May 26, 2026 09:22 AM UTC

Victor Marx Isn't Running For Governor--He's Owning The Race

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post’s Nick Coltrain reported over the holiday weekend, the frontrunner by every metric in the Republican primary to be the next governor of Colorado is leaving his flagging competitors flummoxed and his detractors increasingly desperate to land a punch as the June 30th election rapidly approaches:

Victor Marx won’t debate the two other Republicans on the primary ballot for Colorado governor Tuesday night, with the minister claiming bias — and his opponents claiming cowardice.

The debate, hosted by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University, was set to feature Marx, state Rep. Scott Bottoms and state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer as they vie for the GOP nomination. It was the first of two agreed-upon debates to feature all three candidates — until Marx pulled out May 16.

Tuesday’s event will also be the latest at which Marx, who holds a commanding fundraising lead and won 40% of the vote at the party’s state assembly, won’t appear in person next to his competition.

With Republican state Rep. Scott “Rock” Bottoms trailing a distant third in the three-way race for the gubernatorial nomination against state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer and “high-risk missionary” Victor Marx, Republicans who haven’t yet fallen under Marx’s cultish beguilement are deeply concerned that Marx is pulling away from who they consider to be the only “viable” candidate in the race–not in terms of Kirkmeyer’s own electability, of course, which no Republican realistically hopes for, but the also-important goal of minimizing downticket collateral damage resulting from a flameout at the top.

Against the enthusiastic promotion from allies like Lauren Boebert and right-wing AM radio host Jeff Hunt, a desperate struggle to “expose” alleged gaps in Marx’s colorful biography and highlight Marx’s lack of political experience is underway by Kirkmeyer’s allies. The biggest problem is that Kirkmeyer’s certain defeat in November leaves little incentive for Republicans to invest against Marx, with the only real motivation being to avoid another potential 2010-type outcome where the Republican nominee collapses so completely that the GOP risks losing its status as a major party.

Marx’s supporters obviously have…a very different view of his chances. Untroubled by the doubts about Marx’s record that have raised eyebrows elsewhere, their support for Marx is similar to the devotion that Donald Trump and other high-buzz low-information figures have developed in the MAGA era. In their undesigning view, Marx is about to follow a similar unlikely trajectory into executive office.

Either way, like Trump, Victor Marx is making up his own rules of engagement as he campaigns for governor. If it works and he wins the nomination as the polls predict today, Marx will have made the whole traditional GOP political ecosystem in Colorado obsolete.

And then the real fun of unpacking this character for November can begin.