Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez was one of the members who voted no, explaining that she didn’t support the decision for Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell to accrue those costs before the council could even consider the extension. The arrangement, which was approved 8-4, has also attracted scrutiny recently because of billing rates charged by the Denver-based firm that are higher than cities often pay for outside work.

“Council should not be put in a position where work has already been performed, and we’re asked to approve the money afterwards,” Alvidrez said. “I don’t believe we’ve been given enough information on the competing firms, their rates or why this representation is the best value for taxpayers.”

Denver’s original contract with the firm was for $470,000 to represent the city in two lawsuits, one brought by Everett Martinez, then the general counsel for Denver International Airport, and another by Jessica Calderon, who worked in the Office of Social Equity and Innovation and was laid off last year. The added dollars will bring the contract total to nearly $1 million.

Besides Alvidrez, council members Stacie Gilmore, Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Shontel Lewis voted no on the contract addition. Council members Kevin Flynn, Darrell Watson, Amanda Sawyer, Chris Hinds, Paul Kashmann, Amanda Sandoval, Jamie Torres and President Diana Romero-Campbell voted in favor.

The city is paying the firm $800 per hour as a “blended rate” that includes work from both senior and junior attorneys at the firm.

Alvidrez and Gilmore both also said they were concerned that the firm represents the Geo Group, which operates a facility in Aurora for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Flynn said none of the outside law firms that work with the city would pass a client “purity test” and that Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell also worked with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office to investigate Republican gubernatorial candidate Victor Marx for alleged campaign finance violations.

“I think we need to weigh everything in the balance,” he said.

City Attorney Miko Brown said if the council rejected the contract, the city likely would have had to pay even more to bring a new firm up to speed.

“We will actually spend more money if we do not pass this contract and we are forced to retain new counsel,” she said.

The council’s decision comes after CBS Colorado has broadcast and published several stories scrutinizing the city’s contract with Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell, including to the law firm, where she once worked. Denver’s Board of Ethics is investigating two complaints over the matter, . Brown has denied those allegations.

The city’s insurance company separately chose to hire the firm to handle legal work for the city and DIA after the death of a man who walked in front of an airplane on a runway and was hit by an engine. His death has been ruled a suicide. that the insurance company initially chose a different firm but changed course after Brown’s insistence.

The council also voted 11-1 on Monday to delay a vote on several airport-related contracts, including one with Key Lime Air, which operates deportation flights for ICE, for a subsidiary to continue providing passenger service out of DIA. In December 2025, the council rejected another DIA contract with the company over its ICE work.

Sawyer was the only member to vote against the delay.

The case stems from donations accepted by the Republican gubernatorial nominee’s campaign during the earlier primary race. The fine is one of the largest requested in at least the past eight years, a spokeswoman for the state said.

The hearing officer, Macon Cowles, issued his initial finding Friday afternoon, more than two weeks after a two-day hearing during which the Marx campaign conceded that it had accepted 200 individual contributions that exceeded the $1,450 limit under state law. The campaign attributed it to innocent mistakes made by a first-time political candidate.

The illegal donations — which totaled more than $87,000 — began coming in shortly after Marx entered the race last October and ended in July, more than two months after the campaign first received a complaint that it was violating campaign finance law. A former Colorado GOP official, Darcy Schoening, began filing complaints in May alleging Marx had accepted excess contributions.

Marx, a former nonprofit ministry leader, defeated two Republicans in the June 30 primary and now faces Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser and other candidates in the Nov. 3 election.

On Friday, Cowles assessed a $100 fine for each of the excess contributions and then doubled the fine, citing the case’s aggravating factors. That went above the request from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office, which had sought a 75% multiplier.

Cowles also recommended a $1,104.50 fine for 10 cash contributions that exceeded the legal limit, for a total fine of $57,647.16.

The Marx campaign, which did not return a message seeking comment by late Friday afternoon, can next submit “exceptions” to the deputy secretary of state, agency spokeswoman China Scroggins said. The deputy will then issue a final order, and Marx can appeal that decision to a state judge.

“This would be one of the largest fines ever requested in this context in Secretary (Jena) Griswold’s tenure, if not ever in Colorado,” Scroggins said.

Cowles’ ruling called the scale of the Marx campaign’s violations “without precedent.”

Paul Teske, a professor at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs and a longtime observer of state politics, said he didn’t recall fines on that level against state candidates in the past. It’s more typical to see one-off mistakes than a recurring pattern of ignoring the rules, he said.

In Teske’s view, candidates for Colorado’s four major state offices, including governor, “need to show voters their competence in dealing with legal and fiscal rules.”

“You can hire accountants and lawyers with expertise in campaign finance compliance even if your campaign staff don’t have that expertise,” he said.

The hearing officer noted that Marx, in a July podcast interview, had played down the violations and claimed the campaign was aware of them before the complaints began to mount.

“Candidate Victor Marx, who twice certified familiarity with (state campaign finance law), told the public in July that ‘we didn’t even know’ the limit, that ‘we refunded everybody,’ and that the complaints were ‘a nothing burger,’ ” Cowles wrote. “None of those statements were accurate.”

During the hearing last month, campaign attorney Chris Murray asked for a fine of $9,718.67. He said the campaign had reported all of the money accurately — which is why the overages were detected — and had begun to refund people.

“The campaign has not behaved as a scofflaw,” Murray said in September. “The Marx campaign has behaved in the way that you would expect a first-time candidate and first-time campaign to behave, which is to say they got out over their skis a little bit and they had difficulty complying with, frankly, a very technical and very difficult set of campaign finance regulations for a first-time candidate.”

But Cowles was unmoved by that plea for mercy.

He noted that the financial reporting system will alert campaigns when they’ve reported excess contributions and that the campaign continued accepting the improper donations even after it was aware of them. What’s more, he said, even after the campaign began trying to address the problem, it had not refunded all of the contributions or properly reattributed them to another donor.

As Marx had repeatedly touted, he raised nearly $3 million during the primary campaign, far more than his GOP primary opponents. But instead of hiring an experienced operative to handle its financial reporting, the campaign relied on another political candidate who, Cowles noted, was simultaneously running for office, overseeing Marx’s campaign compliance and working as a math teacher.

“The record shows a pattern of knowing indifference to constitutional prohibitions,” Cowles wrote. He later added: “The person charged with compliance did not know what he was doing, and no one above him made sure that he did. Why an experienced professional was not hired when the Marx Campaign carried a balance of ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ in its bank account was not explained by (the campaign).”

