October 06, 2025 02:25 PM UTC

Barb Kirkmeyer Steps On Every Rake

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last week’s announcement that “high-risk missionary” Richard Victor Marx will run for the Republican nomination for governor in 2026 was bad news for two current candidates: the first being fellow pastor and state Rep. Scott Bottoms, who while running in the same general MAGA religious-right lane as Marx has a massive charismatic deficit by comparison. Marx’s high-energy entry into the race with Rep. Lauren Boebert singing his praises was also a huge setback for the nominal “establishment” candidate in the race, Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer. While Kirkmeyer would have had an easy time pushing past Bottoms, Mark Baisley, and the rest of the oversized pack of underqualified candidates who have filed for the Republican primary, Marx could have the chops to quickly narrow this to a two-person primary–and that would be bad news for Kirkmeyer, who is counting on floating to the top of a large field.

But Karl Victor Marx is just one of several major problems that have sprung up for Kirkmeyer in recent days. Late last month, Rep. Bottoms took the offensive against Kirkmeyer over what detractors are calling the “Kirkmeyer Competency Bill,” legislation that has been in the news as fellow Republicans have tried to blame Democrats for unintended consequences of a bill that passed unanimously in the Colorado Senate. There were a few Republican votes in the House against HB24-1034, including Bottoms:

SCHUILING: Finally, Representative Scott bottoms, your’re a candidate for governor. So is Senator Barb Kirkmeyer. She voted for this in the Senate. If you were on a debate stage and had a chance to confront her on this challenge or on it, what would you ask her? What would you say to her?

BOTTOMS: Well, the first thing is, can you go and look some of these people in the face that, that like this daughter that her mother’s dead now, because this law directly did that and that it wasn’t like this was done in a vacuum guys like me were debating strongly against it. So there’s not really an excuse that says, well, we didn’t know what was going to happen. These are unintended consequences. No, they’re not. We, we spelled out these consequences succinctly that this was going to happen. And so anybody, anybody that voted for it, I’m sorry, but they voted wrong. We told them at the time they were voting wrong, but for some reason it is more important to, to, give rights to criminals in this state. And it doesn’t matter who’s doing it. It doesn’t what letter you have after your name, if you’re voting more and more rights onto criminals, you are hurting the state of Colorado…

Bottoms may not realize it, but he’s setting up this argument for Groucho Victor Marx to drive home against Kirkmeyer. Republican primary voters don’t care about Kirkmeyer’s excuses for voting for this thoroughly demonized piece of legislation, and all of the hype from Republicans about this bipartisan legislation was seemingly heedless of the threat it could pose to their “leading” gubernatorial candidate.

Now it’s evident that Republicans driving the bus over HB24-1034 had Kirkmeyer in mind the whole time.

The third misstep for Kirkmeyer occurred at last week’s forum of gubernatorial candidates at the Denver Press Club, where as the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog reports, Kirkmeyer put herself on the wrong side of yet another MAGA article of faith:

During the lightning round, candidates were asked whether they would pardon Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk who was convicted of multiple crimes tied to her role in tampering with election equipment and records during the 2020 election. The majority of candidates said they would pardon Peters, while Griffin said he would commute her sentence and Kirkmeyer said she would only consider a pardon “if faced with new facts” on the case. [Pols emphasis]

Again Kirkmeyer gave the wrong answer on a defining issue with Republican primary voters, who at this point are generally convinced that convicted felon Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters is a political prisoner being held by Colorado officials to personally spite Donald Trump. Being honest with Republican voters about Peters is not a winning position in a Republican primary, and won’t gain her enough support in the general election to help Kirkmeyer even if she makes it that far.

None of these hurdles should be mistaken to characterize Barb Kirkmeyer as a political “moderate,” which she has proven on issues from abortion to secession to be anything but. Kirkmeyer’s contradictory branding is the result of working with responsible stakeholders as a member of the Joint Budget Committee while still trying to hold on to support from the hard-right conservatives she can’t win the primary without.

The Colorado Republican Party’s turn to “Marxism” is just the latest proof that Kirkmeyer has, while trying to please everybody, become almost universally disliked.