Latino voters in the state have consistently said they feel the country is going in the wrong direction, and they reiterated that dissatisfaction in a poll released Tuesday by the Colorado Latino Policy Agenda. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they felt the country was on the wrong track as their frustrations about the cost of living — which ranked higher than any other issue, including immigration — had gone unaddressed and, for many, had worsened.

Against that national critique, the annual poll has repeatedly found that Latino voters still hold a positive view of their own state. But that grace appears to have been exhausted: Forty-six percent of respondents this year said the state was moving in the wrong direction, against 40% who said the opposite.

That’s a stunning 26-percentage-point swing from the same poll last year. It’s also the first time in the poll’s six-year history that it has found an overall disapproval for Colorado’s direction among Latino voters.

“The main thing is the economy,” said Gabriel Sanchez, the pollster for BSP Research who conducted the survey. “Poll after poll, Latinos are telling us loudly: ‘Address the economy. We can’t afford housing. We can’t afford groceries. We can’t afford gas.’

“We’ve seen consistently in the poll that anger and frustration was largely at the federal government. Now, what we’re seeing is that frustration pointing toward government, period. And that’s because people are saying, ‘Look, every year things are getting worse. Somebody fix it.’ ”

The poll was conducted between July 1 and Aug. 11 in partnership with the advocacy groups Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, or COLOR, and Voces Unidas. It included 1,606 registered Latino voters and has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

The respondents were also critical of who influences their government, saying that wealthy donors, corporate business groups, political consultants and outside PACs, and oil and gas companies wielded too much influence in the state. Eighty-one percent said they were concerned that campaign contributions from wealthy outside groups limited policies that could address the affordability crisis.

Asked to rank what federal and state policymakers should focus on, the top responses included the cost of living and healthcare, increasing wages, and building more affordable and attainable housing. Forty-three percent of respondents said their financial situation had worsened in the past year, compared to 22% who said their situation had improved.

More than half of voters who said their situation has worsened blamed Trump. (Ten percent also blamed billionaires and corporations, the second-highest response.)

Latino voters’ dissatisfaction with Colorado’s direction did not extend to the Democratic officials leading its government. U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jared Polis, Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Attorney General Phil Weiser all had double-digit net approval ratings, with positive appraisals exceeding negative ones significantly.

Respondents also approved of Republican U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd and their Democratic colleagues, U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, Brittany Pettersen, Jason Crow and Joe Neguse.

Freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, whose 8th Congressional District seat is among the most hotly contested in the country this fall, was less appreciated. Only 34% of voting Latinos in his district regarded him favorably, while 42% viewed him unfavorably. Respondents in CD8 disapproved of congressional Republicans by 22 percentage points, compared to views of congressional Democrats that were net-favorable by 6 points.

That’s notable given that Latinos make up more than 38% of the CD8 electorate, .

What’s more, 61% of voters in the district disapproved of Trump. Of those who said the country was going in the wrong direction or their financial situation had worsened, a majority of Latino CD8 voters blamed Trump more than anyone else for those problems.

But Latino voters in the district also had the lowest overall opinion of the direction of the state. With an unpopular president in a blue state, Evans has focused his campaign on opposing Democrats at home. But while they’re unhappy with the state, CD8 Latino voters simultaneously have strongly favorable views of Polis and Colorado state lawmakers.

While those concerns may spell trouble for Evans, the poll’s top-line takeaway about affordability is a call to action for government officials across the political spectrum, said Alex Sánchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas.

“The problem is the lack of action by those in power who can do something about it,” he said. “For the first time since we began this project, more Latinos believe Colorado is moving in the wrong direction than the right direction. That is concerning. State leaders should take that seriously.”

Sánchez said the affordability concerns were “being made worse by what’s happening in our streets, in our communities.” The survey found that 40% of respondents statewide knew someone who had been deported as Trump has pushed to increase immigration arrests and deportations.

To that end, significant majorities of the poll’s respondents opposed letting immigration agents arrest people directly from jails. They backed efforts to allow Coloradans to sue federal officials and opposed allowing the governor to “voluntarily” share immigrants’ information with the federal government, a nod to Polis’ repeated attempts to cooperate with ICE subpoenas.

But the respondents were not entirely progressive. Majorities also supported conservative-backed ballot measures related to penalties for fentanyl possession; trans athletes competing in high school and college sports; and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A ‘lack of enthusiasm’ for Boebert?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laubacher’s strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colorado election results for the 2026 primary

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

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

What is Marx's backstory?

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

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

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

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

What has his ministry done?

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

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

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

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

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

What are some of his unsubstantiated claims?

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

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

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

Marx's political history and role in the GOP

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

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

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

His policy positions

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

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

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

The Associated Press called the race for Marx late Thursday afternoon, nearly nine days after polls closed. He led the runner-up, state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, 39.9% to 39.4%, with 99% of ballots counted, .

Marx had taken his first narrow lead over Kirkmeyer the day after the June 30 primary, and though the race remained close, he never lost the advantage. While outstanding deficient and overseas ballots helped delay a final call on the race, those votes only served to expand Marx’s margin. He led by 2,414 votes at 7:10 p.m. Thursday, out of nearly 523,000 ballots cast.

Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for Colorado governor, has an unusual backstory. Here’s what to know.

State Rep. Scott Bottoms was a distant third, with 20.8% of the vote.

A veteran lawmaker and former Weld County commissioner, Kirkmeyer had jumped to an early advantage on the strength of early ballot returns. But as votes returned on Election Day began to filter in, her lead thinned and collapsed. Within 48 hours of polls closing, and with few ballots left to count in Kirkmeyer's Front Range strongholds, her path to retake the lead had all but vanished.

Marx will next face Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser in November. No Republican has been elected to the governor's office in more than 20 years. Four months out, Weiser appears to be heavily favored to continue Democrats’ electoral dominance.

"My team and I have put together this special message that I want every Coloradan to hear —Republicans, independents, unaffiliated voters, and Democrats who are open to a better way," he said. "Because what we're building now is bigger than a primary victory."

In a video, he appealed to Coloradans who are frustrated with the status quo and don't think things can change — citing his victory as proof they can.

"Now Phil Weiser, he's a smart fella — but he represents the current system, because he is part of it," Marx said. "And that current system has made Colorado more expensive, less safe and harder for regular families to trust government."

