’s how it would work: Anyone, regardless of party affiliation, could run in the primary with the top four contenders advancing to the general election. In the general elections, voters would be asked to rank candidates in order of preference.

It����ap a confusing system, so I’ll put names to an example. Let����ap say that out of a gubernatorial primary, State Senator Shannon Bird, a moderate Democrat, State Representative Elisabeth Epps, a Democratic Socialist, former GOP gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl, and Libertarian Aron Lam, mayor of Keenseburg, emerge from the open primary. On your ballot, you rank Lam, Bird, Ganahl, and Epps in that order. In round one, nobody gets 50% of the statewide vote, so the candidate with the least votes is eliminated. In this example, Lam is out and your vote for Lam now goes to your second choice, Bird. A new tally is made. In this round, Bird is eliminated and your vote goes to Ganahl. The process continues until one candidate remains.

What happens when only one or two candidates meet with your approval? In this example, if you selected only Lam and Bird, your ballot would be deemed “exhausted” after round two and tossed out.

To add to the confusion, races for U.S. president, district attorneys, and county and city offices will be determined by the traditional voting method. Ballots will contain both processes. Think your ballot is long and cumbersome now?  Hold this beer, it����ap about to get worse. Under ranked-choice voting, elections will longer, less fair, and less representative.

Under ranked-choice voting, the candidate with the most votes in round one often loses. Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn analyzed 51 ranked-choice election results and found only eight candidates in those elections crossed the finish line with initial majority support. In the worst of these cases, an election for San Francisco Board of Supervisors concluded after 60% of the ballots were exhausted and tossed out. After all the reshuffling, she was declared the winner with 52% of the remaining votes. In actuality, she was the first choice of only 21% of voters.

In Alaska in 2022, Mary Peltola, a Democrat, won the at-large congressional seat after Alaska switched to ranked-choice voting. In the open primary, Republicans Sarah Palin (27% of the vote) and Nick Begich III (19.1%), Independent candidate Al Gross (12.6%), and Peltola (10.1%) emerged the top four vote getters. Gross then dropped out. In round one of the general election, Begich lost and voters who selected him alone had their ballots tossed out. Those who chose Peltola or Palin as a second choice saw their votes redistributed.  Peltola, the candidate with only 10% support in the primary won.

This could happen here. Take the above example with Bird, Epps, Ganahl, and Lam. Let����ap say Lam drops out before Election Day. In round one, Bird and Ganahl have the most votes and Epps is eliminated. Some of Epps’ voters picked Bird as a second choice but most did not make a second choice and a few chose Ganahl. When the final tally is counted, Ganahl edges out Bird by a handful of votes.

As a Republican, I would be happy with the result but my better angels would question whether it was a fair outcome given that Democrats and left-leaning Independents hold a majority in this state. Rather than winning them over through persuasion to vote Republican, we would have denied them representation through a ranked-choice voting scheme.

It����ap no wonder ranked choice voting is up for repeal in Alaska this November. Let����ap not start. Vote no on Initiative 131.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.

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“If somebody wants to be a congressman who lives in the 4th District, this opportunity rarely comes along — an open seat,” said Dick Wadhams, a Republican political operative and former chair of the Colorado Republican Party. “It basically forces the hand of people who have that ambition.”

Colorado’s 4th Congressional District spans much of the eastern part of the state, from the Wyoming state line to the Oklahoma Panhandle, taking in farming communities as well as more urban enclaves, including Loveland and Douglas County, as it wraps around most of metro Denver. It’s in a state that’s turned deeper shades of blue for nearly a decade.

Buck, a former Weld County district attorney who linked his decision not to run again to Republican election denialism and the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, comfortably held the seat after winning an initial election in 2014.

The seat is so safe, Republicans said, that it can serve as a springboard into U.S. House leadership. The opening provides a chance for Republicans here to break out of the minority in the state legislature or to ditch what’s become, for now, the GOP’s routine second-place finishes in statewide races.

A half-dozen candidates already have thrown their names in for 2024, including:

• • State Rep. Richard Holtorf, an Akron legislator, rancher and the House’s minority whip, who criticized Buck for not fighting for former President Donald Trump’s agenda
  • Deborah Flora, a conservative filmmaker and radio host who’s embraced recent conservative criticism of the public education system
  • Jerry Sonnenberg, a Logan County commissioner, rancher and former state senator who pledged to defend America’s “energy dominance”
  • Ted Harvey, another ex-legislator who’s led pro-Trump super PACs
  • Trent Leisy, a veteran and small business owner
  • Justin Schreiber, a fellow veteran who told that he’s been charged with falsely reporting a break-in to police last year

Some potential contenders already have decided against a run. Kristi Burton Brown, another former state Republican party chair, said she had planned to jump into the race but decided against it, given the young age of her family.

