But despite the “noise,” Colorado election overseers and advocates say they are confident that this fall’s exercise in democracy won’t feature any particular hurdles for voters, or subversion of their intent. Ballots will still be mailed, voter rolls won’t face purging and workers will tally and honor the will of voters, they say — though officials in Colorado still expect a pressure campaign in the election’s fallout, especially if results don’t go President Donald Trump’s way.

“Really, it truly has been a case where we were expecting a lot of (nonsense around the election) and it has lived down to those expectations so far,” said Matt Crane, the Republican head of the , using an expletive to describe the state of things.

“We knew there would be a lot of noise from the election denier community, up to and including the president, and this network he has allowed to grow and wreak havoc and undermine confidence in our elections.”

Among the attempted changes by the Trump administration: an to procure “all records” from Colorado relating to the 2024 election and whatever was available from the 2020 election; a December 2025 lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against Colorado demanding detailed voter registration information; and that sought to restrict mail-in ballot access and create a federal voter list

The White House has also dismantled or defunded federal programs and boards that and the administration of state and local elections. The Trump administration has threatened or even arrest state election officials if they don’t remove noncitizens from voter rolls.

Those efforts have or have been outright shut down by the courts. Still, election officials see them as building on Trump’s longstanding, and baseless, claims that elections were rigged against him, even as he won the presidency twice. have glommed onto those claims, specifically rejecting the reality that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

Despite regular, mandated audits of results and repeated legal challenges, voting is safe, secure and accurate.

“The big picture is that the Constitution is clear: States run elections, not Donald Trump,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said. “He does not have the authority to change how elections are run by executive order or by threat. The bigger picture is that Trump is laying the groundwork to reject the 2026 results if they don’t go his way. That’s what this is all fundamentally about.”

Colorado, like other states, has taken steps where it can to help fill some gaps left by the federal government pulling back its support, Crane and Griswold said. That includes bringing in physical and cybersecurity assistance for county clerks, mailing ballots earlier to minimize problems from delays, and to allow the governor to declare an emergency in case of interference.

The efforts add up to confidence in Colorado’s upcoming general election, officials said. Most voters should see little, if any, difference in how they cast their ballots and how they are tallied. Election Day is Nov. 3 and ballots should start going out to registered voters on Oct. 9.

“I am confident about the ‘26 elections,” Griswold said. “But we have seen an increase in hostility, to say the least. I think something that is really striking is that, at this point, most of our contingency planning, some of our top concerns are about federal interference as opposed to foreign interference.”

Colorado Common Cause, a government watchdog and advocacy nonprofit, has also started hosting trainings on non-partisan election protections, Executive Director Aly Belknap said. The organization has formed a coalition with 70 other groups, including faith leaders, business executives, unions and other voting rights advocates. The training includes how to serve as poll monitors, report suspicious activity, including from federal agents, and work with lawyers to ensure a fair, accessible election.

State and federal law, as well as the U.S. Constitution, already establish strong protections for voting, Belknap said, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be further attempts to exert federal pressure on how elections are run and who can participate. In particular, she has concerns about indirect pressure, such as a massive push of immigration enforcement in swing districts like Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, that could suppress the vote.

“Broadly, we’re in an emergency for what the underpinnings of democracy is in this country,” Belknap said.

Her concerns also don’t end once Election Day passes. She, like Griswold and Crane, worries about post-election challenges to the results, especially if there are close races.

Belknap also points to other existential challenges to American self-governance, such as the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the rush toward partisan gerrymandering that seeks to cement one-party control in different states. That last point has put her group in a particular bind, as it supports a national ban on the practice, but worries a ban on the practice in Colorado essentially sets different rules for red and blue states. Such a ban on in Colorado has been proposed for this year’s ballot.

“The biggest emergency we need to be watching is that this is part of an overall project,” Belknap said of federal attempts to control election administration. “This really is an emergency for the Republic.”

Crane, the executive director of the county clerk’s association, likewise has existential concerns about what the affect the Trump administration and the universe of social media conspiracy theorists will have on trust in U.S. elections. The loss of trust caused by baseless claims of election fraud may be generational, he said.

He encouraged people with questions to contact their local clerks, and volunteer to serve as election judges — just don’t take viral social media posts and outlandish claims alleging fraud at face value.

“People have fought and died for this right,” Crane said. “They have marched and been beaten. To have so many dishonor the sacrifice people have made with their lies and misinformation, it is disgusting.”

On June 29, he had fled in an old pickup truck as the Aspen Acres fire raced toward his home. It burned 30 minutes later.

Now, the 88-year-old Griggs, who had no homeowners insurance and little savings, doesn’t believe he’ll be able to live in a house of his own again.

“At my age, I don’t think I’ll be able to rebuild,” he said. “My heart tells me that.”

As Griggs walked the property on Tuesday, he marveled at an antique, cast iron Fisher stove that had heated his home for nearly 60 years. It was the only thing in the house that withstood the intense flames.

The home was built in 1876 as a stagecoach inn. Griggs moved there as a young man after he married, and on the land he raised a family, built an in-ground swimming pool, tinkered with old cars and chopped firewood for that old stove while working at a steel mill in Pueblo and as a gravedigger at the Beulah cemetery.

“The only way to look at all of this is the good Lord made it and he took it away,” he said.

The Aspen Acres fire, the in recorded state history, destroyed more than 300 homes as it tore through 102,000 acres across four counties since igniting on June 29. The wildfire was 72% contained as of Friday, burning in remote areas and no longer threatening homes. Colorado insurance commissioner Michael Conway told The Denver Post that the fire will be “one of the first big tests” of the legislative measures passed since 2021’s Marshall fire — laws designed to provide insurance coverage to homeowners who have been denied and to make policies more affordable for everyone.

That insurance coverage is more critical than ever, with the Trump administration not inclined to support Colorado with federal disaster assistance during emergencies, and state and local government budgets stretched thin.

