August 25, 2025 02:00 PM UTC

Barb Kirkmeyer's Campaign For Governor Is All But Launched

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• by: Colorado Pols

Four years ago, then-Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl was on the run from inquiring reporters after a questionably lengthy campaign “pre-launch” period, during which the independent expenditure campaign operating on Ganahl’s behalf could money up while Ganahl carried out a “podcast tour” of the state that served as a campaign tour in all but name. Once Ganahl’s formal campaign launched, as readers remember well, things didn’t go well, with a series of gaffes leading to a disastrous embrace of the furry fringe and eventual lopsided defeat in November of 2022.

Ahead of the 2026 season, the Republican candidate expected to have the support of the party’s kingpin donors, state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, has been conducting her own slow roll toward a campaign launch since early this year. Rumors of Kirkmeyer’s imminent entry into the race circulated in the spring, but the legislative session and then the special session to address the budget cuts forced on the state by Kirkmeyer’s Republican colleagues in Washington delayed her formal launch–which we’re now watching for right after the upcoming Labor Day holiday.

But while Kirkmeyer’s campaign is on the pre-launch down-low publicly, her upcoming launch was betrayed by recent edits to the website kirkmeyerforcolorado.com, which is now a password-protected development site. A look at the source code for the only publicly available page unveiled the incipient campaign’s new logo:

And not much else other than confirmation that a statewide run by Kirkmeyer is past the logo design phase. Messagewise, Sen. Kirkmeyer has been previewing her expected campaign message for some months with the special session as a rehearsal, and it hasn’t gone well. Kirkmeyer, who shares responsibility for the state budget every year as a member of the Joint Budget Committee, is obligated like the rest of her partisan colleagues to redirect the blame for the billion-dollar hole blown in the state budget as a direct consequence of the federal “We’re All Going To Die Act” reconciliation budget bill. But the weak excuses local Republicans are making for their federal counterparts aren’t going to work on Colorado voters, and Kirkmeyer is kicking off her campaign with a massive, mostly likely unrepairable, deficit of credibility.

From there, Kirkmeyer will have to explain such wacky moments in her long record in Weld County’s wild conservative politics, like her leading role in a failed movement by a handful of rural counties to secede from the rest of Colorado and form the new state of North Colorado. It’s fair to ask whether, in the likely event that Kirkmeyer gets blown out of the governor’s race in 2026, she’ll rekindle a secession movement in Weld County as they do periodically after Democrats statewide have a particularly good election.

And of course, Kirkmeyer is no shoo-in for the Republican nomination, with a host of competitors and even Ganahl herself throwing shade at a prospective Kirkmeyer run. Whatever Kirkmeyer says to appease the far right in the primary will come back to haunt her in the general election even if she prevails. Like we learned in her 2022 losing bid for Congress, Kirkmeyer will say anything she thinks is necessary in order to win, including lies so monstrous their intent is to confound voters more than win them over.

As long as Coloradans are allowed to vote freely in 2026, we expect them to once again punish local Republicans resoundingly for the sins of their federal big brethren. Even if Barb Kirkmeyer knew how to differentiate herself from her unpopular party, which she doesn’t, it wouldn’t be enough.

But someone has to at least try.