In a separate statement, Kirkmeyer said she was proud of the race that she had run and the "clear vision" she had laid out for the Republican Party here.

"While we came up short in what appears to be the closest Republican gubernatorial primary in Colorado history, I’m grateful for every voter who placed their trust in us," she wrote.

Echoing the pledge she'd made before Election Day, she pointedly did not endorse Marx. She said only that she hoped voters "choose the path that is best for Colorado" in November.

Kirkmeyer also threw a final jab at Marx, who declined in late May to tell 9News how many people he'd killed as an adult.

Kirkmeyer wrote that, "for the record, I still haven’t killed anyone."

First-time candidate shrugged off questions

Marx's primary win is a remarkable result for the embattled Colorado GOP and for Marx, a former Marine, martial arts instructor and nonprofit leader whose extensive and much-scrutinized personal history had drawn national headlines. It's also attracted sharp criticism from other Republicans.

In his video, Marx appealed to Republican primary voters, saying there was room in his campaign for those who supported his opponents.

Marx had entered the fray last fall with no political profile and no experience as a political candidate. But by the time voters began receiving ballots last month, he'd ridden an atypical — if thoroughly modern — campaign to fundraising dominance and front-runner status.

Kirkmeyer’s support largely flowed from northern Front Range counties, nudging her ahead initially. But Marx picked up bigger margins among Election Day voters — meaning those more conservative voters skeptical of mail-in balloting.

He also won ruby-red El Paso County while racking up smaller wins in rural counties and grabbing enough in the Front Range to edge Kirkmeyer.

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

In a pitch reminiscent of President Donald Trump, the arch-dealmaker, Marx has cast himself as a solutions-focused negotiator disinterested in partisan squabbles. In 2003, he founded All Things Possible Ministries, a Christian nonprofit that has provided stuffed animals and trauma support to people. It has also done work in conflict areas in Syria and Iraq, where Marx primarily worked away from the front lines as a funder and facilitator.

By 2024, the nonprofit's annual revenue had surpassed $7.5 million, and Marx has said the group — from which he has resigned — now primarily works to help law enforcement.

Despite his outsider status, Marx was considered the likely winner in the weeks before Election Day. His narrow victory, then, came as something of a surprise, and, on election night, he speculated that Bottoms — a conservative pastor from Colorado Springs — had pulled votes from him. In El Paso County, Bottoms earned more than 20,000 votes, or 24% of the county’s Republican total.

Though Marx out-raised and out-spent both Kirkmeyer and Bottoms, it was Kirkmeyer who had been perceived as the expected nominee when she entered the race last year. Marx had never run for office before, and the stories he’s told about his life — that he’d killed a man at age 7, been involved in "high-risk humanitarian" operations across the globe and could free people from demonic possession — drew intense scrutiny and national punchlines.

But he repeatedly shrugged off questions about his background and said he stood by all that he had said and written.

Through his personality-heavy, direct-to-voter campaign, he encouraged Colorado Republicans to shrug it off, too. He spent heavily on direct mailers, which provided a boost to both his fundraising and name recognition.

Marx eschewed policy discussions and skipped nearly every debate. When he did participate in one, he spent part of the event leaning on the lectern, with his dog at his feet. Rather than deliver a closing statement, he prayed.

Campaigning his own way

Though he leaned into his outsider status, the aw-shucks appeal belied a careful campaign shaped by Marx's emergence from a political environment forged by Trump: He skipped one debate after a moderator pressed him about his background, and he held a rally instead; his campaign later highlighted how many more people attended the rally than the debate.

His media operation was led by a former Turning Points USA staffer, and his campaign touted its social media posts' views at Marx's watch party last week. He was comfortable as a podcast guest, regularly released videos of himself and repeatedly assured voters that he was no politician.

Though Marx had little backing — or trust — from institutional Republican forces, the PAC that supported his campaign was established by a former senior official from Gov. Bill Owens' administration. Marx also was endorsed by U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, the most nationally visible Colorado Republican.

His approach proved to be enough for Colorado Republicans to back him. But his next task will be far harder.

In November, he will face a surging Weiser, who last week dismantled U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet on his way to the Democratic nomination. Weiser proved an adept fundraiser and campaigner with statewide appeal, and he will look to lead a restless Democratic base that elected progressive candidates up and down the ballot.

In a statement Thursday, Weiser said Marx's "views and style are far out of step with Coloradans, and his nomination for governor is a threat to our state’s values and our future."

Republicans' last statewide win was in a University of Colorado at-large regent's race in 2016. The state GOP has had four elected party chairs since the last Republican gubernatorial bid in 2022, which ended with a culture war-focused Heidi Ganahl — who had won that at-large regent seat — losing by nearly 20 percentage points to Gov. Jared Polis.

Simultaneously, Marx may also have to contend with an independent candidacy from Greg Lopez, a former Republican congressman and gubernatorial candidate who is gathering signatures to make the fall ballot.

Romero had 55% of the vote when the Associated Press called the race just after 8 p.m. Tuesday. His opponent, Alex Kelloff, earned 45% of the vote. Approximately 66,700 votes had been tallied.

After his victory, Romero criticized Hurd for siding with President Donald Trump and pledged to fight to lower the cost of living.

“I am ready to take down Jeff Hurd and make sure the voices of Coloradans are heard in Congress,” he said in a statement.

Both Romero and Kelloff campaigned on similar policy platforms emphasizing that they’d address the rising cost of living, access to affordable health care, protection of public lands and opposition to Trump.

Kelloff, 53, is a political newcomer who entered the primary race more than a year ago after more than 30 years in the telecommunications industry. Romero, 61, is a U.S. Army veteran who leads a real estate company and has served on multiple local boards and governments in the Roaring Fork Valley. He entered the race in March.

Colorado’s 3rd District covers nearly half of the state, swooping from the desert and canyons of the Western Slope to the high mountains in southern Colorado and the southern end of the Front Range in Pueblo. Leaders from the Colorado Democratic Party on Tuesday said the district’s general election will be one of the most important for the party in November.

Hurd won the seat in 2024 after U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert moved across the state to run in a different district. A Republican, former state legislator Ron Hanks, challenged Hurd from within his party in Tuesday’s GOP primary.