Officials do not yet know how many of the homes destroyed by the Aspen Acres fire were uninsured, but the Griggs family’s story is indicative of the struggles Coloradans face in buying coverage for their properties. The insurance crisis is driven by the growing threat of severe weather in the drought-stricken state, as climate change fuels more powerful storms and aggressive wildfires.

Bob Griggs could not find a company willing to write a policy for his 150-year-old home, where the only sources of heat were that old wood-burning stove in his living room and another in the kitchen.

“They said it was a cracker box,” he said.

Meanwhile, his son and daughter-in-law, Donald Griggs and Nicole Richardson-Griggs, had insurance on their newer home, which was a football field’s length away on the same property.

They paid about $16,000 a year to insure the property, Richardson-Griggs said. And now they are tangling with the carrier to be reimbursed for what they lost. The family held a $420,000 policy for their home, and the Pueblo County tax assessor valued it at $380,000. Their insurance company offered $240,000 after the fire, Richardson-Griggs said.

The insurer offered to pay 65% of the total value of all the possessions inside their home, such as appliances, furniture and tools. The family is already stressed about how long it will take to rebuild and how they will pay for temporary housing, even though state law requires insurance companies to pay for living expenses for people displaced by fires and other natural disasters.

Richardson-Griggs said the ordeal makes her angry and disappointed.

“We pay a lot of money,” she said. “They’re offering half what the fair market value is. Last night, I just had to pray a lot about it.”

Legislative action and a FAIR Plan

The push for reforms began in earnest after the Marshall fire in Boulder County destroyed 1,084 homes worth a combined half-billion dollars in December 2021, exposing shortfalls in people’s insurance coverage that made rebuilding a challenge.

At the same time, people who own homes in Colorado’s mountain towns were finding it increasingly difficult to buy insurance due to the ever-present wildfire threat. Some people reported they could not find coverage at all, while others saw their premiums skyrocket.

The state legislature jumped into action as people demanded help.

The recent reforms included the requirement to provide 36 months of additional living expenses as well as a change in how insurance companies reimburse people for their lost possessions after a wildfire. If a person loses a home in a wildfire declared a disaster by the governor, the insurance company must offer 65% of the value upfront without requiring an inventory of the home’s contents.

One big addition to Colorado’s insurance landscape was the creation of the FAIR Plan — a state-backed insurance plan that serves as a last resort for those who cannot otherwise find property insurance. The plan is less than two years old and, thus far, has fewer than 300 participants, said Kelly Campbell, the FAIR Plan’s executive director.

The FAIR Plan is intended to insure homes only when an owner cannot find a policy on the regular market. And it only offers bare-bones coverage — a maximum of $750,000 for the home’s cash value. It does not provide liability, water damage or theft coverage. Customers must find separate policies to cover the possessions inside their homes or pay for additional living expenses elsewhere.

“It’s still a safety-net policy,” Campbell said.

When Colorado created the FAIR Plan, Campbell and her staff were not sure how many homeowners would buy into it, but they anticipated selling more than 300 policies, she said, noting that the number of insured homes and commercial buildings fluctuates as people find other options.

“It����ap always hard to know what to expect,” Campbell said. “It was difficult to know for sure how many people truly didn’t have options for coverage.”

Only one of the homes that burned in the Aspen Acres fire was insured under the FAIR Plan, and that represented the program’s first payout since the state started writing policies in April 2025, she said.

The Aspen Acres fire has been labeled a “catastrophic disaster” by the state because of the extensive damage. It’s unclear how many other buildings, such as barns and detached garages, were damaged or destroyed, but estimates have been close to 850 total structures.

A dollar amount has not yet been placed on the property damage, and Conway said it is too early to understand how many people did not have insurance. But he is trying to prevent more people in the fire zone from losing their homeowners coverage.

On Tuesday, the Colorado Division of Insurance announced it wants to place on policy cancellations and non-renewals in the Aspen Acres fire territory, saying the state needs to protect homeowners from unfair discrimination by insurance carriers. The division is asking for public comment on the proposed emergency regulation by Monday. Those comments can be emailed to DORA_Ins_RulesandRecords@state.co.us.

“Without the protections provided for in this emergency regulation, such homeowner policyholders could have their insurance policies canceled or nonrenewed at their greatest time of need and could face extreme financial duress should their residence be impacted by the Aspen Acres wildfire,” the division’s request for comment states.

‘This president is not the biggest fan of Colorado’

Fire recovery is slow and complicated as people piece together resources to help put their lives back together.

During the Marshall fire, it took a combination of insurance payouts, federal disaster loans, nonprofit assistance, local government cooperation and community goodwill to rebuild the fire-ravaged sections of Louisville and Superior.

But there’s one piece of that financial puzzle that is no longer a guarantee in Colorado: federal disaster assistance.

The Marshall fire ignited on Dec. 20, 2021, and the next day President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration, opening the gates for millions in federal assistance to public agencies and individuals.

President Donald Trump has been less willing to help Colorado fire victims.

In April, the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied Colorado’s appeal for a similar declaration for the Lee and Elk fires, which burned last summer in the northwest corner of the state, and for flooding on the Western Slope. It was the first time in 35 years the state was denied federal assistance for a major disaster.

Aspen Acres fire victims, especially those without insurance, are waiting to learn whether or not the federal government will step up this time.

State officials asked FEMA for a joint preliminary damage assessment, which was conducted the first week of August, Joshua Johnson, the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office emergency management coordinator, told residents at a community meeting Tuesday night.

Once that report is complete, Gov. Jared Polis can ask the president for the major disaster declaration, which would trigger federal money to help individuals and public agencies. The governor has 30 days from the end of the incident to make the request.

On Tuesday night, Johnson tried to temper expectations in Beulah.

“This isn’t a political statement, but as you may or may not know, this president is not the biggest fan of Colorado,” he said. “There is a chance we may not get anything.”

Johnson also talked about pressure on Pueblo County’s budget when residents asked whether there was any local money to help. He cited as an example the fact that the county spent $60,000 on dumpsters so people could throw away spoiled food and other possessions ruined when they evacuated and lost electricity.

