DENVER | Colorado Springs ministry leader Victor Marx faced his two rivals for the Colorado Republican Party’s nomination for governor in a debate for the first time on Tuesday night, and quickly found himself the target of stinging criticism from both of them.

“You can’t keep your word. I can’t trust you,” state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer of Weld County, a veteran GOP political figure backed by the party’s establishment, told Marx. “You’re unfit. You’re unqualified.”

Both Kirkmeyer and state Rep. Scott Bottoms of Colorado Springs reiterated during Tuesday’s debate, hosted by 9News in Denver, that they wouldn’t support Marx’s campaign if he wins the party’s gubernatorial nomination on June 30. Bottoms, a pastor and a two-term lawmaker with a reputation as a fringe far-right figure at the Capitol, said he stood by his comments labeling Marx a “con man.”

“I also said he was corrupt, and I also said he lies,” Bottoms said. “He lied to me personally quite a few times. I can’t put somebody like that any more than I can put a Democrat into the governor’s seat.”

The debate was the first televised event that Marx, a first-time candidate now widely considered the primary contest’s unlikely frontrunner, had participated in alongside his two opponents, after skipping a previous debate last month. He mostly shrugged off the attacks, telling Kirkmeyer and Bottoms that he “apologize(d)” for his decision to “step into this race and ruin your next step of being a professional politician.”

“I never meant to hurt either one of y”all’s feelings,” he said. “It’s just I didn’t think y”all could win.”

Marx, the founder of All Things Possible Ministries in Colorado Springs, is by far the race’s leading fundraiser, having collected nearly $2.7 million in contributions as of June 1, compared to Kirkmeyer’s $565,956 and Bottoms’ $210,601, according to campaign finance records.

As the June primary draws nearer, Marx has come under scrutiny for his sensational claims about his life story and work as a self-described “high-risk missionary” in the Middle East and North Africa. In a widely shared interview with 9News last week, he struggled to explain or substantiate claims that his ministry had rescued more than 45,000 women and children in overseas “missions,” while declining to say how many people he has killed.

He again declined to provide specifics about his ministry’s work during Tuesday’s debate.

“Here’s the total number of kids I’ve rescued: not enough,” Marx said. “For folks who want to pigeonhole me on stuff that will absolutely cause safety issues for our teams still out there, I won’t do it.”

GOP’s disadvantage

Colorado has elected only one Republican governor in the last 50 years, and recent election results and historical trends suggest it’s unlikely the GOP will reverse its fortunes in the Centennial State this year.

Four years ago, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, cruised to reelection with a 19-point victory over GOP challenger Heidi Ganahl, helping to cement the state’s shift from purple to solid blue. Democrats are widely expected to gain ground nationally in a favorable midterm election year, and the winner of a head-to-head Democratic governor primary between U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser will enter the general election as the heavy favorite to succeed Polis, who is term-limited.

Kirkmeyer, a former Weld County commissioner who has served in the state Senate since 2021, was the only GOP candidate Tuesday to say that she would not issue a full pardon to Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk and prominent election denier released from prison this week, after Polis commuted the prison sentence she received for her role in a scheme to breach her office’s secure elections equipment.

A member of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Budget Committee, she called herself “the only person in this race that is actually qualified to be governor,” and repeatedly faulted eight years of one-party Democratic rule in Colorado for having “made a mess out of our state.”

“I’m the only one who’s actually ever governed,” said Kirkmeyer. “I have decreased taxes. I have balanced budgets. I’ve built roads. I have backed the blue. I’ve done so, so many things to make people’s lives better.”

Bottoms’ wild allegations

Bottoms again failed, when asked by debate moderators, to substantiate a long list of wild allegations he has made during his campaign for governor, including claims that he is working with federal law enforcement agencies to disrupt a pedophile ring operating at the state Capitol, and an assertion that the state is spending “hundreds of millions of dollars (on) illegal immigrant abortions and transgender surgeries.”

But he acknowledged, after talking to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, that he had erred in claiming during a debate last month that there were “45 to 50,000 Venezuelan cartel (members) in this state.”

“I got that one wrong,” Bottoms said Tuesday. “I misunderstood what the ICE agent was saying.”

Bottoms declined to distance himself from far-right podcaster Joe Oltmann, who has called for his political opponents to be executed by hanging, and referred to several of the state’s top Democratic elected officials — Polis, Weiser and Secretary of State Jena Griswold, all of whom are Jewish — as a “synagogue of Satan Jews.” Bottoms has appeared on Oltmann’s podcast and accepted his endorsement.

“Joe Oltmann and I disagree very strongly on the nation of Israel — very, very strongly,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with the Jewish people at all.”

Bottoms went on, however, to claim that he has been informed that federal indictments for sedition are “probably going to come down around midsummer” against Weiser and Griswold. And he indicated that as governor, he would likely offer Oltmann a role in his administration.

“Assuming it’s not around Jewish people? Probably,” Bottoms said.

A closing prayer

Along with debates, Marx has largely eschewed offering specifics about the policy agenda he would pursue as governor, decrying the “empty promises” made by too many politicians on the campaign trail. But he subsequently unveiled a 10-point platform — full of standard Republican proposals like a freeze on regulations, a cap on property taxes and an end to state and local limits on cooperation with ICE — during a town hall last week.

After Marx gave a vague answer Tuesday night on how he would address affordability issues, moderators pressed him to be more specific.

“I’d simply negotiate with people to accomplish a greater good,” Marx replied. “Like I’ve done all over the world.”

Given an opportunity to make a one-minute closing statement, Marx used most of his time to close his eyes and say a prayer.

“We need a healed state,” he said. “We need Coloradans to come together for a change, Lord, and stop all this political nonsense.”

Ballots in Colorado’s primary elections are scheduled to be mailed to all active registered voters in the state beginning June 8.

This story was made available via the Colorado News Collaborative. Learn more at https://www.google.com/url?q=https://colabnews.co&source=gmail-imap&ust=1781118467000000&usg=AOvVaw0DZ43pbEsxADTvt157V1GM

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