Hurd defeated Hanks, earning 68% of the 60,785 votes counted by 7:45 p.m. The Associated Press called the race at 7:40 p.m.

A Democrat has not represented the 3rd District since 2011.

But in 2022, voters nearly elected Democrat Adam Frisch, an Aspen businessman. He lost to Boebert that year by 546 votes. In 2024, Frisch ran again and earned 46% of the votes to Hurd’s 51% — a difference of nearly 20,000 votes.

Trump’s presidential campaign won the district in 2024 by a 10-point margin.

The race on the Western Slope is one of several contested congressional primaries in Colorado on Tuesday, with the 1st and 8th congressional districts‘ primaries covered in separate stories by The Denver Post. Three other districts had no competition for either major party, with their major-party November matchups already set.

Colorado Springs-based seat

Two Democrats vied for the chance to flip the 5th Congressional District, which covers Colorado Springs and its suburbs. Voters in the district have never voted a Democrat into the position, but the national party has identified the race to unseat incumbent Republican Rep. Jeff Crank as one to watch as demographics change and Trump’s approval ratings fall.

Jessica Killin defeated Joe Reagan for the district’s Democratic nomination. The Associated Press called the race for Killin just before 8 p.m., when she held 63% of the 52,400 votes counted at the time. Reagan earned 37% of the vote.

Crank ran unopposed in the Republican primary.

2nd District Republican race

In the 2nd Congressional District, two Republicans ran for the chance to unseat Democrat Rep. Joe Neguse. Kelley Dennison defeated Christina Blunt, according to the Associated Press, which called the race at 8 p.m. Dennison had 58% of the vote at that time and Blunt had 42%.

Neguse has represented the district since 2019. It covers a broad swath of north-central Colorado, including Boulder, Fort Collins, Summit County and the rural ranchlands around Steamboat Springs. Voters have not elected a Republican to the seat since 1972.

is a Larimer County massage therapist who says her priority is addressing the cost of living. is a Fort Collins business owner who is also focused on affordability and who said she “stands on Christ and the Bible, the Constitution and Bullets.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert’s matchup

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert will face Democrat Eileen Laubacher in the general election after an earlier Democratic contest fizzled; only a write-in candidate, Jenna Preston, filed primary paperwork. The district covers much of the Eastern Plains and small sections of the Front Range, including Castle Rock.

Aurora-based 6th District

Incumbent Democratic Rep. Jason Crow will face Republican Jason Clark in the general election for the district that includes Aurora and sections of Denver’s southern suburbs.

7th District in west metro, mountains

No Democrat challenged incumbent Rep. Brittany Pettersen. She will face Republican Tim Bennett in the general election for the district, which covers the western flank of the Front Range as well as much of the Arkansas River valley from Leadville to Cañon City.

One is a military veteran who pitches himself as a lifelong civic servant and recently tossed his name in the hat. The other is a political newbie who emphasizes his family’s deep Colorado roots and entered the race more than a year ago.

Both candidates — and — said in interviews that they decided to seek the Democratic nomination in the June 30 primary to challenge freshman U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd in response to overreach and corruption they see in the Trump administration. With little difference in their policy platforms — Kelloff even claimed Romero copied his — voters will have to look to their backgrounds to decide.

“This particular district is very large … it’s all these disparate economies: farming, ranching, tourism and steel production,” Romero said. “Because of all that, it’s hard to find some single thread that pulls everyone together. … (Voters) need to see someone that they can trust and they need to see a part of themselves in the candidate before them.”

Colorado’s 3rd District covers nearly half of the state, swooping from the desert and canyons of the Western Slope to the high mountains in southern Colorado and the southern end of the Front Range in Pueblo.

Larger than the entire state of Pennsylvania, the rural district encompasses 27 of the state’s 64 counties and takes in vastly different towns, including Aspen, Grand Junction, San Luis and Durango.

The district in recent years has leaned Republican, though voter data show 23% of the district’s voters are affiliated as Democrats, 26% as Republicans, while nearly half have no party identification.

The district has not been represented by a Democrat since 2011, when former U.S. Rep. John Salazar lost to Republican Scott Tipton. Tipton was then ousted in the 2020 Republican primary by Lauren Boebert, who in 2024 moved across the state to instead represent the 4th Congressional District.

In the 2024 election, President Donald Trump won the 3rd District by a 10-point margin.

But voting tallies show that Republicans’ hold on the district is not absolute. In both 2022 and 2024, Democrat Adam Frisch came close to clinching the seat. The Aspen businessman lost to Boebert in 2022 by less than 546 votes. In 2024, Hurd won the seat with 51% of votes — nearly 20,000 more votes than Frisch, who earned 46% of the vote.

Seizing on frustration with Trump

Both Kelloff and Romero hope to ride the momentum of what they see as rising frustration with the Trump administration to flip the seat back to blue.

“We need to bring back leadership in Washington,” Kelloff said. “I’m running to hopefully lead with moral clarity. I think this is the most corrupt administration that we’ve ever seen in the history of America.”

Both candidates listed addressing the rising cost of living as their top priority. Other goals include protecting public lands and Western Slope water interests.

“There is an absolute public outcry on affordability and the cost of living and making ends meet for rural families and working-class families,” Romero said. “What our current administration has done is absolutely ignore that.”

In interviews, both candidates emphasized their ties to Colorado and — despite their business success and affluence as adults — more humble upbringings.

Kelloff’s family has lived in the district since 1893, though he grew up outside of Washington, D.C. He traveled back frequently to the Centennial State to visit family before moving to Aspen permanently six years ago.

Kelloff, 52, spent 30 years in the telecommunications industry and also co-founded Armada Skis. While he’s never won elected office, Kelloff said he has decades of experience forging deals and leading large teams in the business realm.

He announced his candidacy more than a year before primary ballots were set to be mailed out — starting today — so that he could spend time traveling the state, talking to voters. By January, he had visited all 27 counties in the district.

“I’ve been in this race for almost 13 months,” Kelloff said. “To win this seat, to flip this seat, you need a fighter to take on Jeff Hurd and win. That’s why I got in 13 months early to do the hard work.”

Romero, 61, grew up on the Gulf Coast of Texas and, after 11 years in the military, moved to the Roaring Fork Valley in 1996. He leads that has sold more than $50 million worth of property since 2023. His wife, Margaret, has worked as a local schoolteacher in the Roaring Fork Valley for 25 years.