The excess contributions are not the only campaign finance complaints the Marx campaign faces.

He has also been accused of improperly running an online merchandise shop; in July, Marx directed supporters to visit the shop as a means to support his campaign, even if they had already donated the maximum amount.

The campaign later said the shop was run by a third-party limited liability company, although campaign finance reports subsequently identified Marx as the owner of the company.

Marx called that report a “silly mistake” and said he was not affiliated with the LLC. A complaint about the merchandise shop remains pending.

I was displeased for two reasons. First, and most importantly, I thought it was important and valuable for the two major party candidates to debate the critical issues facing our state. My impression was that both candidates wanted to do that, and I knew the vast majority of Colorado voters wanted to see this happen.

Second, I was unhappy because contrary to statements that Marx was making publicly in recent days, my understanding was he had agreed to the terms of the debate and had separately agreed to my serving as a real moderator and not a potted plant, which appears to be his current definition of what he wants a moderator to be.

Recently, Marx posted : “Aaron attempted to insert himself as a moderator and change the format of the challenge I had already made to Phil. I did not agree to that change, nor did I agree to another debate format. So, respectfully, any suggestion that I agreed to something different is simply incorrect.”

I have moderated almost 100 debates and forums and have done almost 250 political programs, including 75 in one single election year. My team and I are prudent enough to know that when we are involved with the arrangement of a debate among political candidates, it is critically important to get confirmation of the terms of any debate in writing.

That had been done with both the Marx and Weiser campaigns. In fact, what the excerpted email exchange below indicates is what the very specific and detailed terms were that each campaign agreed to abide by, and, in particular, the confirmation of those terms by the Marx campaign.

I emailed Rachael Flick on Monday, Sept. 7, a long outline of the agreed-to terms of the event, saying: “If this all looks good to you, I would like to immediately reach out to the Weiser campaign and see if I can get them to agree. If I am unsuccessful, we will go ahead with the one-on-one interview. Just give me the “Thumbs Up” as soon as possible today.”

The response a day later was: “This is our thumbs up.”

I have never had a candidate, after his or her campaign has confirmed the terms of a debate, suddenly say his campaign staff went rogue and agreed without his knowledge. In this instance, I find this hard to believe for two reasons. First, the Marx campaign staff is very small. It consists only of several people (and I was impressed with all of them as individuals). I find it difficult to believe that Marx did not know what his staff said he had agreed to do.

Secondly, if, while managing such a small number of people, Marx was unaware of what they were doing or that they agreed without his permission to what likely could become the campaign’s single greatest media event, that is not a positive indication of his communication and management skills. From someone seeking to manage almost 150,000 state employees and an annual budget of over $40 billion, this is not a good omen.

I was excited for Colorado voters because the leadership at Denver7 – News Director Russell Haythorn and General Manager Brian Joyce – had proposed a plan that provided millions of Colorado citizens with maximum access to the debate. It included live streaming, prime-time broadcasting, advance promotional efforts, and multiple analysis segments which would serve the people of Colorado in a comprehensive and extraordinary way.

Not only did the Marx campaign confirm the terms of the debate, but they provided me with a quote about the event (and, I’ll note, the Marx quote was much more flattering to me than the quote from Weiser — LOL).

These messages clearly indicate Marx agreed to the debate and to having me serve as the moderator, as well as recognizing how my service always has been impartial and fair. In fact, when we met in person a couple of weeks ago, I told him how much I appreciated these kind words.

In my exchange of emails with him, he has not denied the accuracy of the quote. With all of this in mind, it seems difficult for an objective person to conclude that Marx had never agreed to the debate or my service as its moderator.

I am disappointed. It would have been OK if he told people that he changed his mind. But it’s not OK to tell people I somehow fabricated the story that there was a debate and that he had agreed to it. In fact, both campaigns had agreed the debate would be held on Oct. 5, that it would be recorded at (my new television home), that they would join me for at least an hour, that I could ask whatever questions I wanted, and that there would be an audience.

The approval I received was not from an intern tweeting at midnight. Rather, it was from the spokesperson for the campaign, empowered by Marx to represent him.

Initially, when Marx began denying there had been an agreement to debate, I did not respond because I still had hopes that we could make the debate happen, so I avoided engaging with him about who was telling the truth.

However, as Marx’s responses began to evolve and were becoming more expansive and inaccurate about my role, he forced me to respond. That is what this column is doing. It’s my hope that Marx, from this point on, will be honest with the people of Colorado about what happened or, at the minimum, elect not to say anything at all.

From a political perspective, it is rather fascinating to see the behavior of these two candidates. They both are acting in a manner that is opposite of what political experts traditionally would expect.

In Weiser’s case, if one of the nation’s top Democratic strategists such as Steve Welchert had been advising him — knowing Weiser is significantly ahead of Marx in the polls and is highly likely to win the General Election – the advice would be to avoid debates. The traditional political strategy is, “Why should a leading candidate do anything that publicizes his or her opponent?”

Surprisingly, Weiser is dispensing with traditional political advice, and is appearing everywhere he can and meeting as many people as he can across the state. He has said he is willing to debate Marx anywhere and anytime in Colorado. His philosophy is to “show up.”

Marx, on the other hand, if he were being advised by a nationally recognized Republican strategist, such as former GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams – while likely trailing Weiser significantly  – would be told to appear and debate with Weiser at every possible opportunity.

Instead, Marx has insisted that the two candidates engage on their own, in a free-for-all, with either no moderator or a moderator whose only function is to serve as a timekeeper. Weiser has repeatedly rejected Marx’s proposal and has described it as “unserious.”

Yet Marx, despite knowing he likely lags behind Weiser significantly, continues to obstinately insist on his mano a mano format, knowing that what it means is that he will not debate Weiser. It means he also knows he will miss the opportunity to present his views on the key issues of the day facing Colorado to hundreds of thousands of voters who still, right at this moment, want to know what Victor Marx stands for.

So, in addition to the issues raised regarding whether or not he agreed to debate and whether or not he agreed to have me serve as the debate’s moderator, perhaps the most disconcerting element of this situation is the fact that Victor Marx is unwilling to present himself to the voters of Colorado unless it is under conditions he unilaterally dictates.

Based on the challenges he has faced during his lifetime and his extraordinary achievements, as detailed in his autobiography, Marx, of all people, should not be afraid to debate Phil Weiser. I am uncertain why he fears participating in a debate that does not give him absolute control of the format and the topics. His behavior is discordant and disconcerting.

