October 13, 2025 03:59 PM UTC

Gadflies, Unite! These People for Governor, or Congress, or Whatever

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• by: Colorado Pols

Every election cycle brings its share of gadfly candidates, from the inexplicable first-timers to those who have run again and again (we’re looking at you, Greg Lopez). Thus far the 2026 election cycle has dozens upon dozens of candidates seeking all manner of political office. If history is any guide, 75% of these candidates will make little effort to run a serious campaign and will hope only to see their names ignored on a Primary or General Election ballot. 

There are currently 39 official candidates seeking to become Colorado’s next Governor. On the Democratic side, the field is led by Senator Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser, along with four others whose names are not recognizable. 

On the Republican side [see list at right], there are 20 official candidates already. That list does not include potential (guffaw) candidate George Brauchler. It also doesn’t account for talk radio host/ambulance chasing attorney Dan Caplis, who always seems to flirt with launching a statewide campaign. 

There are seven “Unaffiliated” candidates for Governor, including a Bennett with a different spelling: Someone named “Shawn Bennett.” There is also a candidate from the American Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, and two candidates from the “No Labels” Party. The political affiliation of two other candidates is listed, respectively, as “Non-Partisan” and “Unknown” by the Colorado Secretary of State’s office. 

The last time Colorado had an open seat for Governor was in 2018. That year there were 42 different official candidates; 25 of them failed to raise even $1,000 for the entire cycle, and just 12 raised at least $100,000 in total. 

As of this writing, only six candidates had reported raising at least $20,000 through the first two quarters of 2026: Republicans Mark Baisley ($23k), Greg Lopez ($28k), Scott Bottoms ($34k), and Jason Mikesell ($40k) and Democrats Michael Bennet ($1.74 million) and Phil Weiser ($2.9 million). Republicans Barb Kirkmeyer and Victor Marx will likely join this group soon.

On the federal side, there are 11 candidates running for U.S. Senate against incumbent Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper. That list includes five other Democrats, two Republicans (former State Rep. Janak Joshi and someone listed as “Mr. George Washington Market V”), and three “Independents.” 

As of this writing, there are a total of 48 candidates filed to run for the House of Representatives. This is a much lower number than in 2024, when a total of 104 candidates filed to run for a seat in Congress from Colorado. Those numbers were boosted by open seats in CO-03, CO-04, and CO-05, as well as a bevy of challengers in CO-08 for only the second election in that district’s existence.

The 2026 list of candidates (thus far) includes seven names in CO-01 (Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette is the incumbent); six in CO-03 (Jeff Hurd); seven in CO-04 (Lauren Boebert); eight in CO-05 (Jeff Crank); and a whopping 11 filed candidates in CO-08 (Gabe Evans). It makes sense that there are multiple candidates in CO-03, CO-04, CO-05, and CO-08 because all four districts have freshman incumbents. 

The seven candidates trying to unseat DeGette might seem unusual, but there were also seven filed candidates in CO-01 in the 2024 cycle. The district that includes Denver has always tended to generate more gadfly candidates. 

The oddest filings thus far are in CO-02 (Joe Neguse) and CO-06 (Jason Crow), where two “Democrats” are challenging entrenched and popular incumbents with no hope of succeeding. Neguse had no trouble with five other challengers in 2024, nor did Crow struggle with five challengers in his Aurora-centric district. That hasn’t deterred someone named Cinque Mason in CO-02 (please don’t ask us to pronounce his first name) nor Dylan Shelby in CO-06.   

Mason is a particularly strange candidate, having only registered as a Democrat within the last month after being an “Unaffiliated” voter previously. Mason is 25 years old, the minimum age to serve in Congress. He doesn’t appear to be employed and his only political experience is running (and losing) for student body president at Colorado State University at some point in the last 5 years or so. Stranger still is that his social media accounts have a long history of supporting Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and even Tucker freaking Carlson.

Mason also seems supportive of Republican Lily Tang Williams, a 2024 candidate for Congress in New Hampshire who served as the Chairperson of the Colorado Libertarian Party in 2015-16. Whether or not Mason knows this about Lily Tang Williams is hard to say, given that he would have been just starting high school when she was heading up the CLP. 

These are the sort of views that won’t be well-received by Democrats in a Democratic Primary, not that we would expect Mason to even make it that far:

Why would someone like Mason suddenly decide to run for Congress, let alone in a Democratic Primary when he is not exactly a great example of an actual Democrat? Maybe Mason just needs something to do and thought this would be fun. In the case of Dylan Shelby in CO-06, her Facebook page says that she “came out as a woman to run for Congress in Colorado.” Neither Mason nor Shelby have any chance of unseating popular Democratic incumbents in 2026, but it’s fine that they want to run; the beauty of our democracy is that anyone can throw their hat in the ring at any time.

There are more than 100 people filed to run for Governor, U.S. Senate, or Congress in Colorado in 2026. Fewer than 20 of them will have any real impact on the outcome next November.

As we’ve long said in this space, anyone can file paperwork to become an official candidate for elected office, but that doesn’t mean they all deserve the same level of attention or interest. Filing the paperwork is the easy part; convincing a significant number of people to support your campaign and donate money is a different animal entirely.

And publicly supporting President Trump won’t get anybody elected in a competitive race in Colorado.