Last month, during a GOP primary debate between candidates running to be Colorado’s next governor, moderator Kyle Clark (a Denver journalist) posed a question that ended up going viral.
Addressing candidate Victor Marx, who the polls showed to be the clear front-runner in the race, Clark, asked:
You claim that you’ve been all around the world, armed to the teeth, rescuing women and children from captivity; that you stopped human smugglers at the Mexico border and made them pay a price; that you — as a civilian — called in a U.S. Military airstrike that killed 70 ISIS fighters; that you were the first American into Gaza during the war with Israel; that you’ve done 150 high-risk missions and every one has been a success. You told me last week that it’s all true and that you don’t need to prove it to anyone. But you’re talking to voters now. How should voters decide whether you’ve lived one of the most extraordinary lives in human history, or whether you’re a liar and a fraud?
Marx, who also says he killed a man when he was just seven years old (and possibly others as an adult, though he can’t say for sure), runs a Colorado Springs ministry from which he performs exorcisms — yes, exorcisms — over the phone. It’s just one of many exotic humanitarian services provided by the ministry, which pulls in $7-8 million a year (mostly through donations).
Marx initially tried to deflect Clark’s question, but after being pressed a bit more on his wild claims, the candidate eventually evoked his service dog, Reagan (who sat next to him on stage), saying she was with him in Syria and Iraq.
“So, is she lying, too?” Marx retorted.
As a lifelong Coloradan and longtime conservative, who’s watched the Colorado GOP (that I used to volunteer for) go right down the toilet, it sadly didn’t surprise me that the MAGA-centric Marx (who was endorsed by Lauren Boebert and Ted Nugent among others) was the odds on favorite. In fact, on the morning of the primary election, Polymarket was giving Marx a 94% shot of winning. His closest competitor, state senator Barbara Kirkmeyer, sat at just 5%. This, despite Kirkmeyer arguably being the most qualified Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate in over 20 years.
Being that the third candidate in the race, Scott Bottoms, had happily aligned himself with a prominent antisemitic podcaster (who he said he’d “probably” put in his administration, assuming it’s “not around Jewish people”), my primary-ballot choice was an easy one. I voted for Kirkmeyer, despite some problems I have with her.
Thus, I was very pleasantly surprised to learn, once the vote-counts started pouring in last Tuesday night, that Kirkmeyer had vastly outperformed expectations. She actually led Marx (albeit by a very narrow margin) for the better part of a day. But, per usual, I wasn’t afforded sustained political optimism. The telephone exorcist (who may or may not have killed multiple people) eventually took the lead.
As of the time I’m writing this, with just 4% of Colorado’s ballots left to count, Marx still leads Kirkmeyer (with Bottoms a distant third) by a couple thousand votes. The race is still too close to call, and it could be a few days yet before we’ll know for sure who won.
But sadly, it won’t matter much come November. Our now solidly blue state hasn’t elected a statewide Republican since just prior to the Trump era, and the Colorado GOP has become such a corrupt joke over the past decade that general-election voters, at the state level, just don’t take Republican candidates seriously anymore.
How are they supposed to when a guy like Marx is the man to beat?
Democrat Phil Weiser, who defeated U.S. Senator Michael Bennet in their party’s primary, will assuredly become Colorado’s next governor. The only real question is by how wide of a margin. If he gets to run against Marx (which is my hunch), he could end up setting a new state record.
Yes, Democrats are riding high here, but not without some controversy of their own. To the surprise of many (including me), Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist and first-time candidate, defeated longtime incumbent Diana DeGette for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District. DeGette has held that seat since literally before Kiros was born.
Kiros was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, an organization committed to a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. Her campaign platform reflected as much: Medicare for All, public housing, abolishing ICE, and the obligatory U.S. arms embargo on Israel. Kiros has framed 9/11 as a natural result of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and campaigned with controversial figures like Hasan Piker (who has outright said the United States “deserved” 9/11). She’s also called the 10/7 attack an “inevitable consequence” of Israeli “apartheid,” and has accused Israel of committing “genocide in Palestine.”
Since Kiros’s Denver-based congressional district is deep blue, her general election will simply be a formality. My state will soon have a democratic socialist representative in Washington — perhaps a left-wing version of fellow Colorado congresswoman, Lauren Boebert.
We sure know how to pick ‘em.
Truth be told, I love living in Colorado. It’s a beautiful state with all kinds of wonderful offerings, and I believe most Coloradans are friendly, hard-working, reasonable people. But our state parties, and therefore our larger political environment, are absolute messes. That may not make us terribly unique in this country, especially right now… but it’s still depressing.
It’s also dangerous.
“You can’t have just one sane party,” conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg argued in a recent column. “You need two sane parties. The crazier or more extreme one party is, the more permission the other party has to be crazy and extreme. The only way to prove your party isn’t crazy is to police the crazies on your own side. Period. Strong parties can do that. Cowardly, anemic parties-in-name-only can’t or won’t.”
The rise of people like Victor Marx and Melat Kiros, as high-profile representatives of their respective parties, illustrates his point.
Ten years ago, it would have been hard to imagine either candidate even making it on a primary ballot. But now that we’ve normalized crazy, all bets are off.