Other prominent Republicans she’d expected to vie for the seat — including former district attorney George Brauchler, former 2022 Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl and Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams — all have decided to stay out, too, she said.

Meanwhile, others are still weighing their options.

Rep. Mike Lynch, a Wellington Republican and the Colorado House’s minority leader, told The Denver Post this week that he was still considering whether to join the scrum. Abe Laydon, the chair of the Douglas County commissioners, said in a text that he’s “continuing to actively explore how I may serve my country in Congress.”

One of his fellow commissioners, Lora Thomas, also is said to be considering a run. Thomas did not return a message seeking comment Thursday.

The primary is still more than six months away, but Wadhams and Burton Brown expect more Republicans to declare their candidacies in the coming weeks.

Anyone who isn’t in the race by early January “isn’t serious,” Wadhams said. There’s a reason to wait until the new year: Jan. 1 marks the start of a new fundraising period, meaning candidates may wait until then and start fresh, rather than posting a limited fundraising total right out of the gate.

But any candidate who waits too long risks falling behind in a crowded race in which fundraising will be key.

The district is a Republican stronghold, meaning whoever wins the will be in pole position to coast to Washington, D.C. But Wadhams and Burton Brown said none of the current or potential candidates has universal name recognition in the district — so whoever wins the primary will need an ample war chest to break through.

The district also has changed since the seat was last open in 2014. It now includes more suburban areas, and . Candidates will have to find a way to consolidate their own home turf — whether that’s the Eastern Plains or the suburbs — while expanding their reach beyond it.

“If you can’t raise half a million dollars — if not more — in the primary, you’re going to have a tough time telling your story and distinguishing yourself between the other candidates,” Burton Brown said.

Money aside, it remains to be seen how the candidates will make themselves stand out in a crowded, ideologically similar field.

Because the district is so safely Republican, the question of general electability is almost moot. Whoever wins the primary will almost certainly win the seat, observers say, though a couple of Democrats — including Ike McCorkle, whom Buck defeated in both 2020 and 2022 — have filed to challenge for the seat.

Burton Brown said she didn’t expect the Republican race to be too acrimonious. Candidates will instead have to position themselves as eastern Colorado’s best fighter and voice in Washington, while embracing specific policy issues — immigration, crime, the economy — and hoping that issue resonates.

“Because none of the people running have ever been elected statewide, they would probably all benefit from a campaign that shows voters who they are and pushes their record and their story to voters,” she said. “Because CD4 is the most heavily Republican district in the state, basically what you have to do to win CD4 is pitch yourself as the most conservative champion for the seat, and who can go take the rural-suburban mix of the district.”

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The awarded CSU $6.7 million toward the 14,000-square-foot facility, slated for completion in 2025 at the university’s Foothills Campus on the west side of Fort Collins.

The space is intended to mimic natural bat habitats, becoming one of few places in the world equipped to breed bat colonies, enabling scientists to have a baseline of knowledge about the animals’ age, health and other information needed to collect accurate data.

“It’s absolutely critical work,” said Tom Monath, a virologist and chief science officer at the pharmaceutical company Crozet and former vector-borne infectious disease director at the .

But as scientists buzz about future pioneering bat research — including vaccine development, drug testing and how to guard against future pandemic threats — plans for the lab have generated controversy in a way that wouldn’t have been seen before the pandemic. Conservative pundits and politicos in Colorado have seized on the bat research facility, with some spreading misinformation and trying to draw parallels to the virology lab in Wuhan, China, at the center of the debate over COVID-19’s origins.

CSU researchers say they’re working to better educate the public about the important work that will be done at the Fort Collins facility and the safety measures that will be in place. Some of the claims made about the lab, the head of the project said, are “beyond ridiculous.”

“We as professionals and scientists have to figure out a way to be as transparent as we possibly can without compromising the safety and security of research,” said Rebecca Moritz, CSU’s biosafety director and president of the American Biological Safety Association International. “ people have a tendency to believe the mis- and disinformation before they believe the truth. How can we figure out how to talk more about this? To talk more about how oversight of research works, to talk more about all the layers of safety and security with it and try and make it part of the common vernaculars.”