Romero, who entered the race four months before the primary, emphasized his history of serving on local boards: two terms on the Aspen City Council, two terms on the Aspen School District board, two terms on the local fire district board and, now, serving his second term on the local water and sanitation board. He also served for six months as the chief economic development director in then-Gov. John Hickenlooper’s cabinet in 2011 and for three years on the state economic development commission.

“Twelve months of driving around in the district and taking some pictures here and there is all well and good,” Romero said of Kelloff’s campaigning, “but that does not erase the body of work and the experiences and know-how we’ve achieved over the last 30 to 35 years — sorry.”

Hurd is ‘not a headline-grabber’

Frisch, the Democrat who previously tried to win the seat, endorsed Romero on the day he announced his campaign. The two men served on the Aspen City Council together and the address for Romero’s campaign is the same as that for the Frisch now runs.

Whichever candidate wins the Democratic primary will need to educate voters on Hurd’s voting record, said Nick Voss, the chair of The incumbent operates more quietly than his predecessor, whose controversial statements and personal life routinely made news.

“He’s not a headline-grabber, like Lauren Boebert is,” Voss said.

This year’s race , who previously endorsed a Republican candidate looking to challenge Hurd in the primary after Hurd split from the Republican majority on tariff policy.

However, Trump in March re-endorsed Hurd and said he convinced the other Republican running against him, Hope Scheppelman, to and instead work in his administration, where she as an adviser for the federal .

“Together with (the Scheppelmans), we decided that Congressman Jeff Hurd, of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, should in no way, shape, or form, be impeded from winning the District in that the Democrat alternative is a DISASTER for our Country,” Trump wrote in a March 20 social media post.

In April, a former state representative announced he would challenge Hurd in the Republican primary. served in the state House, representing Fremont County from 2021 to 2023.

Hurd, a Grand Junction attorney, , winning 41% of the vote to Hanks’ 29% in a crowded open race.

As of the most recent federal finance reporting, through March 31, Hurd had raised $3 million, compared to about $1 million by Kelloff and about $500,000 by Romero.

Both Democratic challengers have loaned significant money to their campaigns: Kelloff loaned $450,000 of his own money to his campaign and Romero loaned $280,000 to his.

Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.; Nancy Mace, R-S.C.; and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., drove the resignation last month of two of their colleagues accused of misconduct: Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, and Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. Last fall, Boebert, Mace and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., provided key votes to compel the Justice Department to release its files on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein — despite Trump’s pressuring them to back off. These women, along with Florida Rep. Kat Cammack, founder of the Republican Women’s Caucus, have been pressing to punish Rep. Cory Mills, a Florida Republican who has been subject to a restraining order at the request of an ex-girlfriend.

The last time this issue shook Capitol Hill, in the #MeTooCongress moment of the first Trump administration, Democratic women led the charge, until partisan polarization and backlash killed the momentum. Since then, the GOP, dominated by MAGA machismo, has only grown more antagonistic toward women’s rights and more indulgent of men behaving badly.

This is precisely why Luna et al. are the best equipped to usher in a #Me2.0 in Congress. Their established MAGA-ness gives them the credibility to push leadership on awkward issues. And they are less likely than more moderate colleagues to be dismissed as scolds or man-haters. If these crusaders want to do more than merely pick off a few bad apples, this political moment offers them a rare opening to make progress on one of Congress’ ugliest, most entrenched cultural problems.

Doing so could serve them politically. If anyone knows how to grab the spotlight and keep outrage alive, it����ap MAGA lawmakers. All the better for their iconoclastic brand, their status as disrupters, if they visibly annoy their party’s establishment.

Luna clearly takes pride in prodding leadership. Along with targeting sexual misconduct, she is one of the House’s loudest advocates of a ban on congressional stock trading.

“I’ve been calling out both parties for it, and I won’t stop,” she said of her accountability campaign in an interview well before the Swalwell scandal broke. (Swalwell has denied the assault allegations against him.) She compared herself to a “Jiminy Cricket” perched on colleagues’ shoulders. “I always am giving them correct advice.”

Luna is mindful of the need to push back against criticisms of the GOP as anti-woman. “We do represent a lot of women, businesswomen, young women, stay-at-home moms, et cetera,” she told me. When they learn of misconduct allegations, “and it����ap not dealt with accordingly, it����ap a poor reflection on the party.”

The accountability crew is working across the aisle to advance their cause — a rare and politically touchy move in these polarized times. A heartbeat after news about the Swalwell allegations broke, Luna was coordinating with New Mexico Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, head of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, to oust both him and Gonzales. (The latter first denied then admitted to having an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.) “We worked closely together over that frantic weekend” organizing expulsion resolutions, Fernández told me. “We think we had the votes, which is why we think they both resigned.” Last Wednesday, Fernández and Cammack announced a new bipartisan effort to expand and improve protections against misconduct.

Being outspoken comes with political risk. The original #MeToo surge brought down lawmakers from both parties. But in September 2018, the movement became absorbed into the nation’s most heated, high-stakes political brawl: Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination fight, dominated by allegations that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford in the early 1980s.

Republicans hardened against the movement. Even some Democrats began wondering if it had gone too far. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., was the first senator to call for her colleague Al Franken, D-Minn., to step down over allegations many people considered slight. In political circles, Franken’s ouster became shorthand for the movement����ap overreach, and Gillibrand became a target of grumbling in her own party. During her failed presidential bid in 2020, her campaign lamented that lingering resentment over the Franken episode had damaged her fundraising. In more recent years, the senator has kept a lower profile on the topic — as have most lawmakers.

The MAGA women face their own challenges. Most notably, they tap-dance around Trump’s disturbing record when it comes to women. Mace, Boebert and Luna recently told The New York Times’ Annie Karni that they do not believe the many and varied accusations of sexual misbehavior that have been leveled at Trump — which presumably includes his being found liable of sexual abuse in court. And while their beef with the Justice Department over the Epstein files displeased the president, the women did not directly attack him.

They may well feel compelled to give Trump a pass to preserve credibility with their team. Greene went all in on her feud with the president and wound up resigning her seat in January. This dynamic complicates — but does not rule out — their core goal: changing the toxic culture in Congress. “There is a sense of entitlement and untouchable-ness, if that����ap a word, that comes over some members,” noted former Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., who pushed through the #MeToo reforms in 2018.