Despite my displeasure, I take none of this personally. I still would be honored to moderate the debate between Marx and Weiser. I am confident, at the end of the debate, both of them would feel that I had been fair and that they each had ample and equal time to express their views. For three decades on the air, my focus has been serving viewers in Colorado as a fair, balanced and nonpartisan moderator.

I admire and have tremendous respect for anyone who runs for public office these days. It has become a far greater sacrifice for candidates and, even worse, for their families than it has ever been in the past several decades. It can even be life-threatening.

So, my great respect for Victor Marx and Phil Weiser remains unchanged. If Marx would like to join me on Oct. 5, there will be a comfortable chair waiting for him. I would still warmly welcome his participation. Confirmation from his campaign by email would be sufficient.

Aaron Harber, past winner of the Colorado Broadcasters Association’s top honor as “Broadcaster of the Year,” is the host and moderator of “ on Rocky Mountain PBS.  Email: Producer@HarberTV.com.��

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A handful of issue committees reported spending more than $3 million total on three ballot measures between Sept. 3 and Sept. 16, the period covered by campaign finance reports due Monday night. One backs an effort to increase state education funding, another is fighting a measure that would increase penalties for fentanyl possession and the third group backs an amendment that would require extra identification on returned mail ballots.

Most of the money was spent on advertising, according to campaign finance reports.

Two-thirds of that total, $2 million, was reported by the Colorado Voter Trust Initiative, a committee backing Amendment 84. That proposed constitutional amendment would require voters to write either the last four digits of their Social Security number, their full driver’s license number or an ID card number on their ballot return envelopes.

That committee has raised $4.2 million already, most of which has come from an Ohio-based dark-money group that doesn’t disclose its donors. It has spent more than $3.3 million this election cycle.

Yes for Colorado Kids, which is supported by education groups, spent $715,000. The committee backs Proposition NN, a measure that would funnel more money to education by allowing the state to keep revenue that would otherwise be returned under a cap set by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

That measure was put on the Nov. 3 ballot by Democrats in the legislature. The recent spending has brought the group’s total up to more than $1.2 million.

Coloradans for Real Safety Solutions, which is opposing an Advance Colorado-led proposal to increase criminal penalties for fentanyl possession and distribution, reported spending $426,000 to fight against Proposition 132 over the two-week period covered by the campaign finance reports. It has spent almost $700,000 total and reported raising more than $1 million, including from philanthropist Lynn Schusterman and the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.

Other groups involved with ballot advocacy haven’t yet ramped up public spending.

Meanwhile, the candidate races are also starting to see bigger cash dropped on them. The Senate Majority Fund, which supports Republican candidates for the state legislature’s upper chamber, reported spending almost $1 million to defend one GOP-held Senate seat and to flip two occupied by Democrats — further highlighting the battlegrounds that could determine if Republicans blunt Democratic power or sink into superminority status in the legislature.

Democrats are one seat shy of outnumbering Republicans by 2-to-1 margins in each chamber of the legislature.

The GOP independent expenditure committee is focusing its spending on supporting Dana Charles in Pueblo and former Sen. Rob Woodward in Loveland. Those two seats are currently represented by Democrats. The committee is also spending to support Sen. John Carson, a Highlands Ranch Republican, who is being challenged by former school board member Kevin Leung.

The Democratic legislative campaign committees, All Together Colorado and Colorado Way Forward, did not report spending on advertising, though each spent more than $100,000 on consultants and professional services.

Neither major party gubernatorial candidate reported spending more than $200,000 to kick off September. Republican Victor Marx reported $175,000 spent, versus $191,000 raised, with most of the money going to consultants and other professional services.

Democrat Phil Weiser reported spending $198,000, more than half of which went to advertising, while raising almost $275,000.

The spending is expected to ramp up as ballots start arriving in mailboxes. County clerks will start mailing ballots to voters on Oct. 2, a full month before Election Day.

Why wasn’t the Centennial State’s flagship university doing more to support entrepreneurship?

He answered with , an interdisciplinary research center and technology hub. The barrier-breaking enterprise’s founding, evolution and legacy show the thinking that has carried Weiser to the Democratic nomination for governor. It also gives some insight into how — if he’s elected — he may approach some of the biggest issues facing Colorado.

In 1999, Weiser was new on the Boulder campus, and the first tech bubble had not yet burst. The startup spirit was thriving around the city, recalled , a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, in a recent interview. But the university itself wasn’t playing much of a role, or at least it wasn’t capitalizing on the environment.

Enter Weiser, just five years removed from graduating from law school himself — and a long way from becoming the state’s two-term attorney general. He’d just finished a stint with the Clinton administration’s Justice Department, where he focused on telecommunications matters, and was trying to use his time in academia to make an impact on the wider world, Weiser recalled in an interview.

That chance arose only a few months into his time at CU Boulder, with a telecommunications conference. That one event started as a chance for Weiser to host an interesting conversation, with “intellectual honesty and intellectual rigor,” he said.

The program turned into a hit before it even began, Weiser said. He raised enough sponsorship money to schedule a second event. The conferences ended up as precursors to , a place that now supports interdisciplinary events and programs year-round to help steer technology policy and connect law students, researchers, entrepreneurs and others working in the field.

Feld, who moved to Boulder in the mid-1990s, recalled being impressed by Weiser’s ideas and openness. What’s more, this was a law school professor, out of all of the university’s wide-ranging faculty — which included those in more obvious pro-entrepreneurship departments like business and engineering — convening people from different interests and backgrounds.

But CU could also do more, he thought.

“When I showed up, I said: ‘This is super-awesome, but the rest of CU is kind of sucking around entrepreneurship — and I’d really like to do more about entrepreneurship,’ ” Feld said, now acknowledging that “sucking” was a bit of frustrated hyperbole at the time. “(Weiser) didn’t say, ‘Not my area.’ He didn’t say, ‘Go talk to the business school.’ His first question was, ‘Why does CU suck around entrepreneurship?’ ”

Weiser said he recognized even then that there was “a vacuum and an opportunity” for CU Boulder to serve as a hub for policymakers, business leaders, researchers and others involved in the burgeoning tech field. He recalled telling Feld and others that he didn’t know why CU Boulder was so hard to work with. His answer was to suggest they try to do things together — and see what they could build.

“It was important to me to not be someone who disappeared into the ivory tower,” Weiser said of starting Silicon Flatirons. “I wanted to remain engaged in the real world.”