Last month, the decried the facility as a “bioweapons lab” in a tweet. (The party’s Twitter account has since from the social media service. Communications director Jordan Marinovich said Twitter told the state party that the account broke rules against violent speech, but didn’t provide evidence of any violation.)

“Health officials, whether intentionally or not, misled the public on important aspects of the pandemic and the response,” Marinovich wrote in a statement to The Denver Post when asked why the party incorrectly characterized the lab as a bioweapons facility. “Such matters include: the origin of SARS-COV2, the effectiveness of masks, lockdowns, school and business closures, the effectiveness of vaccines and more. This undermines trust in health institutions to conduct this research properly.”

Greg Ebel, a CSU virologist and project leader for the bat research facility, said he has seen misinformation about the facility circulating, but dismissed the claims.

“This isn’t a bat COVID lab,” Ebel said. “It����ap not a bioweapons lab. We’re not working with Ebola or Nipah virus or any of these things. I’m not interested in losing my job or going to jail or interested in doing research that����ap going to carry home pathogens to my wife or my child. Those kinds of things are beyond ridiculous.”

Sherronna Bishop, former campaign manager for Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, said in January during her web show “America’s Mom” that since the pandemic, nothing concerns people more than hearing that a research lab is going into their backyard.

“Fort Collins is not exactly moving down a conservative path in any way, shape or form, and to go from their transgender ideology to now their bat institution… are people just feeling the disconnect between the elected officials and themselves?” Bishop said during the show.

Former Colorado GOP gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl dedicated a May episode of her “Unleashed with Heidi Ganahl” podcast — titled “Has Colorado Gone Bat (Expletive) Crazy?” — to air her concerns about the facility, centered on what she said were plans to perform “gain-of-function” research there.

Gain-of-function is a type of research in which an organism gains a new function, such as grass being modified to be more tolerant to drought, CSU officials said. In virology, it can involve making a virus more transmissible for research purposes in an effort to better prepare a public health response.

CSU officials insist they do not plan to conduct gain-of-function research on bats that could increase the transmission of a virus or other pathogens to humans.

“My podcast is about informing Coloradans, why wouldn’t I?” Ganahl wrote to The Post when asked why she made the episode. “It����ap a very relevant topic after many millions died in the last few years from this pandemic that was likely caused by a lab leak, and many in CO are not aware of this lab or the expansion” of CSU’s existing bat research.

The U.S. intelligence community remains divided over how the COVID-19 pandemic began, with four agencies believing the virus was transferred from animals to humans, and two agencies — the Energy Department and the FBI — contending the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab.

“A way to get people riled up”

The backlash against CSU’s research comes at a time when professionals across the nation — including librarians, , and — are facing harassment, restrictive legislation or firings for doing their jobs.

Jim Newman, with the nonprofit Americans for Medical Progress, is a nationally-recognized leader in helping researchers navigate misinformation campaigns and related safety concerns.

“I never would have believed 20 years ago that this is even more of a problem in the post-COVID world — misunderstanding and misinformation,” Newman said. “Some of it is weaponizing and sometimes it is a way to get people riled up and scared, and that����ap really unfortunate.”

CSU’s bat facility will be a building, meaning the pathogens inside pose a potential “moderate risk” to staff if accidentally inhaled, ingested or exposed to skin. A number of safety requirements and university, state and federal regulations are mandated within these so-called BSL-2 buildings, including specific decontamination procedures, the use of filtered ventilation when appropriate and self-closing doors, according to the .

BSL-2 buildings are common at universities, Moritz said. In Colorado, the University of Colorado Boulder, CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus, the University of Denver and CSU’s multiple campuses all have labs that meet BSL-2 standards.

Additionally, CSU already has maintained a bat colony for more than a decade, but the new facility will allow for an expansion of that research.

Future projects at the facility are expected to examine how coronaviruses, paramyxoviruses and flu viruses infect bats without making the animals sick.

“We really are considered nationally recognized for our infectious disease research,” Moritz said. “People forgot that there is so much oversight over what these researchers do. They aren’t mad scientists in the lab dreaming all this stuff up and willy-nilly doing what they want.”

Ebel, the project’s leader, said that in addition to being important pollinators and pest controllers, bats are hosts to a number of viruses, from coronaviruses to rabies, but have the ability to carry the viruses without getting sick. Scientists don’t know what protects bats from getting sick, which is part of the question CSU scientists hope to investigate.