High-profile campaigns to expose misbehaving members help crack that aura of privilege. There has been a renewed focus of late on misconduct allegations, including the House Ethics Committee’s investigation into Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., who has been accused of inappropriate conduct toward young staff members. (He has denied wrongdoing.)

So far, Republican leaders seem most interested in tightening enforcement. Among the top reform ideas with bipartisan support being discussed: overhauling the House Ethics Committee. “It����ap set up to take forever,” said Speier, who served on the committee. “They need to come up with a swifter way of moving through these complaints.”

More broadly, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights has been recommending for decades that Congress establish whistleblower protections comparable to those in the executive branch.

And there is widespread agreement that reporting incidents should be easier. “It is so complicated for a woman to know where to go,” said Fernández. Why, she asked, doesn’t Congress have a hotline for sexual assault and misconduct? “A single number you call where somebody is going to answer the phone, and they’re on your side.” Speier, who has been consulting with Fernández and other former colleagues, noted that there are also apps on the market that could facilitate anonymous reporting.

Now is the time to push. Republicans are anxious about their president����ap widespread unpopularity, and party leaders cannot afford to be seen as protecting congressional wrongdoers, especially in a high-stakes election year. Reformers have leverage — if they keep the heat on.

I asked Luna if she worried about alienating her colleagues or leaders or getting labeled a bad team player.

“No. I’m cool with being Jiminy Cricket,” she insisted. “Everyone loves Jiminy Cricket. He saves Pinocchio.”

Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for ����ap. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. This article originally appeared in .

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Evans brought in more than $1.2 million during the first three months of 2026, according to federal campaign finance reports due Wednesday. He ended March with more than $3.4 million in the bank. That’s an eye-watering sum, easily surpassing the roughly $2 million that Evans’ Democratic predecessor, then-U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo, had gathered at the same point in early 2024.

Evans has no primary challenger, meaning he won’t need to start seriously spending his cash until after his Democratic opponent emerges from the June 30 primary.

In other federal races, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper significantly outraised a state senator challenging him in the Democratic primary, while another incumbent — Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert — was outraised by an even greater factor by her only remaining Democratic challenger in the state’s most conservative-leaning district.

The race for Evans’ 8th Congressional District seat, which sits in a rural-suburban area north of Denver, will be among the most closely watched contests in the country this fall. Two of the Democrats hoping to topple Evans have started marshalling their own financial resources.

State Rep. Manny Rutinel posted a strong quarter, hauling in more than $952,000 to bring his cash-on-hand total to more than $1.76 million. He raised more — and has banked more — than his former state House colleague, Shannon Bird, who joined the race a few months after Rutinel last year.

Bird raised nearly $567,000 in early 2026, and she ended the quarter with just over $1 million to play with as the primary season entered its final three-month stretch.

The third Democrat in the race, Marine veteran Evan Munsing, has outlasted several more established candidates — including Caraveo, who mounted a brief comeback campaign last year. But his fundraising has slipped farther behind Rutinel’s and Bird’s: Munsing raked in $115,000 last quarter, and he spent almost double that.

As a consequence, his cash pile has been halved, from the $213,000 at the end of 2025 to $108,000 at the end of March.

Between the three Democrats and Evans, the CD8 candidates raised more than $2.8 million over the last three months. Between them, the four candidates have nearly $6.4 million on hand.

More than half of that pile lies, waiting, in Evans’ coffers.

“I’m grateful for the outpouring of support from Coloradans who are ready to keep fighting for safer communities, a stronger economy and a more secure future,” Evans said in a statement Wednesday.

Here’s what else was revealed by the latest federal campaign finance reports, which came out just after the major parties’ primary ballots were finalized through assembly votes and petitioning.

Hickenlooper’s haul grows for primary challenge

In his Senate reelection race, Hickenlooper raised nearly $1.4 million last quarter, the first full reporting period since his primary challenger, state Sen. Julie Gonzales, entered the race. That’s more than he raised in the prior quarter.

Though he spent more than $1.2 million in the early part of 2026, the incumbent Democrat will still enter primary season with a hefty $4 million in the bank.

Gonzales, meanwhile, has reported more anemic fundraising. She raised more than $264,000 this past quarter, compared with the nearly $180,000 she posted in her first month in late 2025, showing a slowing pace. Her most recent total in the bank sat at just over $114,000.

In a blog post Wednesday, Gonzales acknowledged that her campaign was “living paycheck to paycheck.” But she appeared undaunted and said she raised $130,000 in the first week of April, after the reporting period’s end.

DeGette’s balance grows as challenger picks up pace

A different primary challenge is brewing in Denver’s 1st Congressional District.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat who’s been in Congress for nearly 30 years, is facing two Democratic opponents: University of Colorado Regent Wanda James and Melat Kiros, a lawyer and doctoral student who last month beat DeGette in an assembly nominating vote.

Whether that victory translates to an incumbent-toppling result in June remains to be seen. DeGette raised more than $263,000 last quarter, a bit more than she’d raised at the end of 2025. Her cash-on-hand total ticked up, too, and now sits at $636,000.

Kiros also saw a boost, bringing in more than $174,000, double her prior quarter’s total. With $118,000 in the bank, she trailed DeGette’s total entering primary season.

James’ fundraising went the opposite way. The regent raised more than $72,000 last quarter, below her fourth-quarter total last year. Her spending also ticked up, bringing her cash on hand down to just more than $54,000.

Boebert challenger keeps raking in cash. Will it matter?

Among Colorado’s incumbents in Congress, Boebert has long been a fundraising lightning rod. That remains true, even as she settles into the comfortably conservative 4th Congressional District, which covers Colorado’s Eastern Plains as well as Douglas County, after a district switch in the last election.

Eileen Laubacher, a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, raised more than $2 million for the second consecutive quarter. After a big spend of $1.5 million, she still ended the quarter with more than $3 million in her campaign’s pocket. Another Democratic candidate, Trisha Calvarese, also had raised big money in her second run against Boebert before she dropped out two weeks ago.

Boebert, in contrast, raised just under $90,000 in the last three months, and she reported $160,000 on hand in late March.