‘Here comes the flood’

A failure to receive federal aid could hurt people like Paul and Christine Taft, a couple whose Beulah home survived the flames but was swamped by floodwaters a few weeks later.

The Tafts have property insurance, which paid out after the Aspen Acres fire burned a barn and a work shed, Christine Taft said.

But that policy does not cover floods.

When the couple was warned about potential flooding across the burn scar, they decided to buy a flood policy. The company that insures their house said no. So Christine Taft started making calls. She bought a policy on July 20 that came with a 10-day waiting period, which means they would have flood insurance effective at midnight July 30.

But a rainstorm over the mountains surrounding the Beulah Valley sent water and fire debris rolling toward their house around 7 p.m. July 29, just hours before that policy kicked in. The water, which carried burned trees, loose dirt and fire-scarred items from homes higher up, poured over the banks of Squirrel Creek, which splits their property, Christine Taft said.

“I saw this wall coming at me,” she said.

Christine Taft escaped with their two dogs, walking through knee-deep water and losing her shoes as she traversed the mud.

The couple received help from the to rip out ruined floors and scrape mud off the walls. But they have not figured out a long-term solution to get back into their house, in part because more flooding is expected.

The couple had been creating an itemized list of Paul Taft’s tools that were lost when the shed and barn burned, compiling receipts and replacement costs, so they can be reimbursed by their insurance company. But the floodwaters destroyed those documents, and now they must start over.

On Wednesday, the couple filled 300 sandbags in anticipation of the next wave of thunderstorms forecast at the end of the week.

The Tafts are using the insurance money they already received for living expenses, she said. She also visited the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities to find out what financial assistance might be available.

It’s a disheartening situation, Christine Taft said.

“We are looking out for ourselves, knowing where we live in this wildland urban interface,” she said. “We made it through the fire and then here comes the flood. How much more can a person handle? And here we are asking for help.”

Climate change, hail and drought

The wildfire risk across Colorado is not improving any time soon. An extended statewide drought, hot and windy weather, and forests ransacked by pine beetles persist, making conditions ripe for fires.

An estimated 301,308 residential properties in Colorado, valued at more than $146 billion, are at a moderate or great risk of wildfire, according to the , which is used by insurers. Colorado ranks second in the nation to California when it comes to wildfire risk, the report said.

Yet severe hailstorms are a bigger threat in Colorado, driving insurance costs even higher for property owners. Earlier this year, the state Division of Insurance surveyed 20 insurance carriers and determined that hail damage accounts for an average of 26% to 54% of the total homeowner insurance premium, depending on the county.

All of these conditions are driven by climate change, which makes wildfires burn hotter and faster and causes more severe storms.

It’s the changing climate that is leading Evon Davis to reconsider how she will live on her family’s mountainside land in Beulah after the Aspen Acres fire destroyed a home her father, a school teacher, started building in the 1960s.

Her father, Wes Davis, 92, had taken steps to mitigate wildfire risk by cutting down trees and other forest growth near the house. But when the Aspen Acres fire roared over a ridge and downhill toward their house, it didn’t make a difference.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop it,” she said.

The Davis family lost insurance coverage about 10 years ago when their carrier dropped their policy due to the fire risk. When asked if she had considered Colorado’s FAIR Plan, Davis said she had only recently heard of it, then shrugged and said, “But it won’t do me any good now.”

The Griggs family said they had never heard of the FAIR Plan.

Campbell, who runs the state’s insurance-of-last-resort program, acknowledged that more consumer education is needed so Coloradans know it is available.

The plan does not directly sell policies. Instead, they are sold through registered agents. The state plan last week issued more educational material to those agents and asked them to tell their clients about it, she said. And the staff sent material to state legislators so they could talk to constituents.

“Traditionally in FAIR plans, because it����ap safety-net coverage, you don’t do a lot of marketing,” Campbell said. “We want to make sure they know about it. If they don’t know about it, it’s not an option.”

Carole Walker, executive director of the , said the state’s FAIR Plan is working well from the industry’s perspective.

“We didn’t want people to turn to the FAIR Plan if they didn’t have to,” she said. “We’ve always hoped it wouldn’t go the way of California and there wouldn’t be a run on the FAIR Plan. We just want it to be a pressure valve release.”

The industry’s research shows that secondary homes in high-risk areas are more likely to be uninsured than primary residences, Walker said.

“They tend to be paid off and that����ap when people gamble on self-insurance rather than paying the higher cost of insurance,” she said.

But she warns people about the risk.

“What you need to understand when that bad day comes — the unthinkable — is: will you have that money not only to rebuild, but can you afford to replace the contents?” Walker said. “And the cost to live elsewhere is expensive.”

‘This is generational land’

On Davis’s hillside, there were four other houses; none was insured, she said.

“It’s not like they couldn’t afford it or didn’t want it,” Davis said. “They couldn’t get it. All of these houses were paid for. There were no mortgages.”

All of those homeowners are similar to Davis’ father — older Beulah residents whose families had owned land and mountain cabins for decades. Their homes were not like the large estates found in wealthier Colorado mountain towns, but smaller structures where their blue-collar families went to relax and enjoy the outdoors.

“This is generational land,” Davis said.

The Davis family home was valued at $210,000 by the Pueblo County tax assessor, she said.

That amount doesn’t include all the furniture, appliances, tools and clothes that were destroyed. Rusted saw blades and shards of pottery were scattered in the blackened earth on Tuesday as Davis walked the land.

The home was Davis’s retirement plan. She spent most of the year in Beulah but retreated to Arizona during the winter to live in a nomadic community.

Now, she’s homeless and isn’t sure what her future living arrangements will entail. She and her father don’t have the money to build another home. The house was constructed during a time when there were fewer regulations and less code enforcement. That wouldn’t be the case now, and it would cost far more than $210,000 to replace it.

Like many who lost homes in the Aspen Acres fire, Davis is asking for financial help through So far, she’s received less than $5,000.

She would like to live in Beulah again and is considering a camper, a hut similar to those at Colorado state park campgrounds, or a tiny house.