“It just makes sense we would be interested in studying the animals responsible for some of these really challenging viruses that emerge on an ongoing basis,” Ebel said.

“Straight out of ‘Jurassic Park'”

Christine Bowman has questions.

She learned about the bat facility after a friend who lives near the university received mail from CSU letting them know about the project and inviting them to attend a public meeting approving the building. So Bowman attended the meeting and said her concerns about the lab were not assuaged.

“Why do we have to play with nature?” Bowman said. “I think it����ap too soon to shove this down the public’s throat and put the community at risk. I’m not a scientist, but I say all the time I have a Ph.D. in common sense.”

Bowman started a Facebook group called Covid Bat Research Moratorium of Colorado, which now has more than 600 members. Bowman is asking for CSU to pause building the facility until Congress determines how the pandemic started and whether the planned Fort Collins facility would pose a risk of starting another one.

“Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should,” Bowman said. “This is straight out of ‘Jurassic Park.'”

But the main concerns Bowman expressed — worries about gain-of-function research, misgivings about the types of diseases the university will be working with and unease about a researcher carrying a pathogen into the community — are addressed in a

The FAQ has a section about why bat research is important, details on the facility, information about the research the university plans to do and explanations of biosafety.

“Ebola, Marburg or Nipah viruses will not be studied in the new building or at any CSU laboratory,” the university wrote in the FAQ. “CSU does not and cannot possess these viruses. Our facilities are not built to research these viruses.”

Bowman was interviewed on Ganahl and Bishop’s shows, during which she shared the email addresses of CSU scientists and encourages listeners to “inundate” them with questions.

“We’re not being ugly about this,” Bowman told The Post. “We just want assurances or guarantees about the safety of this kind of research. I’m not going to harass any one person. I’m not going to picket when they break ground. I’m not taking to the streets. I want facts.”

Biosafety director Moritz said she made a decision long ago to have a light online profile because she knew about the possibility of scientific harassment.

“It’s incredibly unfortunate,” Moritz said. “I wish we could just focus on the science.”

Ebel said he came to CSU 15 years ago because of the university’s work in this field.

“What we’re building is going to be a first-rate, safe facility to house and breed bats and there’s a real dire need right now for the research those animals are going to facilitate,” Ebel said. “As a society, we have really big problems, and they’re going to be very complex to fix and confront, and CSU is a great place for this particular piece of that to be done. We have a chance to contribute to some studies that really will make things better and help us understand the way the world works.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The party is done pretending in this state to reject the extremists’ lies that fueled an attack on the U.S. Capitol and caused a constitutional crisis. It’s a shocking decision following an election where even their most anti-Trump candidates got trounced at the polls.

Last week Dave Williams, an election conspiracy theorist who maintains without evidence that the 2020 election was stolen, was regretfully nominated the head of the Colorado Republican Party.

Williams certainly hasn’t come a long way since his college days when he used his position as student body president to discriminate against an LGBT student group at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

Since being ousted from student council in 2007, Williams has served as the chair of the El Paso County Republican Party, represented in El Paso County, and run an unsuccessful campaign for Congress.

But while his job title has changed, Williams is still the same old bigoted bully, only now with more power to wield than just refusing to sign off on the approximately $2,000 check to fund an LGBT student organization.

Williams proposed to a House Resolution supporting voting rights in 2022, thanking those who joined the Save America Rally for Trump in 2020, and then calling into question the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s election. The amendments also supported indicted Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters who he claimed “now faces unjust persecution and prosecution.” He also called for the state to end use of Dominion Voting Systems — a Colorado company subjected to outlandish claims of election fraud by Trump and his supporters following the 2020 election.

We aren’t sure exactly what was going through the heads of the approximately 200 Republican Party leaders who voted for Williams. We thought that conservative El Paso County sent a pretty clear message about Williams’ divisive brand of politics – often divorced from reality – when only 33% of voters in Congressional District 5 supported Williams.

A conservative who can’t win a majority in El Paso County against a flawed incumbent who faced an embarrassing personal scandal involving the misuse of congressional office resources, including allowing his son to sleep in Capitol office space, should be a red flag to those who hope for a Republican Party comeback.

And yet, Williams is now bearing the standard for the Colorado GOP.

The second-place choice, Erik Aadland, would have been a much wiser choice.