It’s important to remember that Boebert now represents a district where, in a 2021 analysis, by more than 26 percentage points. In 2024, Boebert’s win wasn’t even half that — and .

Hurd amasses cash to defend Western Slope seat

In Boebert’s old 3rd Congressional District, her erstwhile Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, is looking to defend a seat that’s reliably, if not comfortably, red. Hurd raised more than $609,000 last quarter, bringing his war chest to just under $2 million.

He also picked up a primary opponent at the Colorado Republican Party assembly last week — former state Rep. Ron Hanks — but his fundraising advantage is hefty.

Two Democrats are jockeying to take on Hurd in November. Alex Kelloff, a Snowmass businessman, has been in the race longer. He raised $192,000 last quarter, adding a bit to his cash-on-hand total of $458,000.

Kelloff’s newcomer primary opponent, fellow businessman Dwayne Romero, raised more than $505,000 in his first month in the race, and, after expenses, had slighty more on hand than Kelloff.

Democrat brings in cash to flip Colorado Springs district

Colorado’s other Jeff among Republican congressmen — Hurd’s fellow freshman, U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank —  raised $345,000 last quarter as he looks to defend the conservative 5th Congressional District. Crank’s war chest now tops $1.1 million.

His likely opponent, Democrat Jessica Killin, brought in nearly $670,000, bringing her on-hand total to more than $1.5 million. Army veteran Joe Reagan, who is challenging Killin for the Democratic nomination, raised $86,000 and ended the first quarter with $33,000 in the bank.

Democrats have been targeting the district, which — after Boebert’s current seat — is the most conservative in the state.

Incumbents’ cash hauls

While DeGette looks to ward off her primary opponents, Colorado’s three other Democratic members of Congress are without well-known Republican challengers. But they’re still slowly building up their campaign bank accounts.

U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, of the Boulder-based 2nd Congressional District, brought his cash on hand to just under $3 million last quarter. U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, of Aurora’s 6th Congressional District, raked in nearly $940,000 to start 2026 (which, his campaign said, was his largest single-quarter haul), and he had more than $2.5 million under his campaign mattress.

U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, whose 7th Congressional District covers the center of the state up through parts of metro Denver, had more than $915,000 on hand.

Those sums will allow the Democrats to support not only their own campaigns but others’ races and causes, too. Crow’s latest campaign finance report listed a nearly $60,000 contribution to the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, for instance, while Neguse gave $35,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The editor and publisher of the newspaper in rural northwest Nebraska looked in amazement at the resume for her newest reporter, A. Marie Hamilton: multiple degrees from a well-known journalism school. Seventeen years working for the . Several statewide awards for her coverage.

“We were all super excited,” Perez said of the April 2023 hire. “Like, wow, why would someone with that much experience, why would she be here?”

Slowly, though, Perez realized that not everything was as it seemed. Hamilton had a problem with authority, Perez said, and ruffled feathers with the town’s police chief and school board. She appeared to sometimes sleep in the office. Nobody ever met her husband, who she said was a district manager for a local cable company.

“We heard so many different things,” Perez said. “It turned out to be this melange of (expletive).”

In fact, A. Marie Hamilton wasn’t even her real name. Those bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arizona State University? Never attained. No evidence exists that she worked for 17 years at USA Today-affiliated newspapers.

“In seeking truth, you have to get both sides of the story,” Hamilton said in her at the Nebraska paper, citing the quote .

This is the other side, a story rife with inconsistencies, false claims and, now, a slew of felony charges that could land her in prison for decades. A. Marie Hamilton is actually April Marie Morganroth. Before that, she was April McClellan. At various points in her career, the journalist reinvented herself to start fresh in new states, including Colorado.

Wyoming prosecutors last month charged Morganroth, 40, with 20 felonies in two separate criminal cases in which she is alleged to have falsified documents and lied under oath — charges that relate to her alleged acts as a private citizen, not as a journalist. But Morganroth’s previous stops in at least four states and numerous publications were also marked by falsehoods and fabrications about her background, The Denver Post found.

She was fired from a Boulder newspaper for inventing quotations and misrepresenting the stories of sources she had interviewed about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In Arizona, she was convicted of forgery after authorities said she falsified documents as she sought housing. In Wyoming, she claimed to be a muckraking reporter with a Ph.D. who was also in law school. She never sought either degree.

Now she’s facing decades in prison, leaving the communities she covered wondering: Who was April Morganroth?

“There are people who are liars, people who are chronic liars, and then there is mental illness,” Perez said.

Two journalism ethics experts told The Post that while there have been high-profile examples of reporters caught ���ǰ���, they had never heard of someone committing these ethical violations and then altering their identity to continue practicing the trade elsewhere.

“It’s safe to say this is historically unprecedented in the modern era,” said Mark Feldstein, the Richard Eaton Chair of Broadcast Journalism at the University of Maryland.

None of the editors interviewed by The Post who worked with Morganroth outside of Boulder said they found fabrications in her work, and the newspaper could not independently fact-check all of her published stories.

Morganroth, who is free on bail in the two criminal cases, did not return messages from The Post seeking comment.

‘It was always the perfect story’

In her writings and website biographies, Morganroth extolled the virtues of freedom of speech, of seeking the truth no matter the roadblocks and of adhering to strong ethical values.

She wrote that she harps on honesty and accuracy as a foundation for earning and maintaining public trust. Her work must be consistent and principled, fair and independent.

“I aspire to bring truth, integrity and a personal touch to American journalism, unlike what we’ve seen since its early conception,” Morganroth once wrote on her .

But peel back the lofty rhetoric, and a different side of Morganroth emerges.

In 2007, Morganroth — then known by her birth name April McClellan — was charged with cashing a $5,000 welfare check in Arizona meant for her brother, according to court documents. She failed to respond to the bank’s efforts to seek restitution, authorities said, and attempts to locate her were unsuccessful.

“She then withdrew the $5,000 and disappeared,” investigators said in a criminal complaint.

McClellan pleaded guilty to one count of forgery, a class four felony, and was sentenced to probation.

In March 2008, McClellan was charged with three counts of felony forgery after Arizona authorities accused her of forging a court document, a Department of Corrections employment statement and a document from her previous landlord as she sought an apartment for rent, according to an arrest affidavit.

She pleaded guilty to one count and received probation.