But one thing is certain — the Davis family will not rebuild another traditional mountain home that cannot be insured.

“Even if I had insurance, I wouldn’t rebuild a house like that again,” she said. “You’re just asking for it to burn down again.”

As for the Griggs family, they also have  to raise money. Thus far, they have collected $4,850 to help Bob Griggs, who they call “Grandpa Bob.”

For now, Bob Griggs is living in a rented Airbnb with his son and daughter-in-law in Pueblo. He will not be homeless, Richardson-Griggs said. But it’s unclear what the future home for the three of them will look like.

“I don’t know what we’re going to be able to afford,” she said.

Pence will travel to Lakewood campus once a month for the 2026-27 term, CCU said in a press release on Tuesday. He’ll give lectures, lead classroom discussions and “have direct engagement with students” during his visiting stint at the school.

Pence served as vice president during President Donald Trump’s first term in office between 2017 and 2021. He then unsuccessfully ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. He also served as Indiana governor and represented that state in Congress for six terms.

“It is an honor to join Colorado Christian University, an institution firmly committed to academic excellence, Christian truth, and the principles that have sustained our nation since her founding,” said Pence, who is an evangelical Christian, in the release. “Throughout my years in public service, I have seen the importance of preparing leaders who understand that faith, freedom, character and constitutional government are inseparable from the future of America.”

Pence recently spoke at the CCU-hosted Western Conservative Summit, and he spoke at CCU shortly after Trump was elected again in 2024. He warned against populism in both speeches, .

In his 2024 address, he said his relationship with his “old friend” Trump had become “more animated” on Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol building amid Trump’s efforts to undermine Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory. Trump had pressured Pence to block Congress’ certification of that win, a request that Pence refused. He told the CCU audience he “did my duty.”

The former vice president also participated in an online course at CCU this summer in which he “taught alongside CCU faculty examining the principles, history, and contemporary application of American conservatism,” according to the press release.

In that release, CCU’s president, Eric Hogue, said that Pence’s “commitment to faith, freedom, constitutional government, and civil discourse aligns deeply with the mission of Colorado Christian University.”

The former Colorado attorney general, U.S. senator, Interior secretary and ambassador to Mexico writes about the plan and the impact of family and growing up in southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley on his career in his book “Borderlands: My Fight for an Inclusive America.”

The book, scheduled for release July 28, is part memoir, charting his journey from a ranching area, home to his family for several generations, to the upper levels of political power in Colorado and the federal government.

“Borderlands” is also Salazar’s proposed map for charting a path out of what he said is the country’s “greatest division in my lifetime.” He blames President Donald Trump for the division and denounces what he calls Trump’s “project of erasure”: the dismantling of diversity, inclusion and norms that constrained his modern-era predecessors.

The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment.

While Salazar criticizes Trump for vilifying immigrants to grab and hold onto power, he doesn’t let his fellow Democrats off the hook. He vents frustration with the Biden administration for not responding sooner to the growing groups of people crossing the border with Mexico and for not appointing a migration “czar” that he advocated for.

Salazar said Trump was right when he called the southern border broken. Thousands of people a day were crossing into the U.S., far beyond what Customers and Border Protection was meant to handle.

“We criticize Donald Trump as unfit for office, which I think is accurate. But you’ve got to move beyond that to really create the vision and the solutions for the future,” Salazar said in an interview with The Denver Post.

He hopes Democrats have learned that people’s concerns about a safe, secure border need to be addressed. “You don’t solve the crisis by simply calling it something else or walking away from it.”

Dick Wadhams, former state Republican chairman and longtime political strategist for GOP candidates, said he couldn’t see Salazar agreeing with the Biden administration’s policies on the border.

“Ken Salazar, I always thought, was a very smart political guy and that he could see that the nation was not in favor of essentially an open border,”  Wadhams said. “And second, that’s just not the right way to have a border. A nation has to have a secure border.”

Immigration reform, long stymied in Congress, was needed, including changes in asylum laws, Salazar wrote in his book. Migrants reaching the border could claim asylum and wait to go to court, which could take months or even years.

“This surge turned an existing crisis into what I can only call an emergency. Eleven months before the US election, it had the potential to be politically devastating for President Biden,” Salazar wrote. “But even more than that, it was a human catastrophe on an industrial scale.”

Salazar said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, as many call him, grew frustrated with a lack of movement by the U.S. to modernize facilities on its side of the border as Mexico had. Salazar was vexed by a drop in Mexico’s repatriation flights and efforts to relocate migrants from the border.

Vice President Kamala Harris was tasked with getting at the “root causes” of the migration problem by concentrating on poverty and corruption in places such as Guatemala and Honduras. But Salazar wrote the effort “was having no effect on migration flows.”

However, the border wasn’t open as Republicans claimed, Salazar said. Including the COVID-related expulsions, former President Joe Biden had deported about 3.6 million migrants, more than the 2 million Trump deported during his entire first term, Salazar wrote.

Biden issued an executive order on asylum restrictions. The number of crossings began dropping almost immediately and continued to decline, Salazar said.

And a bipartisan immigration reform bill introduced in the Senate looked like it might pass, but failed 50-49 in February 2024 after Trump, then a private citizen, intervened.

“He needed the chaos, the human suffering, the political vulnerability it created for President Biden and congressional Democrats,” Salazar wrote.

in Trump winning a second term. were among Trump’s promises in the 2024 presidential campaign.

“There were a lot of issues. You could point to Biden hanging on too long, inflation,” said Robert Preuhs, a professor and head of the political science department at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

“But immigration was one of those sets of important issues that arose right around that time. It has been a growing concern and it was certainly an impetus for voting for Trump, particularly among Republicans,” Preuhs said.

Slight majorities and in some cases pluralities of Americans support more border security, a legal framework for immigration and see diversity, particularly from immigration, as beneficial to the U.S., Preuhs said.

“The difficulty is that there are slices of each party that reject particular points of those,” Preuhs said. “I think polarization is still the overriding context in the midterms and likely in 2028.”