From professor to politician

The question — and the result — provides a peek into Weiser’s thought process, leadership approach and willingness to take initiative, from a time long before he was the frontrunner to become Colorado’s next governor. He would spend 15 years at the University of Colorado — before and after another Justice Department stint — as a professor, as the founder and executive director of Silicon Flatirons, then eventually as dean of the law school.

People who worked with Weiser then describe him as a man who never confined himself to one academic arena, as a person who was more focused on today and tomorrow than yesterday, and on where he could best put his energies to use. He also didn’t wear his political aspirations on his sleeve, assuming he even had them 25 years ago.

Weiser didn’t have any apparent scandals during his time at CU and turned down a reappointment as dean of the law school only when his political goals did start to emerge in 2016, ahead of his run for Colorado attorney general in the 2018 election.

“The nice thing as dean is, I didn’t have to be cleaning up messes,” former CU Law School Dean Hal Bruff, who first hired Weiser there, joked before offering superlatives about Weiser. “That wasn’t true of every faculty member I knew. He’d report in, and I’d just say, ‘You go boy.’ ”

Weiser’s past at CU didn’t figure heavily in this year’s Democratic primary, which resulted in him defeating U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. It hasn’t been a big factor so far in the general election race against Republican Victor Marx, the founder of a nonprofit ministry whose unusual backstory has faced significant scrutiny.

But some of the traits people saw in Weiser back in his CU days — a willingness to bring together competing interests, to put egos aside, to collaborate and experiment in the interest of a common aim — are visible in his recent accomplishments as attorney general. They also point to how Weiser may govern Colorado: not with flash or bravado, but as a “bureaucratic entrepreneur,” as one associate put it, with the ability to rework (or sidestep) the confines of government to build new institutions and achieve aims bigger than himself.

They also give a sense of how Weiser, if elected, might navigate the travails awaiting the next governor. Those are likely to include ongoing budget cuts and working with Democratic legislative majorities that are poised to wrestle with challenges like business and tech regulation, affordability, water, education, childcare and more.

In the past month, Weiser was credited with helping negotiate a political peace agreement on the state’s road funding, averting a potentially bruising election fight this fall that would have pitted lawmakers against the construction industry.

The industry had proposed a constitutional amendment requiring the state to use vehicle-related taxes and fees to pay for road construction and safety; Democratic legislators, fearing it would handcuff their ability to pay for other state needs, passed a law attempting to neuter the amendment before it could take effect. Weiser’s deal promised even more money for road construction while stopping the proposed constitutional requirement.

He for a recent settlement deal with Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, over a multistate lawsuit alleging the company intentionally sought to addict young users to its platforms, and then lied to the public about it. The settlement, worth up to nearly $18 billion, was about more than just financial punishment.

To end the lawsuit, Meta agreed to a number of policy concessions that were lauded by public health experts, such as stronger age-verification policies, time-of-use restrictions for young users, and automatic blocking of content about eating disorders and self-harm.

Weiser said that last point also served to underscore how he’d evolved since the early days at CU.

Back then, a lot of the conferences focused on the upside of the internet and the optimism ushered in by the new age. Now, Weiser said, he’s more aware of “a dark side” to the technology — and despite his closeness to some of tech’s most influential people, he’s still willing to “always search for the truth and take it wear it leads.”

‘Persistence in innovative ideas’

During the hiring process back in 1999, Bruff said two aspects of Weiser stood out: Weiser’s “rather astonishing” energy, and his expertise in telecommunications law. In December 1998, only about a quarter of U.S. households — 26.2% — , demonstrating a prescience about the importance of the looming technology.

He characterized Weiser’s stewardship of the Silicon Flatirons program as having a “persistence in innovative ideas.”

“He was willing to persist in the strategies that he thought would work,” Bruff said.

The program’s alumni have gone on to serve on boards of venture capital firms and as experts on emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence. It has served as a crucial link between the university and the wider startup world, opening doors to expertise, partnerships and discourse as well as to students trying to find their footing.

Over the past 25 years, the program has served as a jumping-off point not just for technology policy and firms, but for the very foundations of the modern internet, such as the principle of . The principle dictates a nondiscrimination standard for internet traffic, meaning providers and regulators can’t steer where users go or throttle traffic for certain ideas.

Professor Tim Wu, then of the University of Virginia, introduced the idea at a 2003 Silicon Flatirons conference. It has since been within telecommunications law.

, a retired law school professor and former executive director of Silicon Flatirons, said the underlying philosophy of the center ties back to foundations laid by Weiser.

“From the origin, (Silicon Flatirons) was never just about law and legal policy matters,” he said. “Phil had, and continues to have, a real interest in the economic perspectives, the business perspectives, the underlying technology and engineering perspectives. That caught my attention because he was, from the start, the most multidisciplinary professor I met.”

Silicon Flatirons itself fell outside the typical incentive structure for a new university professor, Bernthal said. Most new hires, who don’t have tenure yet, are told to publish research as much and as fast as they can.

Weiser didn’t neglect that part of the job, but in Silicon Flatirons, Bernthal said, he built something bigger than another tenured professor.

Bernthal described working “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Weiser at Silicon Flatirons as a fellow there before succeeding Weiser as its leader. He was impressed by Weiser’s ability to multitask while serving as a panel moderator — and then to proceed to ask insightful, thoughtful questions of the experts without missing a beat.

But perhaps more important, Bernthal recalled observing a person who cared more about building up the institutions he worked within than about building himself up. He called Weiser a “bureaucratic entrepreneur,” in the sense that Weiser never got trapped by the machine of the system, and constantly shifted it toward those end goals.

“He is someone who is in these projects for the right reasons,” Bernthal said. “And those reasons are not for the glorification of Phil. They’re because he believes in the work that those institutions do. He believed in Silicon Flatirons, and now he believes in the attorney general’s office. … I think if he’s in (the governor’s office), he’ll make it not just better while he’s there, he’ll make the state government better even after he’s gone.”

Connecting CU to entrepreneurs

Feld, for his part, called Weiser “the canonical example” of how a university should interact with the entrepreneurial world.

The university world, historically and generally, viewed itself as the center of its solar system. Its faculty would spin off research that companies could harness, creating an orbit effect like planets around a sun. Weiser and others behind the initiative turned that concept on its side, saying the university should instead be a convening force — so that startups could feed off of each other and harness the expertise and viewpoints of others.