McClellan, after her marriage to Scott Morganroth, started going by April Morganroth.

Bethany Barnes met April Morganroth around 2010 when the two worked at a Sears department store in the Phoenix suburbs, and the two quickly became close friends.

Over time, however, Barnes realized that it became hard to trust her friend’s word. Morganroth said things about her family that Barnes later learned were false. She would say she couldn’t hang out for a certain reason, only for Barnes to find out that Morganroth was somewhere else.

“She was always making herself look bigger than what was actually the case,” Barnes told The Post. “It was just a little bit of everything. You could tell she was being dishonest.”

These larger-than-life tales grew harder to tolerate, Barnes said. Eventually, the two lost touch.

“It was always the perfect story,” she said. “She did it very well. She lied very well.”

Morganroth graduated from , a community college, in December 2013 with an associate’s degree in digital photography. At the same time, she was finishing her first full semester at Arizona State’s .

On her blog, Morganroth promoted her services as a commercial and wedding photographer, showcasing her work in local galleries.

During her school years, she accumulated bylines for ASU’s student newspaper, appeared on the school’s radio station and did a , the state’s largest news organization, covering a variety of breaking news stories, including fires, floods and crime. A university spokesperson told The Post that Morganroth was enrolled at ASU at one time but never completed her degree.

Fabricated quotes and a retraction

In 2020, Morganroth moved with her husband and three children to Colorado, where she got a job in the joint newsroom of the Boulder and , newspapers owned by , which also owns The Post.

Her author page shared little in common with reality: She claimed she had been a newspaper journalist for nearly 20 years — even though she was just 35 at the time. She referred to her role at the Arizona Republic as a “full-time writer and multimedia journalist,” but an archived version of the from that time doesn’t show her name. Morganroth, on her , called it an internship.

She said she graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State.

On Sept. 11, 2021, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Daily Camera and Times-Call by Morganroth featuring reflections from locals who had been impacted by the day’s horrors.

Morganroth interviewed three Boulder residents, including a naval intelligen­ce analyst who recounted a harrowing story in which, she wrote, he watched Marines perform a heroic rescue of children from a nursery in the Pentagon. She quoted a flight attendant who, she said, was scheduled to work on 9/11 but switched her plans at the last minute. And she detailed the supposed experiences of a mental health clinician who, she wrote, didn’t know whether his daughter was alive or dead on Sept. 11.

It turned out that the three individuals said very little of what Morganroth wrote.

A few weeks after its publication, the Daily Camera , saying in a lengthy editor’s note that the story “substantially misrepresented” statements from the three subjects and fabricated many of the quotations attributed to them. One of the sources called his purported quotes “fictional.”

“I was absolutely horrified — like blood-pressure-spiked horrified,” said Mark Pfundstein, the former naval intelligence analyst, in an interview with The Post. “I thought, ‘My God, what will my colleagues think about this?'”

Morganroth, after the retraction, was fired, according to a from one of her colleagues. Mitchell Byars, who covered courts and crime for the paper, called for more due diligence in the hiring process.

“I feel there were some frankly easily identifiable red flags that I brought up with editors after her hire,” he wrote. Byars did not identify those warning signs on social media and declined to be interviewed for this story.

Colleagues, though, had noticed that Morganroth frequently retweeted far-right conservatives on social media, including U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert. Standard social media policies at newspapers forbid this type of political activity.

John Vahlenkamp, one of the editors who retracted the story, declined to comment on his investigation into Morganroth’s work or her tenure in Boulder.

An incident like this could have ended Morganroth’s journalism career. Instead, she pivoted.

New state, new name

In 2022, Morganroth popped up in the Wyoming journalism scene under a new byline: A. Marie Hamilton.

She worked for the , a newspaper in a small community in southeast Wyoming near the Nebraska border, for roughly a year, according to a review of her bylines on the site. Current ownership could not confirm her exact employment dates.

Morganroth’s father, in text messages with Barnes, the friend from Arizona, suggested that he knew that his daughter was running from trouble.

Child protective services “from Colorado was on April; she ran to Cheyenne this time,” Bill McClellan wrote to Barnes in June 2022, according to texts reviewed by The Post. “She thinks it’s okay to keep pulling her lieing (sic) and (expletive). Not working for her, I’d say.”

A few months later, McClellan told Barnes that “they will catch her soon enough.” McClellan died in 2024.

In April 2023, Morganroth took the job in Sidney, Nebraska.

Perez, the editor and publisher there, said Morganroth appeared to be “super knowledgeable” with professional writing chops. The editor said she never worried about the content of her reporter’s work — and only recently learned about what happened at the Daily Camera.

Still, Morganroth was difficult to manage, Perez said.

“Nobody knew what she knew,” Perez said. “Her attitude was: everyone was stupid.”

Many details about her life, though, just didn’t add up. The cable company that her husband supposedly worked for advertised in the paper. So Perez asked about him. The company said they had no idea what she was talking about.

Only four months after getting to the state, Morganroth said she was putting in her two-week notice. Perez didn’t fight her. On her way out, Morganroth told colleagues that the Nebraska newspaper company was starting a new outfit in Cheyenne and that they had asked her to be the editor, Perez said. None of this was true.

“That level of lying and thinking you’ll get away with it that goes beyond telling falsehoods,” Perez said. “That’s where you live in your own reality.”

A slew of felony charges

Once again, Morganroth started anew.

She returned to Wyoming, landing a job at the in southeast Wyoming, an hour north of Cheyenne.

Her listed accolades just kept growing: She now boasted more than 25 years of journalism experience, despite being under 40. The paper, in its , said she previously worked for National Public Radio and iHeartMedia. The Post could find no evidence of these employment stints.

Morganroth, still going by “Marie Hamilton,” earned the nickname “Little Miss Fact-Checker” by her peers at Wyoming Press Association conventions, the paper said, for “always providing clarifying and enriching accurate information about various news topics in our state.”

She again falsely claimed to hold both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Arizona State, and said she was in the midst of obtaining a law degree from the University of Wyoming. A university spokesperson said she was never enrolled there.

After the Record-Times briefly ceased publication, Morganroth launched her own media outlet called the , an “independent, community-centered” news organization focused on southeast Wyoming.

Its stated values: honesty and accuracy, integrity, ethical and watchdog journalism. Its motto: “Independent. Local. Unafraid.”

