Colorado GOP Primary: Marx Won, but the Party Still Lost

The Gazette’s Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy call Victor Marx’s razor-thin Republican gubernatorial primary win an “interesting case study.” That is polite. Too polite. This was not a case study. This was the Colorado GOP conducting another live-fire demonstration of why Democrats keep getting to run a state they have made more expensive, more crowded, more regulated and more smug.

Marx won with about 39.9% of the vote. Barbara Kirkmeyer finished at roughly 39.4%. Scott Bottoms took about 21%. That is not a mandate. That is a primary electorate coughing up a hairball and everybody at party headquarters pretending it is a bald eagle.

Colorado conservatives are furious, and they have every right to be. The Democratic machine has turned the state into an overpriced policy laboratory, yet Republicans still cannot decide whether they want to win power or just win arguments in church basements and Facebook threads.

The Bullet Point Brief

• Marx won, but the margin was microscopic. A victory is a victory, but half a point is not divine coronation. It is a warning label. Nearly six in ten Republican primary voters chose somebody else, which means the party is not unified. It is barely sharing a parking lot.
• Kirkmeyer’s near-miss proves the establishment is not dead. Party insiders may be unpopular, smug and occasionally allergic to actual voters, but they still command a huge chunk of the Republican electorate. The outsider wing did not crush them. It edged them out with the political equivalent of a loose lug nut.
• Bottoms mattered because 21% matters. His presence clearly shaped the race, but nobody gets to pretend they know exactly where those votes would have gone in a two-way contest. The only honest conclusion is that the party remains split three ways and has all the emotional stability of a county central committee meeting after bad coffee.
• The geographic split should terrify anyone interested in winning statewide. Kirkmeyer did better in more populated and economically successful areas. Marx ran stronger across rural regions, the Eastern Plains, the Eastern Mountains and non-ski Western Slope counties. Translation: the GOP once again found a way to divide the voters it needs into separate camps and call the fracture “energy.”
• Unaffiliated voters chose the Democratic ballot by a huge margin. According to the column, 72% of unaffiliated voters who participated chose the Democratic primary ballot, while 28% chose the Republican ballot. That should have triggered alarms. Instead, the Republican ecosystem will probably hold another seminar on loyalty and blame the fire extinguisher.

My Bottom Line

The Colorado GOP keeps confusing rebellion with strategy.

Conservatives are right to distrust consultants, insiders and establishment managers who think voters owe them obedience because they printed the right mailer and attended the right rubber-chicken dinner. The party establishment has spent years managing decline, losing statewide races and then acting offended when the base stops taking orders. That arrogance deserves to be roasted.

But outsider status is not a governing credential. Being hated by the establishment does not automatically make someone electable, disciplined or ready to run a state. Social-media heat is not statewide infrastructure. A thousand angry comments are not a suburban persuasion campaign. And exorcist baggage is not exactly the sort of thing that forces Democratic opposition researchers to work overtime.

That is the part both camps refuse to learn. The insiders think experience entitles them to support. The insurgents think contempt for the insiders entitles them to victory. Meanwhile, Democrats get to sit back while Republicans manufacture their attack ads, talking points and internal sabotage in-house.

Colorado is in obvious decline. Housing is brutal. Regulation is relentless. Rural communities are ignored. The state government has become a Denver-centric vanity project with mountains in the background. Republicans should be feasting politically.

Instead, they are still arguing over who gets the steering wheel in a car with three flat tires and no map.

Marx won. Barely. Kirkmeyer nearly won. Bottoms took a meaningful share. The lesson is not that the party has found its savior. The lesson is that the Colorado GOP remains fractured, exhausted and addicted to confusing emotional validation with electoral strategy.

Democrats keep winning because Republicans keep treating the general election like an afterthought and the primary like Judgment Day.

That is not rebellion. That is malpractice with yard signs.

Source: The Gazette