That willingness to pivot a quarter-century ago demonstrates qualities that Feld thinks would translate well to the governorship. (Feld was an early endorser of Weiser in the primary. He also backed his attorney general run in 2018.)

“He is not a siloed leader,” Feld said. “He is not afraid, as a leader, to work across boundaries. He’s very, very comfortable exploring and engaging with things where he is not the primary power player, or he is not the top-down leader.”

Weiser, reflecting on the center, said it taught him a number of key lessons that he’s carried with him — among them, to experiment, to never lose focus on intellectual honesty and wide perspectives, not to limit himself or his team to one discipline, and the importance of “a low-ego, high let’s-get-stuff-done mindset.”

Russ Moore, the former provost of CU, hired Weiser in 2011 to lead the law school. He beat out several “crackerjack” applicants, despite prior experience on campus — something that can often be seen as a knock as leaders seek outsiders offering fresh perspectives, Moore said.

Five years later, Moore was ready to offer Weiser an extension when he found out the dean had his eyes on the attorney general’s office. As a consolation, he said, Weiser did pick up the brewery tab.

Fundraising and fighting to keep the growth of CU’s law school tuition — already high among peer institutions — in check were among the feathers in his cap. He also spearheaded a tuition forgiveness program for law school graduates who practiced in underserved areas.

While Silicon Flatirons preceded Weiser’s time as dean, Moore said it showcased the thinking that he carried into the job. Traditionally, law schools act like “castles on the hill,” separate from the rest of campus.

Weiser broke down some of that barrier, in his view.

“He was good at convincing not only his faculty, but other faculties, that for a faculty member to be successful, they don’t necessarily have to be the prototypical law professor. They can have different qualities,” Moore said, citing Silicon Flatirons as an example. “He wasn’t afraid to value people who brought nontraditional approaches to the activities that went on in the law school, and I think the law school benefited from that.”

Less than a month before ballots start arriving in mailboxes , Marx this week reported having about $215,000 in the bank. Weiser, the state’s attorney general, reported about $827,000 in his campaign account.

In the most recent campaign fundraising filings, covering July 28 through Sept. 2 and due Tuesday, Weiser reported raising almost $687,000. Marx raised almost $625,000.

But Weiser spent less than half of his haul — about $229,000 — and much of that was on payroll. Marx, meanwhile, spent almost 90% of his new fundraising, or more than $551,000. More than half of the total — almost $335,000 — went to a direct-mail fundraising company.

Both major-party candidates also have independent expenditure committees supporting them, and those can spend and raise unlimited funds, albeit without any coordination with the candidates’ campaigns. Both operations appear to have gone largely dark following the June 30 primary election. Freedom IEC, the group backing Marx, reported spending about $29,000, with about $28,000 raised, over the past month. Fighting For Colorado, the group backing Weiser, reported spending about $124 and raising just over $3,000.

Labor Day historically marks the start of the sprint toward Election Day, with heavy spending expected in October to sway voters who haven’t made up their minds or cast their ballots yet. Election Day is Nov. 3.

Colorado clerks will begin mailing ballots to voters Oct. 2. Weiser is the heavy favorite to succeed term-limited Gov. Jared Polis, with Colorado voters choosing only one Republican governor in the past 50 years and the state trending steadily blue over the past decade.

Marx, a first-time candidate who’s a former nonprofit ministry leader, emerged from a bruising primary campaign that came down to only a few thousand votes over state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer — and ended with both of his GOP rivals saying they would not support him in the general election.

Marx’s candidacy has also been marred by ongoing questions about his biography and fundraising practices. On Aug. 31, the secretary of state’s office announced it was seeking against the Marx campaign for allegedly accepting donations over the state limit and “aggravating factors.”

A is slated to begin Thursday.

Among other candidates, Greg Lopez, a former short-term Republican member of Congress now seeking the governorship as an unaffiliated candidate, reported ending the latest campaign filing period with less than $18,000 on hand. He raised less than $17,000 during the period.

Other Colorado races

Here is how much money major-party candidates raised in other state races July 28 through Sept. 2, and how much they had on hand at the end of the reporting period:

Attorney General

• Michael Allen (Republican): raised $97,812.61, reported $62,506.59 on hand.
• Jena Griswold (Democrat): raised $241,521, reported $292,067.19 on hand.

Secretary of State

• Amanda Gonzalez (Democrat): raised $64,721.82, reported $84,499.32 on hand.
• James Wiley (Republican): raised $13,516.32, reported a debt of $4,305.11.

Treasurer

• Kevin Grantham (Republican): raised $9,231, reported $59,612.22 on hand.
• Jeff Bridges (Democrat): raised $13,101, reported $228,880.89 on hand.

In state legislative races, party political action committees that aim to expand or reduce Democrats’ majorities also reported recent fundraising and spending:

Colorado House of Representatives

• Colorado Way Forward (PAC supporting Democrats): raised $226,750, spent $38,583.18. Reported $1,179,792.08 total raised this cycle.
• New Day Colorado (PAC supporting Republicans): raised $112,505, spent $87,784.40. Reported $1,260,601.19 total raised this cycle.

State Senate

• All Together Colorado (PAC supporting Democrats): raised $217,575, spent $72,730.85. Reported $1,678,887.09 total raised this cycle.
• Senate Majority Fund (PAC supporting Republicans): raised $434,200, spent $189,419.75. Reported $1,928,319.11 total raised this cycle.

That attorney, Chris Murray, and the Republican candidate’s campaign have not returned messages over the past week seeking information about who is behind the shop. But a campaign finance report indicates it’s a limited liability company linked to Marx.

A promotional email from the store Wednesday included a disclaimer that it was funded by “Not Shook LLC,” a Wyoming company that was registered two weeks before Marx launched his campaign last year. The LLC’s owners are not included on its registration paperwork, but in late July, Marx’s campaign received a $5,000 contribution from the LLC for logo licensing.

The donation came from “Not Shook LLC — Victor Marx.” The address included in the contribution record is Marx’s campaign headquarters, which is also his nonprofit’s training center — and his former home — in Colorado Springs.

, Marx, a former nonprofit ministry leader, denied that he was behind Not Shook, saying: “I don’t have anything to do with it, period.” He said the campaign finance filing was incorrect.

“Inadvertently, they put my name on the TRACER report,” Marx continued, referring to the state’s campaign finance reporting system. “We had to correct that. It’s being cured as we speak. I never caught it because I never looked at it. I didn’t know anything. But that’s the way it was entered. Again, it’s just another silly mistake.”

