The way I understand it, one of the biggest questions in Colorado politics in the runup to the November general election is whether Melat Kiros, the democratic socialist who upset longtime U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, or Victor Marx, who upsets my stomach each time I write about him, will be the bigger drag on their respective parties.
The obvious answer is that, without question, Donald Trump will be the drag king. He has managed to lose all three of his elections in Colorado. According to a running Civiqs poll of all 50 states, Trump is 29 points underwater in Colorado. His answer is that the elections, as well as the polls, are rigged. And he can solve that by ending mail-in voting. Or maybe just end all voting.
We’re also five-months-plus into Trump’s vastly unpopular war/excursion, with no clear end in sight. Meanwhile, his handling of the economy is rated just a tick higher than his White House Correspondents dinner speech and a couple of ticks lower than ICE’s jackbooted thugs.
With Trump as president, Republicans have not elected a candidate statewide in Colorado, and they’re sure to keep the streak alive this year. I assure you, that is no coincidence.
But let’s go back to the Kiros-Marx question because there’s a chance it tells us something about the two parties in Colorado — one that controls nearly all facets of state government and one that is in complete thrall to Trump.
State Republicans have said they will work to tag each Democratic candidate, from governor to dog catcher, with Kiros and her democratic socialist ways.
Lauren Boebert called her “a gift to Republicans.”
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Rep. Gabe Evans, whose Republican seat in the 8th Congressional District is considered among the most vulnerable in the country, charged that “socialists have taken over the Democrat (sic) party.”
He also said: “If they win, they will bring about the end of America as we know it.”
If Evans means that they will bring an end to Trumpian America, then I’m all for it. But I don’t think that’s what he was talking about.
Besides, Evans has enough hay to feed on against his Dem rival, Manny Rutinel, who once posted on Reddit, in an entry since deleted, that animals should have the same legal rights as humans. Meanwhile, Evans — as well as Boebert and Jeff Crank — have endorsed Marx. As one Democratic strategist told me, “I think that will be the last time he ever mentions Marx.”
Since this midterm election is about swing districts like the 8th — and whether Dems can retake the House or the Senate or both — you can bet that the strategist is right. It’s bad enough for Evans that he’s pro-Trump.
The funny thing is that Kiros is a self-proclaimed national socialist, which means that there’s a slighter better hook with which to toss accusations at her. Not that Republicans need one. They routinely accuse Democrats, including socialist-bashing Jared Polis back in the day, of being a socialist or a communist or worse.
There is a wide difference, of course, between a national socialist like Kiros or AOC or Mayor Mamdani, and, say, Karl Marx (no relation). As I mentioned before, I’ve never seen Kiros campaigning with a well-worn copy of Das Kapital at her side.
But she doesn’t have to believe in the government controlling the means of production — which she doesn’t — for Republicans to say she does. It’s straight out of the McCarthy playbook.
Still, is that all Republicans have? Kiros is running in a bright blue district, which is dependably progressive and which she will win in a romp. She’s young, she’s bright and most of the criticism against her will come from fellow Democrats, like Phil Weiser, who are upset about her clumsy answers to questions about the Boulder bombing of marchers calling for Hamas to give up its Israeli (and some American) hostages.
Kiros will appear only on ballots for the 1st CD. Marx, running for governor, will be on every ballot. Maybe they should have air-sickness bags at every voting station.
Which is why Victor Marx is the easy winner in figuring out who will drag down which party. Republican-aligned pundits in the state say so. At the Gazette. At the Denver Post. Dick Wadhams has spent the last several months campaigning, with his column and his quotes landing everywhere, about the dangers of Marx.
Nonpartisan commenter Eric Sondermann says, correctly, there would be no Marx if not for Donald Trump. Sondermann also writes, correctly, that Lauren Boebert is the No. 1 face of Colorado Republicans. And that No. 2 would probably be Tina Peters. Yes, it’s just that bad.
We know the Marx story because he’s running for governor. But now it seems that everyone is interested — from People magazine to the Times of London — in how an apparent con artist like Marx could win the Colorado GOP primary to run for governor.
You know the rundown. The man his stepfather supposedly made him kill when Victor was 7. The 30 countries he says he has visited, as a high-risk missionary, to rescue thousands of at-risk women and children. His answer, in a Kyle Clark interview, about whether he has killed anyone else, and the agonizing 10-second pause before replying, “Does it matter?” It goes on and on.
But the real grabber has been his claim not only to be an exorcist, a claim that has apparently earned millions of dollars, but that he can do exorcisms on the phone. I guess it’s as believable as the time he says he called in, as a civilian, the U.S. military to bomb ISIS troops, which he says killed 45 of them.
The sad truth is that Marx falls somewhere — OK, probably in the lead — on a GOP continuum. The last Republican candidate for governor, Heidi Ganahl, ran as an anti-furry, saying “furries” were being accommodated in Colorado public schools. When Dan Maes ran for governor, he accused John Hickenlooper of using a bike-sharing program to place Denver under the control of the United Nations. Yes, the U.N. Yes, shareable bikes.
Maybe my personal favorite was when Janet Rowland, running for lieutenant governor in 2006 on a ticket with Bob Beauprez, said that gay marriage could lead to people marrying sheep. If she were asked today, I wonder if there would be a 10-second pause before she answered: Does it matter?
Still, Marx is obviously in a class by himself. The two candidates who ran against him in the GOP primary said they will not endorse him. And they haven’t so far, even state Sen. Scott Bottoms, whose claim to (cray-cray) fame is his accusation that Democrats in the state legislature and the governor’s office are running a pedophile ring. Apparently Marx is even too crazy for him.
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As if to prove the point, his campaign has sent out what it calls a “Republican General Election Unity Compact” for federal, state and local GOP candidates to sign, asking them to support Marx, to do so publicly and to halt attacks on fellow nominees. It reeks of desperation, but more than that, it sounds Trump-inspired, except Trump doesn’t have to ask. He threatens.
But Trump, who has been at war with Colorado over Peters, whom he called a political prisoner, can’t threaten Colorado voters. At least not so far.
The idea of Marx as governor, though, is more than just a threat to Colorado voters. Since he can’t win, the real victim will be the fumbling, bumbling, never-be-humbling Colorado Republican Party, which has set itself up as a national laughingstock.
And which has only itself, and not a single Marxist other than Victor, to blame.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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