Salazar: Not identity politics, unity agenda

Salazar wants to defuse the polarization he sees as a threat to the country’s democratic principles. On immigration, he supports pathways to legalization for the “Dreamers,” who were brought to the U.S. as children, and others in the U.S. illegally. He said criteria must be established and the people would have to be “good actors.”

As a Senator, he worked on bipartisan legislation that offered immigrants an opportunity to become citizens. The requirements included background checks, payment of back taxes, learning English and starting the naturalization process at the “back of the line.”

There are 10 million to 12 million people living in the shadows and mass deportations of them don’t make sense, Salazar said.

“You’re going to have an economy that breaks if you deport them. Whether it’s homeowners who have landscaping needs, or contractors, or dairy farms, or slaughterhouses, they’re going to be hurting more than they’re hurting today,” Salazar said.

Families in Colorado and across the country are living in fear of parents being deported and children being left behind, he said.

Under Trump, diversity, what Salazar calls America’s “superpower,” is under siege, Salazar said. As Interior Secretary in the Obama administration, Salazar said the department worked to diversify the ranks of employees and tell the stories of all Americans.

“Some would call this ‘identity politics,’ but I’ve always called it a unity agenda,” Salazar wrote.

He grew up on a ranch in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado on land his family has owned since before Colorado became a state. His family’s roots in the Southwest go back four centuries.

Mexican Americans throughout the region “became U.S. citizens of this country not by choice but by conquest when, in 1848, the United States won a bloody two-year conflict it had waged against Mexico,” Salazar wrote.

The differences in people’s backgrounds and beliefs that the Trump administration deems unimportant are the country’s strengths and protecting them is part of the march toward a more perfect union, Salazar said.

“I can’t stand on the sidelines and just watch everything that I’ve worked for in my life basically be undone by this president and his administration,” Salazar said.

He wrote that he was fortunate to have been raised “with the hallmark values of faith, family, and community, and to have had exceptional mentors throughout my life.”  He said they taught him to fight for a diverse and inclusive society.

“And now is the time to fight,” Salazar added.

He believes his New American Alliance proposal gives Democrats something to fight for. The relationship with Mexico and Canada would focus on such areas as trade; national security; maintaining security along borders; migration; crime; defense; energy; and climate change.

Salazar has talked to national politicians, think tanks and business organizations about his plan. He wants to see the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement be renewed. have strained relations among the neighbors.

“I think what I have posed is something that the Democrats should embrace, as well as Republicans. It’s a good program for America, for security, for the economy,” Salazar said.

Asked if he is considering promotion of the alliance as a lead-up to a run for the White House, Salazar said for now, he’s taking his granddaughter’s advice.

“Mireya, my granddaughter, always tells me, ‘One thing at a time.’ Right now the message is about the borderlands, the platform for the borderlands,” Salazar said.

After his time as ambassador to Mexico ended, Salazar said he thought about running for Colorado governor. But in 2025, he had started work on his book and thought he could accomplish more by pursuing what he refers to as his “borderlands” agenda.

After Biden struggled in his debate with Trump in July 2024 and sentiment grew that he should drop out of the race, Salazar wrote that he considered running for president on a “Make America United Again” campaign.

Salazar’s plans ended when Biden halted his campaign and endorsed Vice President Harris.

“If there were no primaries and he was the candidate, I think a Ken Salazar campaign would have a lot of potential,” Preuhs, the MSU-Denver professor said. “I do think it’s important to have a senior statesman, particularly a moderate, but also a Latino, making these arguments for the importance of diversity.”

But there are already up to a dozen viable Democratic presidential candidates, some well-known, Preuhs said. And it’s unclear whether the party will rally behind a moderate or back a more progressive candidate.

“I think a lot of it depends on how well moderates do in some of these swing districts this year,” he added.

Political consultant Wadhams said if Biden had not sought a second term and if a competitive nomination process had been held, Salazar could have played an interesting role in the election.

“Now, would he have won the nomination? I don’t know, because I think maybe he is in some ways too, interestingly enough, conservative for today’s Democratic Party,” Wadhams said.

The two political parties are operating from the extremes, he added. The Democratic Party is heavily influenced by the Democratic Socialists, while the “MAGA, stolen-election conspiracists run the Republican Party,” Wadhams said.

Part of what makes Salazar different from other Democrats is his rural background, Wadhams said. When Republican Bill Owens was elected governor in 1998, Salazar, who was elected as attorney general, was the only Democrat to win statewide office. Salazar invited Wadhams, Owens’ press secretary, to breakfast to get to know him.

“What it really drove home for me that day was that our backgrounds were so similar,” said Wadhams, who grew up in the Arkansas Valley, east of the San Luis Valley.

“We were kind of chuckling that we both had to feed livestock before we went to school every day,” Wadhams said. “We both grew up on irrigated farms. We talked about spending our summers stacking hay and irrigating crops.

“I don’t think you can underestimate his family background, where he grew up and how he grew up and how that����ap affected his political persona,” Wadhams said.

For the time being, the politics Salazar is focused on is his idea for a North American alliance. He also splits time between being with his family in Denver and working on the family ranch near Manassa in the San Luis Valley, which sits between the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountains.

He also intends to stay engaged in public affairs no matter what. “I have more public purpose left in me.”

John Hickenlooper has had a storied political career. But if he wins the Democratic Party’s primary, is re-elected in November, and serves a full second term, he will be 80 years old by the end. If Diana DeGette (Colorado House District 1) follows a similar path, she will be 70 when her next term expires.

As a “Boomer,” whose age falls between these two candidates, I recognize that my mental faculties are not what they were a decade ago — and that they will only decline. We have also seen the electoral consequences of ignoring this with President Joe Biden.

Of course, age should not be the only criterion that a voter uses when evaluating the suitability of a candidate, but it should be considered. Especially since the generational differences between the Boomers and everyone younger are so stark.

If the Democrats have any aspirations to be the party of the future, they will need candidates who have a similar lived experience with younger voters.