He said he has not received any financial benefits from the third-party vendor.

Marx’s campaign has refused to answer questions about the vendor since Murray described the arrangement last week, and the financial disclosure — together with the online store’s email — provides the only insight into who’s handling the campaign’s unusual merchandise arrangement.

Martha Tierney, a veteran campaign attorney who has worked for the Colorado Democratic Party, said she had never seen a state-level campaign outsource its merchandise to a third party.

“I have never seen it here,” she said. “And I’ve certainly never seen this kind of a setup, where the candidate appears to own the merchandise shop.”

Marx has boosted the website: On July 30, three days after Not Shook’s donation to the campaign, that supporters who already had contributed the maximum to his campaign should visit the store.

He previously acknowledged that the campaign errantly had accepted donations above what individuals were allowed to give under Colorado law. The individual maximum is $1,450.

The store, he suggested, offered another path for maxed-out supporters.

“If they order merchandise, there’s no limit on that. They can order as much as they want. That will really help us,” Marx told his wife in the interview. 9News was the first to report on Marx directing people to the site.

Under state campaign finance rules, LLCs that donate to candidate campaigns must identify an individual associated with the donation. Not Shook’s contribution to Marx’s campaign did not mention any other owners or company officers. Last year, the LLC was registered in Wyoming on the same day that Marx bought his campaign website domain name, according to campaign finance reports.

Murray did not return an email seeking comment Wednesday. The same day, Marx spokeswoman Rachael Flick directed The Denver Post to Murray’s radio interview. She did not respond to prior requests about the third-party vendor and declined to comment further in a follow-up email Thursday.

Marx’s Democratic opponent, Attorney General Phil Weiser, also runs a merchandise shop through his campaign website, and his financial reports include expenditures for running it. There’s also an outside merchandise store purporting to sell Weiser merchandise. A Weiser spokesman said Thursday that the shop was not affiliated with the campaign and that the campaign was unaware of it until asked by The Post.

Questions about where money goes

The Marx-promoting outside merch store, , sells items with Marx’s campaign logo as well as his books and his branded coffee. It was created July 7, . Marx officially won the GOP primary, which was a close race, two days later.

The website lists no information about who operates it or whether it financially supports Marx’s campaign.

It sells routine campaign merchandise — bumper stickers, hats, shirts — as well as pricey “bundles” of Marx gear that run up to $1,299 a pop. The most expensive bundle includes a “private group Zoom” call with Marx.

The merchandising saga is the latest sideshow in which the Marx campaign has become embroiled in recent months. His campaign faces several campaign finance complaints and recently moved to refile nearly all of its financial reports.

He touted an endorsement that didn’t exist, expressed frustration at reporters’ ongoing focus on his difficult-to-verify personal history, and from other leading Republican figures. He joked in Loveland recently that other candidates didn’t want to appear in photos with him, according to the Colorado Sun.

In Murray’s interview last week with conservative radio host Jeff Hunt — a prominent Marx supporter — the campaign’s attorney said it had sold its merchandise in bulk to a third party for the same amount that the campaign paid for it. Murray indicated to Hunt that the outside entity was not affiliated with the campaign, and anyone purchasing things from it was not financially supporting Marx’s gubernatorial bid.

He said the merchandise was being sold for the price that the campaign paid to purchase it in the first place. The campaign has spent at least $108,000 on merchandise, according to campaign finance records.

Marx’s call for supporters to patronize the third-party merch shop spurred a campaign finance complaint that accused Marx of trying to get around individual donation limits. In an initial review, the secretary of state’s office wrote that the complaint alleged sufficient facts to support the complaint, and it gave Marx’s campaign until Friday to tell the state if it intended to fix the issues.

Tierney said it was unclear if the third-party setup violated state law. The state constitution prohibits people from acting as a “conduit” to funnel money into a campaign — but the definition of “conduit” does not include candidates and their immediate family members.

In any case, she said, the website appears to mislead voters.

“Are people being duped into thinking this is going to the campaign when it’s not — if in fact it����ap not?” she said.

‘The material was sold at cost’

The campaign continues to operate its own “official” merch store, although Marx’s website prominently directs people to the third-party outlet.

Murray told Hunt that selling merchandise wasn’t worth the effort for the campaign.

“The benefit, the financial benefit, is going to the merch store owners and operators. They are not campaign contributions to the Victor Marx campaign,” Hunt summarized back to Murray. “And the material was sold at cost. So there was no financial benefit back to the Victor Marx campaign. The merch store buys all these T-shirts, sells them themselves. I think the bottom line, Chris Murray, is that this is not Victor Marx’s merch store right now.”

“Yeah, that’s correct,” Murray replied.

Marx’s daughter, Brie Marx, directed her Instagram followers to the third-party store in mid-July, in a post that included a favorable comment from Marx’s wife. A former Marx spokesman that Brie Marx was handling the campaign’s merchandise sales. She’s received more than $22,000 from the campaign this year and is one of several people in Marx’s personal orbit who have been paid by the campaign.

The Post purchased a bumper sticker from the third-party merch store this month. It was shipped from a Colorado Springs address with a “Victor Marx for Governor” return label. The shipping address is a postal annex frequently used by a significant number of groups and businesses. Among them is another LLC established in Marx’s name, as well as his wife’s publishing company.

The merchant store did not charge The Post any sales tax for the bumper sticker. While campaigns often don’t charge sales tax for merchandise, that’s because the purchase is packaged as a contribution to the campaign, Tierney said.

But such a distinction seemingly wouldn’t apply to a third-party merchandise vendor that is not collecting donations and is not affiliated with a political campaign.

Last September, the same month that Not Shook LLC was registered in Wyoming, an Instagram account was created under the same name. The account appears never to have posted anything to its page, although it did boost Marx and criticize his then-GOP primary opponents in comments on other accounts’ posts. The account also follows several Marx-affiliated accounts, including one dedicated to his dogs and accounts for Marx’s family, various supporters and campaign staffers.

Sometime between late Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, the account’s name was changed. No one returned a Thursday direct message from a Post reporter, and by Thursday evening, the account was no longer visible.

Update, Aug. 28: This story was updated to include additional merchandise spending records.

Re: “Aurora police need more training,” Aug. 9 editorial.

As a former police officer, police chief, and a mediator for the U.S. Department of Justice, I have found that no other event raises the public consciousness as the police use of fatal force. This awareness is exacerbated when the person against whom fatal force is applied is an African American, Hispanic or other minority person.