Aadland is a thoughtful man who served this country in the Marines. Yes, he was caught on camera once fully endorsing the stolen election conspiracy, but Aadland has worked hard to distance himself from that position, including taking a more forceful stance against the election lies when he ran for Congress than GOP candidate for governor, Heidi Ganahl, did in 2020.

We can see why Republican insiders wanted to move away from former Chair Kristi Burton Brown, who oversaw a historically dismal Republican performance in 2022, at a time when many predicted a red wave in a mid-term election with an unpopular Democrat in the White House.

But we are dismayed that they decided to move further away from decency and instead embrace the group that rallied across the street from GOP headquarters in November, calling for Burton to resign in vulgar and appalling terms, including calling leaders of the GOP “whores,” “evil” and saying Burton “hates America.”

Williams styled himself as a “wartime leader” at the convention in Loveland where he was elected, talking about a war within America.

If we were to employ such outlandish rhetoric, we would say there is a war, but it is an anti-corruption war for honesty, equality and freedom with Trump on one side and most Americans on the other. Williams stands on the wrong side of history.

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GOP strategist Sage Naumann said that “only the insane, incapacitated or incompetent” would consider the job. Several other party officials used the word “thankless” to refer to the position, which serves as a combination cheerleader, unifier, peacemaker and fundraiser for the party and its candidates. Even Steve Reams, the Weld County sheriff who said he’s strongly considering a run for the job, made the position sound more like a sacrifice than a prize.

“There’s not much about it that appeals to me,” he said Tuesday, a day after the party’s current chair, Kristi Burton Brown, announced she wouldn’t seek re-election after serving one term, setting up a contested race at a pivotal time in the party’s history. “I’m just frustrated by what’s happened.”

Burton Brown’s decision came six weeks after Republicans suffered defeats up and down the ticket here, a sucker punch of an election that was supposed to announce the party’s return to prominence. Party officials are calling for a years-long rebuild, work that will extend beyond 2024 and the latest presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. Though the party chair isn’t solely responsible for that undertaking, whoever replaces Burton Brown will need to serve as a unifying and stabilizing presence for a party adrift, several Republican officials said.

The chair and the party both are at the mercy of the top of the ticket — meaning Trump — and that person’s popularity, Naumann and others said. But the chair can still influence Colorado Republicans’ infrastructure, messaging and unity moving forward. Laura Carno, a Republican strategist, said the next chair needs to elevate candidates on a local and statewide level, prioritizing party unity over political purity. That’s something Burton Brown did well, officials said.

“Somebody who is very interested in being a workhorse and not a showhorse is very important,” said Lang Sias, the Republican candidate for treasurer this year and lieutenant governor hopeful in 2018. “(Burton Brown’s) public positions on some issues personally were different than public positions of some of the candidates — (U.S. Senate candidate) Joe (O’Dea), for example, when he ran. But I think she viewed it as her job to do everything she could to support the candidates that the Republican Party had nominated and to try to get them elected.”

“The other thing I would say is the person needs to do no harm,” Carno said. “Some of the names out there (as potential candidates for party chair) have a reputation for being bomb-throwers. I think someone who’s a bomb-thrower will do harm. … You just can’t do harm to the brand.”

Those names include Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who’s pushed baseless election conspiracy theories and is awaiting trial for allegedly breaching election security; she is said to be considering a run, multiple officials said (Peters did not return a request for comment this week). Dave Williams, a departing representative and member of the party’s right-wing faction, has also eyed the chair position. He told the Post this week that “nothing has been ruled out” but that his main goal was to replace Burton Brown.

Despite rumors to the contrary, Erik Aadland, who mounted an unsuccessful congressional campaign this year, will not run, a spokeswoman said. Casper Stockham, who ran against Burton Brown for the position in 2021, . Burton Brown told the Post that Greg Lopez, who lost in the party’s gubernatorial primary against Heidi Ganahl in June, is also running. Lopez did not return requests for comment sent this week.

A Peters chairmanship, several Republicans said, would be disastrous for a party trying to stabilize itself and appeal to unaffiliated voters turned off by Trump and election conspiracies. One likened the prospect of her or Williams’ assuming the role to “inmates running the asylum.” Several, including former party chair Dick Wadhams, pointed to a late November protest featuring Peters where right-wing speakers lobbed personal insults at state Republican leaders.

“We need a state chair who doesn’t talk about stolen election conspiracies, doesn’t talk about anybody that disagrees with them as a whore or a traitor or an a–wipe,” Wadhams said, referring to the insults hurled at leaders at the November protest, which was held near the party’s Greenwood Village headquarters. “We need a credible state chair. Then that person needs to work on what we could win in 2024.”