An additional problem is that people often fail to recognize their own diminished capacity. And because most House and Senate seats are “safe,” many incumbents end up with seats for life.

Politicians who hold national office, even more so than athletes, are loath to retire for the simple reason that they will instantly go from being a “somebody” to becoming a “nobody.” Quick, who was the previous Speaker of the House?

So it is up to primary voters to ease older candidates out of office if this is warranted. There are many talented younger candidates on the Democrats’ primary ballot. Perhaps you should choose one. I have.

Guy Wroble, Denver

Michael Bennet for governor

In the Democratic primary for governor, we will be casting our votes for Michael Bennet for three reasons.

First, Michael’s career is marked by experience that will be essential for our next governor. He has been a successful businessman, led the Denver public schools through a precarious period, and now serves as Colorado’s respected U.S. Senator. This experience puts him miles ahead of other candidates.

Second, his life has been one of acting with veracity and honesty, two traits that underscore his proven record of personal integrity.

Finally, he is a committed advocate for moving all regions of our state ahead. No matter the stage in his professional career, he has demonstrated time and again that making Colorado the greatest place in America to raise a family — through affordability, excellent education, and protecting our public lands — is a number-one priority.

In many ways, Michael Bennet is a “throwback” to how political leaders used to behave and must behave again if we are to navigate the onslaught of revenge that Donald Trump seeks to wreak on our beloved state.

Michael Bennet. Experience. Integrity. Commitment. He is our choice for the Democratic primary and our next governor.

Don and Jan Smith, Denver

Scott Bottoms for governor

As an independent voter, I tire of being ignored by the two monopoly parties, so when I sent out questions to the governor candidates and received only one reply, which was from Scott Bottoms, he got my vote for governor. And though I don’t agree with him on many issues, at least he’s willing to listen and engage with voters — even those of us who don’t agree with him.

Candidates who can’t or won’t engage with us are telling us that they are inefficient or too busy and important. It����ap going to take innovative thinking to figure out how to engage and represent so many diverse voters, all constitutionally promised equality under the law, which includes minority rights under majority rule. If candidates don’t have the wherewithal to listen to us, then there is no way they can represent us.

Bottoms gets my vote because he is the only candidate who is respectful enough to engage with those of us whom he will represent as governor, even those of us with whom he disagrees. At least he listens before disagreeing or agreeing. These others are just talking at us.

If candidates can make themselves available for lobbyists, they can make themselves available to the rest of us. There are solutions for reaching and engaging us, but they’d have to actually listen to us in order to find out what those solutions are. It matters.

I’ve sent numerous letters and emails to Attorney General Phil Weiser over the past five years, but he can’t be bothered to respond. Five years! And I voted for him! Not making that mistake again.

Krystyn Hartman, Grand Junction

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A Manhattan federal jury deliberated for four days before reaching its decision Wednesday in the closely watched case, which gave fans the equivalent of a backstage pass to a business that dominates live entertainment in the U.S. and beyond.

“Live Nation is a monopolist and has abused its monopoly power to squeeze out competition, jack up ticket prices, stifle artists and make it harder for fans to see their favorite artists,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement.

The judge overseeing the trial told lawyers on both sides to meet with one another “and the United States” to provide a joint letter proposing a schedule for motions and how the remedies phase of the case would occur. He told them to deliver it by late next week.

The trial brought Live Nation , where he was questioned about matters including the company’s  in 2022. Rapino blamed a cyberattack.

The proceedings also aired a Live Nation employee’s  to another employee declaring some prices “outrageous,” calling customers “so stupid” and boasting that the company was “robbing them blind, baby.” The employee, Benjamin Baker, who has since been promoted to a position as a ticketing executive,  that the messages were “very immature and unacceptable.”

Live Nation Entertainment owns, operates, controls booking for or has an equity interest in hundreds of venues. Its subsidiary Ticketmaster is widely considered to be the world’s largest ticket-seller for live events. Its lawyers did not immediately comment as they left the courthouse, but said a statement would be issued shortly.

The verdict could cost Live Nation and Ticketmaster hundreds of millions of dollars, just for the $1.72 per ticket that the jury found Ticketmaster had overcharged consumers in 22 states. The companies could also be assessed penalties. In addition, sanctions could result in court orders that they divest themselves of some entities, including venues such as amphitheaters that they own.

The civil case, , accused Live Nation of using its reach to smother competition — by blocking venues from using multiple ticket sellers, for example.

“It is time to hold them accountable,” Jeffrey Kessler, an attorney for the states, said in a closing argument, calling Live Nation a “monopolistic bully” that drove up prices for ticket buyers.

Live Nation insisted it����ap not a monopoly, saying that artists, sports teams and venues decide prices and ticketing practices. A company lawyer insisted its size was simply a function of excellence and effort.

“Success is not against the antitrust laws in the United States,” attorney David Marriott said in his summation.

Ticketmaster was established in 1976 and merged with Live Nation in 2010. The company now controls of 86% of the market for concerts and 73% of the overall market when sports events are included, according to Kessler.

Ticketmaster has long drawn ire from fans and some artists. Grunge rock titans Pearl Jam battled the business in the 1990s, even filing an anti-monopoly complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to bring a case then.

Decades later, the Justice Department, joined by Colorado and dozens of states, brought the current lawsuit during Democratic former President Joe Biden’s administration. Days into the trial, Republican President Donald Trump’s administration announced it was settling its claims against Live Nation.

The a cap on service fees at some amphitheaters, plus some new ticket-selling options for promoters and venues — potentially allowing, but not requiring, them to open doors to Ticketmaster competitors such as SeatGeek or AXS. But the settlement doesn’t force Live Nation to split from Ticketmaster.

A handful of the states . But more than 30 pressed ahead with the trial, saying the federal government hadn’t gotten enough concessions from Live Nation.

“State attorneys general stood strong and continued this case without the federal government because we believed that concertgoers deserved a fair trial and a fair deal,” Weiser said. “Live Nation is being held to account for violating state and federal antitrust laws, and I’ll continue to fight to break up their monopoly, restore competition and get money back for concertgoers.”