The Denver Post editorial calls for more training and a public reckoning. In my experience, training is only one factor. Community trust is critical and must be developed over time through an open and honest relationship with the community that is served. The editorial mentions that the department culture must be changed. This is a key factor and originates with the attitude of the chief.

If the police chief stresses conduct that respects the sanctity of human life and follows up with close administrative review, the officers will respond accordingly. If the public believes that fatal force is used indiscriminately, then that trust cannot be achieved. The department’s mission statement should clearly state and emulate the respect for safeguarding human lives, police officers included. The Aurora Police Department’s mission statement, as indicated on its website, is: “To make Aurora safer every day.”

This would be a good step forward, create a mission and values statement which emphasizes the value of every human life and echoes the police code of ethics: “As a law enforcement officer my fundamental duty is to serve mankind; to safeguard lives and property; to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the constitutional rights of all men(persons) to liberty, equality and justice.” Police training should start with and include the mission statement and the values of the department.

Philip Arreola, Denver

Ask yourself in November if it really belongs in the Constitution

Re: “Fall Ballot Chock-Full,” Aug. 9 news story.

I was disturbed to read that as many as 10 of the citizen-led initiatives headed for our November ballot are constitutional amendments. When approached to add my signature to one of these, my response has been that the state Constitution is becoming a junk drawer stuffed with issues of the moment.

Some clearly collide – a proposed amendment to shift Colorado income tax from its flat rate to a graduated rate where high earners pay more, faces off against another amendment that would cap the state’s income tax.

Then there’s the “right to hunt and fish,” purporting to be a method for managing wildlife – which, let����ap be honest, it is not. Letting individuals decide how many fish or game animals they can kill is the opposite of wildlife management. This free-for-all disregards impacts on wildlife from climate change, habitat loss due to human encroachment, and the big picture of herd health and land carrying capacity. This is also a “solution” in search of a problem, and as a Coloradan, I already have a right to hunt and fish.

A right to use natural gas for cooking and heating? Does this really belong in the Constitution?

When you get your ballot, review these citizen referenda carefully and if they involve amending our Constitution, vote No.

Nancy B. Weil, Denver

Hunters can’t manage wildlife populations alone

I fully support the spirit of the Colorado Right to Hunt and Fish Initiative, but I take issue with proposing harvest regulations as the preferred population management method. Hunting is one tool in the wildlife manager’s kit and is not nearly as effective as might be expected.

As an ecologist who has primarily studied white-tailed deer, I have seen legitimate challenges to the assumption that hunting controls deer populations. There are simply too many other factors involved for hunting to play a primary role in population regulation. Even intense, targeted hunting has a very limited impact.

It is fruitless and possibly counterproductive to assign first-line responsibility to an activity that demonstrably cannot achieve desired results. But the wording of this amendment would prioritize hunting and fishing regulations as the preeminent tool for population management. This is a mistake.

If populations are low due to poor habitat quality, would hunters want the state to be forced to first try lowering bag limits and shortening seasons to reduce harvest and let more deer live to the next season? Of course not. Any sensible person would prefer to see effective habitat management begin immediately as the first step in recovery. Overabundant populations may be reduced somewhat by increased harvest, but even those results are typically small and transitory.

Let our wildlife professionals be free to choose their most effective strategies to provide sound, effective wildlife management benefiting the wildlife resource and the public (including hunters and fishermen!) seeking to enjoy it.

Phillip D. Jones, Grand Junction

Don’t make immigrants fear police

Don’t be fooled by Initiative 95, which is on the ballot in November. Initiative 95 will not make Colorado safer. This amendment would alter our constitution to require local law enforcement to collect and share information with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concerning any immigrant who is arrested for a felony or violent crime.

Immigrants in our communities are less likely to report a crime if they live in fear of local law enforcement. Immigrants historically have similar or lower crime rates as citizens. In fact, studies indicate that communities with high rates of immigrants are safer. Also, any person in America is innocent until proven guilty.

Of note, the League of Women Voters is against this initiative. They state, “a person charged with a violent crime is not necessarily guilty.” They also note that racial profiling could be used to locate immigrants charged with a crime.

Do not be taken in by the fear-mongering language of Initiative 95. What makes us safe and what makes us better is our humanity, our understanding that immigrants are people and that all of us are created equal.

 Bill J Fyfe, Denver

Did voters know what they were signing?

Re: “Colorado voters are being tricked into signing billionaire-backed petitions,” August 2 commentary.

When I saw petitioners outside our local King Soopers, I assumed they were collecting signatures for a good cause — why else would the store allow it?

Friends later told me the petition was for “voter ID.” Next time, I told the circulator that Colorado already requires some form of identification for in-person voting and verifies every mail ballot by signature. There is no documented fraud to justify changing the law.

He replied: “Tell that to Georgia.” That struck a nerve. Georgia’s 2020 fraud claims were investigated and repeatedly disproven, so hearing this from him felt like a tell about this petition’s purpose.

So I wondered who funded this ballot measure. The answer: Advance Colorado, a 501(c)(4) “dark money” nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors. The circulator is paid, not a volunteer. At their table, you could also find #95 (immigration reporting), #232 (locks in the current flat tax, blocking a graduated system), and #251/252/256 (blocking Colorado’s redistricting response). Voters needed to know what they were signing!

King Soopers isn’t endorsing anything — the sidewalk outside is a public forum. But voters deserve to know who’s funding what before they sign.

I support secure elections. I also support knowing who’s asking for my signature, and why.

Lorraine O’Hara, Thornton

Decades-old trope from Marx supporter was antisemitism

Re: “Victor Marx and Melat Kiros are horrible candidates but probably not antisemitic,” Aug. 9 opinion.

Sean Pond, Republican Montrose County commissioner, posted an antisemitic poster of Democratic Governor candidate Phil Weiser wearing the horns of a devil, and Krista Kafer passes it off as an “artless effort” by a Victor Marx supporter. She further instructs us that there’s “no point getting exercised by it.”

These comments come after reporter Kyle Clark had pointed out that it is a well-documented, centuries-old, ugly, antisemitic trope that’s been used to demonize Jews around the world, thus justifying violence against them, and Kafer still contends it was harmless?

Pond claimed he didn’t know that Weiser was Jewish. Does that imply he wouldn’t have done it had he known? Therefore, he knew the demeaning and dangerous nature of that image; we can’t know for certain.