Peters, Williams and members of the right-wing “Save Colorado Project,” which organized the November protest, have criticized party leaders for being too moderate. After the election, Williams accused those officials of being “charlatans” for spending so much money only to lose in November. On its website, the Save Colorado Project said Burton Brown and others had betrayed fundamental values and favored “center-left candidates.”

The chair will be selected in March by the party’s central committee, which could include as many as 450 Republicans from across the state, Wadhams said. He and another veteran Republican both said the committee would likely favor a more right-wing figure like Peters or Williams.

Reams, who was first elected as Weld County sheriff in 2014, is an example of a more moderate and “credible” candidate, Wadhams said. Danny Moore, Ganahl’s running mate, was also said to be considering a run but has since decided against it, several officials said. Ganahl has also been mentioned as a potential candidate, though her interest has reportedly cooled, as well (neither Ganahl nor Moore returned messages seeking comment this week).

Reams said he was likely to run and that he would make a final decision in the coming days. He said the party was “extremely fractured” and that Republicans had become proficient at pointing out problems but not the needed solutions. As for Peters and other right-wing candidates, he said it was up to them to “define themselves.”

“My messaging will be different than theirs,” Reams said. “I’ll leave it at that.”

There will be a recount of ballots in the 3rd Congressional District starting this week. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert beat former Aspen City Councilman Adam Frisch by a mere 550 votes. Even though he conceded, the law requires a recount when the vote margin between candidates is less than .5 percent of the total votes cast for the winner. While the recount isn’t expected to change the results, it will keep the race in the news cycle until December 13, when it must be completed. That����ap good; Boebert and the remaining MAGA supporters in this state need to feel a little indigestion.

Judging by her Twitter presence, Boebert hasn’t taken to heart the election’s lessons. She may still be under the illusion that her unexpected photo-finish victory was due to a lack of enthusiasm for statewide top ticket candidates, as she suggested after Election Day. by The Colorado Sun should disabuse her; she underperformed all statewide GOP candidates in her district except one, gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl.

Republican candidates for U.S. Senate, Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Attorney General all received more votes in Colorado’s third district than did the congresswoman. While Boebert beat her opponent by a fraction of a percent in CD3, Lang Sias led his opponent by seven percentage points, John Kellner beat his by five, Pam Anderson hers by three, and Joe O’Dea his by two.

The 3rd Congressional District is one of a minority of districts in Colorado where Republican voters outnumber Democrats. Thirty-one percent of active registered voters are Republicans, 24% are Democrats, and the remainder (44%) of voters is unaffiliated. In 2020, Boebert beat her opponent Diane Mitsch Bush 51% to 45%. The district has since been redrawn to include more Republicans. In 2022, a strong Republican should have garnered 55% or more of the vote.

Instead, a significant percentage of right-leaning voters split their ticket by voting for GOP statewide candidates and a Democrat for Congress or by voting for the GOP and leaving an empty bubble for that race.

Boebert was the only Trump-endorsed candidate in Colorado. An analysis by Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, found Trump-backed Republicans underperformed expectations in competitive races while Republican candidates who were not endorsed by the former president over-performed expectations.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, for example, beat Stacey Abrams 53% to 46%. Trump-picked Herschel Walker is tied in the polls going into the December 5 runoff. So long as no more skeletons tumble out of his closet and he refrains from talking, he has a chance, but the GOP would be in a far stronger position had they picked a different candidate.

Republican candidates who were not officially endorsed by Trump but touted election conspiracy theories also did poorly in comparison to mainstream Republicans. An analysis by the Washington Post of 47 competitive races for Congress and statewide offices found election deniers fared poorly; only ten of the 47 won, with two races, not yet called.

Election deniers did poorly here, too. Republican candidates in statewide offices or in congressional districts accepted the 2020 election results. Only Erik Aadland, candidate for the 7th Congressional District and Danny Moore, Ganahl’s running mate, were on record for saying the election was rigged. While they backpedaled the allegations, their former stance cost them votes.

Fortunately, Trump’s announcement for another presidential bid seems to have garnered a mix of “meh,” “nah,” and “hell no” from prominent Republicans in the state. They understand that his brand of politics is toxic here. If Republicans want to exert a modicum of political influence in this deep blue state, they must reject Trump’s style, his election conspiracy theories, and the man himself. Take heed congresswoman.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.

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