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said in a release that the “landmark jury verdict in our case against Live Nation confirms what we have said since the start of our case: For far too long, Live Nation has illegally profited from its monopoly at the expense of hardworking New Jerseyans.”

“Live Nation’s illegal, anti-competitive practices have caused immense damage in our state, exploiting consumers by driving up the price of tickets and making it harder for fans to see their favorite artists,” she added.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called the verdict “a landmark victory in our ongoing work to protect our economy and New Yorkers’ wallets from harmful monopolies.”

After the victory, Kessler would not say specifically what the states will seek in the next phase of the litigation, which was expected to involve another lengthy proceeding with witnesses before penalties are decided on.

But he celebrated the moment.

“It����ap a great day for consumers. This case is a tribute to the 34 states and the District of Columbia who carried this case forward,” he said.

The data provides detailed insights into the dramatic effects of the Trump administration’s mass arrest and deportation efforts in the state and across the country — what one immigration attorney previously described as the federal government’s “deportation machine.”

The share of arrestees who have criminal convictions has plummeted, the data shows, while deportations of those with no criminal history have surged, despite federal officials’ claims that they’re pursuing the The Denver Post analyzed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data . It included arrests in the full year ending Jan. 20, the anniversary of the start of Trump’s second term.

Of the thousands arrested in the state, 78% had a listed date of departure — indicating that they’d already been removed from the United States.

The people arrested in Colorado came from more than 80 countries spread across five continents. Two thousand and one came from Mexico and 782 from Venezuela. Among others, 316 were from Guatemala, 22 from China, a dozen from Afghanistan and four from the United Kingdom.

They ranged in age from a 91-year-old Mexican man deported last year to two children who were, at most, a  year old; one of them has also been deported, the data shows. At least 121 people were younger than 18. Ten of the arrestees were Iranians, all arrested within days of the in June.

Five Venezuelans were removed under the statute created by the Alien Enemies Act, the 18th-century law that . All five were transferred to a Texas facility and then were removed on March 15, 2025, the data set shows. The men then disappear from the data. On that same day, nearly 300 people were sent to the prison in El Salvador from the same Texas detention center, .

In the 12 months prior to Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, 1,202 immigrants without legal status were arrested in Colorado. More than 58% of them had prior criminal convictions, while nearly 24% more had pending charges. Only 17.7% had no criminal history.

Looking at the Trump-era arrests, those trends flipped. Of the 4,750 people arrested over the ensuing 12 months, the largest group — 38% — had no criminal history, compared to nearly 35% with prior convictions and 26% with pending charges.

Surge in ICE presence, arrests

The Post analyzed ICE arrest and detention data obtained and released in full by the , which is composed of researchers and lawyers based primarily at the University of California, Berkeley.

For the purposes of its analysis, The Post examined arrests that occurred in Colorado during the 12-month period that began when Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025, and compared it to arrests made during President Joe Biden’s final year in office.

The Deportation Data Project, using data obtained from public records requests, has released four broad batches of ICE data detailing arrests and detentions since Trump’s return to office. ICE has released far more limited information on its operations, often focusing on arrests of immigrants with criminal backgrounds.

Using unique identifiers attached to each arrestee, The Post excluded a number of apparent duplicate arrests from its analysis. In both 2024 and 2025, The Post examined only the arrests that the data identified as occurring in Colorado or at a specific location within the state.

The Post used publicly available information and multiple datasets to match more than a dozen specific arrests — of a Colombian family from Durango; of a Brazilian-born college student on I-70; of a Peruvian school teacher and her family; of a who later died in a Mississippi detention center — to corresponding entries in the Berkeley data.

The surge in arrests came as ICE has significantly ramped up its presence in the state. Gregory Davies, a senior ICE official in Denver, testified in court last month that the number of deportation officers in the area has more than doubled — to roughly 200 — since Trump’s return to office. The Denver field office also has responsibility for Wyoming.

A recent of internal ICE data identified more than 5,200 ICE arrests in Colorado and Wyoming between Trump’s inauguration and mid-December. In the Denver area, the Times found, arrests peaked last summer and have declined since.

The Post’s analysis found a similar trend in Colorado: There were more than 500 arrests in both June and July, averaging more than 17 per day. Over the fall and winter, they dropped, averaging between 12 and 14 per day.

The ICE detention center in Aurora has flexed its capacity to the maximum possible and can now hold more than 1,500 detainees, according to federal contracting records. When Trump was inaugurated, the facility held just over 1,000 people. By the end of the year, its daily population regularly topped 1,400, the Berkeley data shows.

Federal officials have also pursued plans to open one or more additional detention facilities in Colorado.

In an unsigned statement Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said the data — which was obtained by the data project through public records requests — “is not accurate.” An unidentified media office representative did not say what part of the data was incorrect and did not directly address questions about The Post’s findings.

“The facts are: ICE is targeting criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, criminals, gang members and more,” the DHS representative wrote in an email to The Post. “Nearly 70% of ICE arrests nationwide are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S.”

Numbers are ‘not at all surprising’

In October, attorneys suing ICE for its arrest practices questioned the now-former head of ICE’s Denver field office about a prior Post analysis of the Berkeley data. That official, Robert Guadian, said he didn’t know exact numbers but didn’t dispute The Post’s findings.

Davies, the other senior official, testified last month that the agency now averages between 15 and 25 arrests per day. The Post’s analysis shows ICE has arrested just under 15 people per day on average since late January of this year and 13 per day since the start of Trump’s term.

The findings also align with what immigrant-rights advocates and immigration attorneys are seeing in real time.

“They’re not at all surprising,” Laura Lunn, an immigration attorney with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, said of the numbers. “They’re (emotionally) deflating, but not surprising.”

“Obviously, so much has happened since this administration took over, but I think a lot of folks don’t necessarily remember that Trump announced Operation Aurora shortly (before) he took office,” she continued. “Communities in Denver and Aurora were targeted for mass enforcement actions. We saw military-grade vehicles rolling down the streets of Denver before we saw the same thing happening in L.A., Chicago, Minneapolis.”