But what I do know is we owe it to each other, to society, to any group that’s been marginalized or threatened, to educate ourselves and call out hate whenever we see it and demand that any image of it be taken down. When we know better, we must do better. That goes double for anyone who has a public forum.

Lynne Popkowski, Littleton

America’s tax system perpetuates inequality

Income inequality and affordability are real-life issues for at least half the country. Yet our income tax system rewards the wealthy and high earners, including large corporations, with generous loopholes and write-offs. This is the opposite of what is needed. Flip it upside down and give income tax write-offs to the lower half of earners (or thereabouts) for health insurance, childcare, rent or mortgage interest. Eliminate loopholes, gimmicks and write-offs for (as an example) those whose annual gross is $400k as individuals, $600k as a couple. Eliminate the same for large corporations and give the break to small businesses.

You would see the economy rapidly take off and the social safety net enhanced without creating another bureaucracy or agency to do oversight. No need to raise income tax rates either.

John W. Thomas, Fort Collins

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We have to hand it to Marx: setting completely unrealistic parameters for your only debate is a logistically clever way to hide from your opponent without looking like a complete coward. Marx’s refusal to debate won’t hurt Phil Weiser, who easily defeated U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet to become the Democratic nominee in a state that we think will likely trend left in backlash to President Donald Trump’s disastrous second term in office. Rather, voters in Colorado deserve to hear the candidates for governor answer tough questions, including Weiser and Marx.

Debates are a time-honored tradition in Colorado, and they historically have begun with the Club 20 debate in Grand Junction where Western Slope voters get the first crack at asking candidates about the policy issues that affect them most: water policy, the oil and gas industry, agriculture, wolf reintroduction and infrastructure investment.

Marx refused to go to the Club 20 debate, which is moderated by members of the Western Colorado group, a conservative-leaning coalition of business leaders, local governments and tribes from 22 counties. Marx isn’t the first candidate to snub Club 20, but mostly Democratic candidates skip the debate hoping to avoid elaborating their positions on thorny issues like wolves and hydraulic fracturing. When Gov. Jared Polis refused to attend the debate in 2018, we called it cowardly.

Weiser will be at the Club 20 debate on Sept. 19 at Asteria Theatre in Grand Junction.

“I’ve shown up to the Club 20 debate every time I’ve run for elected office,” Weiser wrote in a statement about the debate. “The challenges facing rural Colorado and the Western Slope are serious, and it’s critically important that our next governor listens to every community. As governor, I’ll always show up for Western Colorado.”

Marx posted on Facebook that he would only debate Weiser one time, and that the debate must be “a substantive, extended, candidate-to-candidate conversation without a moderator controlling the questions, topics, or direction of the discussion.” This offer to debate but only on his terms is a charade.

Such a debate would not be “substantive,” but would rather result in the candidates loudly talking over each other, repeating their talking points and exchanging barbs and insults. While that would be entertaining for a minute or two, it most certainly would not help inform voters. We aren’t sure what reputable neutral organization would even offer to host such an event.

Moderators serve a vital function in debates. No matter the format — town hall style events with the public asking questions of a single candidate or a panel event with multiple candidates fielding questions prepared ahead of time — moderators keep candidates on task, demand they answer tough questions and prevent any one candidate from filibustering. Moderators also play the important role of fact-checking candidates in real time.

Weiser has already agreed to debates with moderators in Colorado Springs with KOAA, and in Denver with 9News, and Weiser is working on setting up a debate co-hosted by The Denver Post and Denver7.

Weiser has been in political office and the public spotlight for eight years as attorney general. Marx is a political newcomer — a huge part of his appeal to his supporters — which means he has never taken stands on complex policies before. For example, Weiser is on the record as being willing to make pro-union adjustments to the Labor Peace Act. Colorado’s outgoing governor, Jared Polis, recently vetoed legislation that would have done just that. Marx has never taken a position on this legislation that we have seen.

Marx’s campaign is also whitewashing him as a candidate. Someone visiting his Facebook page would have to scroll for a very long time to get past his campaign’s recent polished posts about Colorado’s budget, public safety, and other domestic issues to find a March 15, 2026, repost simply saying: “I remember this.”

The video he shares was posted in 2018 but taken in 2016 when Marx was in Sinjar, Iraq, doing what his nonprofit predominantly does – delivering lamb and lion stuffed animals to women and children. The stuffed animals have a recorded prayer in a device that is played when a button is pushed.

“I don’t know why I’m whispering,” Marx whispers into the shaky camera he holds before speaking up. “Cause they can’t hear me. ISIS is right over there.” Marx points across a vast desert. “We need airstrikes. I could be a forward controller. I could call in airstrikes; just give me a laser … bomb that position right there. Boom! Bring them the good news, which is the Bible, and if they don’t go for that, bombs, bullets to stop the evil.”

Once an asset, Victor Marx’s extensive backstory becomes uncomfortable talking point in governor’s race

Marx says his organization has "rescued 45,000 women and children." But he has recently clarified during several interviews that what he means to say is that his organization has helped thousands of women and children spiritually with stuffed animals and prayers.

Marx has certainly done some rescue missions, but it's unclear how many. One of his first campaign videos in 2025 included a clip of him in Iraq riding in a car with a very small girl he said had no name or family and had recently been rescued from rubble in Mosul.

Marx has taken hard questions from journalists about his nonprofit, which raises about $7 million a year on pledges to rescue women and children from sex trafficking. Still, we know many hard questions remain to be asked of a man who wants to lead the state.

If we took Marx at his word on social media, a voter would assume that he, like his close personal friend Charlie Kirk, was the victim of an assassination attempt. , that "A gunman tried to kill me 3 months before I took this photo with Charlie." But Marx is actually talking about a family dispute that is captured in police records and a 911 call. Marx's brother-in-law was living in a trailer on his property in Colorado Springs. In a conversation recorded by the dispatcher, Marx says his brother-in-law was shooting out of the trailer and had not responded to his efforts to contact him by phone.

"I think we are going to need a unit out here to help us to get him to come out," Marx told the dispatcher.

We have questions about that event as well that we would like Marx to address publicly.

But more than fact-checking a candidate's past, voters need to know where Marx stands on policy issues.

Anyone can say they will make Colorado safer and more affordable, but voters deserve to know exactly what Marx intends to do when he is in the governor's office.

Colorado voters benefit from the vetting of candidates that happens in debates. There is ample time and opportunity in the coming months for Marx to get on the stage with Weiser and take tough questions.

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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.