April 06, 2017 01:50 PM UTC

Ed Perlmutter Will Run for Governor in 2018

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• by: Colorado Pols

Ed Perlmutter will run for Governor in 2018.

The Jefferson County Democrat will officially declare his intentions at 1:00 on Sunday in Golden, and he will immediately become the frontrunner for the top job in Colorado.

Rumors of a potential Perlmutter candidacy have been circulating for months, becoming all but inevitable in late March when former Senator and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced publicly that he would not seek the Democratic nomination himself.

The 2018 field for Governor is going to be a crowded affair, and may well end up as the most expensive statewide campaign in Colorado history. But as we’ve said in this space before, no other potential candidate — in either party — can match Perlmutter’s combination of experience and results as a campaigner. Perlmutter is wildly popular in Jefferson County, always one of the most important counties for any statewide candidate, and he has established a reputation as both a brilliant retail politician and a consistently-strong fundraiser. Consider this: Perlmutter has won six consecutive races for Congress in CD-7, and no opponent has ever come within single digits on Election Day.

Perlmutter’s decision to run for Governor will also set off a chain reaction in CD-7 that should attract numerous candidates for Congress, including Democratic lawmakers Andy Kerr and Brittany Pettersen, but that is a story for another day. In a gubernatorial field full of recognizable names, none is as big (literally and figuratively) as Perlmutter.