The surge in arrests has led to an accompanying growth in deportations, particularly as federal officials have moved to keep immigrants detained indefinitely by, among other things, granting bail far less often to longtime residents of the United States.

Over the past year, according to earlier Post reporting, an unprecedented number of Aurora detainees have been granted voluntary departures — essentially deportations without a more punitive court order. More than 1,700 people have requested voluntary removals from the facility since the start of 2025, according to — a level unparalleled by any period since the researchers began tracking it nearly 30 years ago.

Of the 4,750 people arrested in Colorado during Trump’s first year back in office, 3,710 have already left the United States, the Berkeley data shows.

More than 62% of those arrested and removed last year had never been convicted of a crime, while more than a third had no criminal history.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled late Wednesday that the government cannot send the former death row inmates to the “Supermax” federal prison in Florence, Colorado, because it likely would violate their Fifth Amendment rights to due process.

Kelly cited evidence that officials from the Republican administration “made it clear” to the federal Bureau of Prisons that the inmates had to be sent to ADX Florence — “administrative maximum” — to punish them because Democratic President Joe Biden had commuted their death sentences.

“At least for now, they will remain serving life sentences for their heinous crimes where they are currently imprisoned,” wrote Kelly, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump.

In December 2024, less than a month before Trump returned to the White House, Biden on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment.

On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to house the 37 inmates “in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”

Twenty of the 37 inmates are plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Kelly, who issued a preliminary injunction blocking their transfers to Florence while the lawsuit proceeds. All were incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana, when Biden commuted their death sentences.

Government lawyers argued that the bureau has broad authority to decide what facilities the inmates should be redesignated for after their commutations.

“BOP’s designation decisions are within its exclusive purview and are intended to preserve the safety of inmates, employees, and surrounding communities,” .

The judge concluded that the inmates have not had a meaningful opportunity to challenge their redesignations because it appears the outcome of the review process was predetermined.

“But the Constitution requires that whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of a liberty or property interest that the Due Process Clause protects — whether that person is a notorious prisoner or a law-abiding citizen — the process it provides cannot be a sham,” Kelly wrote.

The Florence prison has housed some of the most notorious criminals in federal custody, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The prison is “unmatched in its draconian conditions,” the inmates’ attorneys argued.

“The categorical redesignations challenged here deprived Plaintiffs of an opportunity to show why they should not be condemned to a life bereft of human contact, in a cell the size of a parking spot, where they will see nothing out the window but a strip of sky,” .

Government attorneys said other courts have held that the conditions are not objectively cruel and unusual.

“Plaintiffs fail to show that conditions at ADX are atypical for them,” they wrote.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A Delaware man who was once married to former first lady Jill Biden decades ago remains in jail on  as authorities investigate the death of his wife, who was found unresponsive in their home late last year.

William Stevenson, 77, of Wilmington was charged Monday in a grand jury indictment with killing his wife, Linda Stevenson, 64, on Dec. 28. He has remained in jail after failing to post $500,000 bail, authorities said. Investigators have not disclosed a motive.

Police say they were called to the couple’s home shortly after 11 p.m. for a reported domestic dispute and found a woman unresponsive in the living room, according to a previous news release. Life-saving measures were unsuccessful.

Stevenson was charged following a weekslong investigation by detectives in the Delaware Department of Justice. It was not immediately clear whether Stevenson has an attorney. The Associated Press left a voicemail at a phone number and sent emails to addresses associated with him seeking comment. Court records made public so far do not list a defense lawyer, and charging documents detailing the allegations have not been released.

Linda Stevenson ran a bookkeeping business and was described in her obituary as a family-oriented mother and grandmother and a Philadelphia Eagles fan. The obituary does not mention her husband.

In a statement posted on Facebook, Linda Stevenson’s daughter Christine Mae described her mother as an avid reader and a dedicated runner. The mother-daughter duo would participate in a monthly 5k to support local charities, she wrote.

“One hug from her and all your worries would disappear,” Mae wrote. “The pain of losing her is paralyzing and the emptiness in my heart is an abyss.”

In her post, Mae also expressed frustration that coverage of the case has focused on Stevenson’s past marriage to Jill Biden rather than on her mother’s life. She said Linda Stevenson “deserves her own story” and should not be reduced to being described in relation to her husband’s former spouse.

Mae was not available for further comment.

Stevenson was married to Jill Biden from 1970 to 1975. Jill Biden married U.S. Sen. Joe Biden in 1977. He served as U.S. president from January 2021 to January 2025. A spokesperson for former U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady said Jill Biden declined to comment on Monday.

William Stevenson founded the Stone Balloon, a popular music venue in Newark, Delaware, in the early 1970s.

In her 2019 memoir, Jill Biden wrote about meeting Stevenson while she was a student at the University of Delaware and marrying him at age 18.

Jill Biden said she fell in love with a “tall ex-football player” who drove a yellow Camaro and who her parents “loved.” She described him as charismatic and entrepreneurial and wrote that she believed she had found a partnership “built on loyalty and devotion.”

“Looking back, it may seem like that relationship was a mistake of youth,” she wrote, adding that there was a time when she truly believed they were “destined for each other.”

Jill Biden wrote that the marriage later unraveled as they grew in different directions, calling its collapse “the biggest disappointment of my young life.”

She wrote that she ultimately decided not to “settle for a counterfeit love.” She said that the divorce underscored for her the importance of financial independence, a lesson she said she later passed on to her daughters and to young women she taught.

In the memoir, Jill Biden wrote that she had “absolutely no interest in politics” at the time she married her first husband, but that Stevenson became increasingly engaged in the long-shot 1972 U.S. Senate campaign of Joe Biden. She wrote that she began seeing campaign materials at their home and attended the election-night celebration, where she met Biden’s first wife, Neilia.

In a 2024 interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax, Stevenson criticized Jill Biden and described their divorce as contentious, calling her “bitter” and “nasty.”

Dale reported from Philadelphia. Willingham reported from Boston.

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.”