“I am unafraid to hold the accountable — accountable — and I have faced my fair share of credible threats, attempts to intimidate, blackmail and discredit because I refuse to allow elected officials to have a get-out-of-jail-free card,” she wrote.

Her journalism, in practice, often blurred the line between objective news coverage and her own opinions.

On social media, Morganroth frequently posted her thoughts on gun rights, supposed corruption in the Democratic Party and President Donald Trump.

Morganroth took a particular interest in a planned near the town of Chugwater in southeast Wyoming. She published a on Nov. 25 — which she called an “investigation” — in which she falsely drew links between solar and wind farms and disabilities in children.

The story, published under a “Wyoming Sentinel Staff” byline, quoted a “Marie Hamilton” numerous times as an advocate for children with disabilities. Hamilton is listed on the news outlet’s website as the owner, publisher and managing editor. There’s no indication anyone else worked there.

Her involvement in the project, though, was about to get much more serious after she personally lobbied against the wind farm.

On March 9, prosecutors in Platte County, Wyoming, arrested Morgranroth and related to her opposition to the Chugwater energy project. Authorities allege the local journalist concocted letters of support from two area residents expressing their supposed objections to the project and lied under oath during a public hearing held by a state panel considering the proposal.

In a pre-hearing statement, she asserted she held three degrees from Arizona State, was pursuing a law degree, owned an unspecified local brand and operated various family ranching businesses in several states, an arrest affidavit states. She introduced herself as “Dr. Marie Hamilton.”

Two weeks after the initial charges, prosecutors in the same district against Morganroth. Authorities say she forged documents purporting to show that she had prequalified for a federal loan as she attempted to purchase a home in Chugwater, according to an arrest affidavit cited in local media reports.

Morganroth also claimed that she and her husband had been approved for a federal grant to do construction on the property to allow them to qualify for the loan, prosecutors alleged, submitting to the sellers supposed invoices from two companies for the work. Both companies told investigators and The Post that they never did jobs on this property.

“It was so impressive,” Jessica Logue, owner and CEO of Cowgirl Demolition and Excavating, told The Post. “She used my logo, faded it with an opaque excavator, and had all the verbiage right. I was like, ‘Who is this?'”

‘Detrimental to journalism’

Up until the arrest, people in southern Wyoming knew her as Marie Hamilton. When the news broke, editors at the papers she worked for expressed their disappointment and confusion.

Klark Byrd, managing editor at the Casper-based , said Morganroth covered the state legislature for a month this year, but she never filed paperwork with human resources to get paid. Despite numerous reminders, he said in an interview, the reporter wouldn’t submit her forms.

Boyd said he fact-checked her work and it was always clean.

“It’s always detrimental to journalism when someone in the profession breaks that kind of trust,” he said. “It wasn’t just public trust; she broke the trust of colleagues. It floored me when all the pieces finally came together.”

Lying about a journalist’s true identity calls into question what else they might have fabricated in their stories, the two journalism experts said, calling trust a bedrock principle for the industry.

“You expect this maybe out of priests who get bounced from parish to parish or doctors who get their licenses pulled in one state and move to another,” said Feldstein, the University of Maryland ethics expert. “But I’ve never heard of a journalist doing that.”

Publicly advocating on a topic you’re also covering as a reporter is a clear violation of journalism ethics, said Bob Steele, a former professor and director of the at DePauw University in Indiana. Since Morganroth served as the Wyoming Sentinel’s publisher, editor and reporter, there’s an even greater obligation to be honest, independent and fair in her reporting, he said.

Quoting oneself in the third person, meanwhile, breaks every rule of journalism, both experts said.

“It’s astounding,” Steele said. “It’s problematic to the nth degree.”

Steele and Feldstein said it’s important to characterize Morganroth’s behavior as an extreme outlier in the industry. The public, they said, should not see this as all that’s wrong with journalism. Even Pfundstein, the intelligence analyst whose story Morganroth mispresented in the 9/11 remembrance, said the incident did not shake his confidence or trust in the media.

Those who knew Morganroth previously said they weren’t entirely surprised by her alleged actions. They were just surprised she got caught.

“Part of me thinks she’ll wiggle out of this; that is her forte,” said Perez, the Nebraska editor. “Getting out of things is kind of her milieu. I’m popping some popcorn to see how she’ll get out of this one.”

Her Tuesday evening announcement came 48 hours before she and her Democratic rival were set to compete in the 4th District Democratic assembly Thursday night.

Calvarese threw her support to Navy veteran Eileen Laubacher, despite having sued the Colorado Democratic Party over her opponent’s eligibility to compete for a nomination to the June 30 primary ballot. Calvarese’s lawsuit last month.

“We’ve made the difficult decision to suspend my campaign to represent Colorado’s 4th Congressional District,” Calvarese’s campaign . “Congratulations to Eileen Laubacher and her team. I hope this carries through to a win in November.”

The two had competed for support in local caucuses and county assemblies ahead of the district assembly. Calvarese thanked her supporters and said only that “I’m sorry we fell short” in Tuesday. She also was trailing Laubacher in fundraising at the end of 2025.

In a statement Wednesday, Laubacher said Calvarese “has helped elevate the visibility of this race and engage people across the district in meaningful ways.”

“It����ap time to turn the corner and focus fully on what comes next and what matters most: defeating Lauren Boebert in November,” she said.

Laubacher, a longtime Republican and then unaffiliated voter, . She had the biggest haul of the final quarter of last year of any candidate running for Congress in Colorado, pulling down just over $2 million and bringing her contribution total in the election cycle to nearly $6.5 million.

She also had about five times the cash on hand that Calvarese had at year’s end.

Calvarese was chasing the Democratic nomination through the congressional assembly process only, while Laubacher had been competing both at the assembly and by submitting signatures to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office in March to get on the primary ballot through the petition process.

Laubacher’s petition has from state elections officials. But she stands as the only Democratic candidate left in the race after contenders John Padora and Jenna Preston neither petitioned their way onto the ballot nor were listed as contenders at Thursday’s district assembly on the website.

Laubacher will have a tough road ahead in the 4th District, given its makeup as the most Republican-leaning district in the state. Calvarese lost to Boebert in 2024 by over 10 percentage points after Boebert switched over from Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District.