Greg Lopez Announces Campaign...for 2022

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by: Colorado Pols

Greg Lopez

Some day there will be an entire generation of Coloradans who don’t remember a time when Greg Lopez was not a candidate for statewide office.

The former Mayor of Parker ran for U.S. Senate in 2016 (he dropped out of the race before he could fail to make the Primary ballot) and sought the GOP nomination for Governor in 2018 to no avail. Lopez can’t run for Senate in 2020 without mounting a Primary challenge against incumbent Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma), so he has set his course for 2022 instead.

On Tuesday, Lopez announced via something called “The Richard Randall Show” that he will be a Republican candidate for Governor in three years:

Greg Lopez joins me today to make his announcement about his run for Colorado Governor in 2022. He just narrowly lost the 2018 primaries, and now with our current Governor just making us more and more like California in the Mountains it is time for Greg Lopez.

The Bronze Medal

You could quibble with Randall’s definition of “narrowly lost,” as you can see from the graphic at right (you could also quibble with the phrase “California in the Mountains,” but we can’t even begin to help you with that one). Lopez was never a serious threat to actually win the GOP nomination in 2018, though he was one of two Republican candidates with a criminal record, and the first statewide candidate in memory to have both asked and answered the question, “When did you stop beating your wife?”

Lopez managed to get his name on the ballot for the Republican Primary in 2018 largely because better-known and better-funded campaigns promoted him as a good foil to frontrunner Walker Stapleton. Perhaps Lopez can do even better in 2022 with such a ginormous head start on the rest of the field. If nothing else, it should give him time to make a new campaign video instead of recycling the same one he used in 2018.

5 thoughts on “Greg Lopez Announces Campaign…for 2022”

MADCO says:

August 20, 2019 at 1:10 pm

If a candidate who fundraises doesn't end up spending everything on the campaign – does the balance get refunded? Or is it like recal stuff?

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1. Colorado Pols says:
  
  August 20, 2019 at 1:19 pm
  
  You could roll it over to another (non-federal) campaign
  
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2. Diogenesdemar says:
  
  August 20, 2019 at 1:21 pm
  
  Probably moot. You think there might be someone who’s donated to Lopez? . . .
  
  Theoretically, it could be saved for the next campaign, I spose? Or, it’ll eventually just get inherited by Ivanka, Eric, Ijut jr., et all — maybe Vladimir — I dunno’ . . .
  
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JohnInDenver says:

August 20, 2019 at 1:29 pm
Federal campaigns are limited:
With leftover funds, former politicians can legally only use the money from campaign committees toward political or charitable purposes. They can:
Colorado Secretary of State document says mostly the same — see pp. 17-18 of Colorado Campaign and Political Finance Manual
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mamajama55 says:

August 20, 2019 at 2:19 pm

[Lopez was]…the first statewide candidate in memory to have both asked and answered the question, “When did you stop beating your wife?”

ooh, schnap, Pols.

To answer a question above about what can be done with unused campaign funds: since the funds can be donated to a charity, this is why these people go to the trouble of setting up non-profit “educational “ organizations. They become their very own favorite charity.

That way, they can essentially donate to themselves or their family members, using salaries, office space rental which just happens to be in the candidate’s home, and “operational expenses”, or “consulting”.

This form of self dealing is very common- Dudley Brown of RMGO used it, Pa and the boy Nevilles have, Gordon Klingenschmitt did. I can look up old links if anyone’s curious. Maybe Secretary of State Griswold can tighten this up somehow, but for now, the loopholes are big enough to drive a truck through.

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