October 23, 2025 01:44 PM UTC

Fundraising for Governor Shows Huge Gap for GOP's Kirkmeyer

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last week we dug through the campaign finance reports for major races in Colorado in 2026, and while we provided some brief analysis for every race, we thought it would be worthwhile to look a little closer at the top contest on the ballot: The open seat for Governor.

Here’s how the fundraising numbers compare for notable gubernatorial candidates in their first fundraising quarter of a given election cycle. We did not include Democrat Jared Polis (2018 and 2022) or Republican Victor Mitchell (2018), because both candidates were primarily self-funded in the early going.

[FFQ: First fundraising quarter; COH: Cash-on-hand]

This chart includes three candidates for 2026 — Democrats Phil Weiser and Michael Bennet, and Republican Barb Kirkmeyer. No other filed candidates for 2026 raised anywhere close to six digits in their first fundraising quarter.

As you can see, Weiser and Bennet are in a different stratosphere in terms of fundraising. Only Republican Walker Stapleton (2018) was anywhere close to the numbers put up by Weiser and Bennet in their first fundraising quarters.

Republican Barb Kirkmeyer is the top fundraiser for Republicans thus far in 2026, which is not great news for the GOP. Kirkmeyer’s fundraising is in the same area as what 2018 Republican hopefuls George Brauchler and Doug Robinson (Mitt Romney’s Nephew) produced in their first fundraising quarters the last time Colorado had an open seat for Governor. Brauchler was out of the race for Governor just a few months later; Robinson stayed until the end but finished in a distant fourth place in the June 2018 Republican Primary.

Kirkmeyer is nowhere near the fundraising numbers put up by Democrats Mike Johnston and Cary Kennedy in their first fundraising quarters in the 2018 cycle. Kirkmeyer’s overall fundraising was actually worse than that of 2022 GOP nominee Heidi Ganahl, but the totals look a little better because Kirkmeyer transferred $28k from her State Senate committee.

Kirkmeyer’s fundraising also looks weak compared to the four Democratic candidates running for Attorney General in 2026 (no serious Republican candidate has yet filed for AG). Jena Griswold (COH: $697,889); David Seligman (COH: $324,750); and Hetal Doshi (COH: $346,383) had significantly stronger first fundraising quarters than Kirkmeyer. Democrat Michael Dougherty (COH: $137,243) was in the same neighborhood when you subtract Kirkmeyer’s transfer from her State Senate committee.

Two months ago, the editorial board of The Denver Post damned Kirkmeyer with faint praise by calling her the best Republican gubernatorial candidate in Colorado in a decade. As we said at the time, you could certainly argue that Kirkmeyer is better than prior GOP nominees Stapleton (2018) and Ganahl (2022), but you would really have to squint to see the difference. Kirkmeyer will need to up her fundraising game for Q4, which will be the first reporting period in which she goes head-to-head against new GOP contender Victor Marx. If Marx outperforms Kirkmeyer by a significant amount, her hold on the claim as “Republican frontrunner” for 2026 will go up in smoke.