When it comes to elections, candidates from the Democratic and Republican parties get most of the votes and the most attention. But dozens of independent and third-party candidates will be running for offices up and down the ballot in Colorado this fall.
This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.
Sitting outside a coffee shop in north Boulder, Bob Chew explained that it was the growing size of the U.S. debt, which recently topped $40 trillion, that led him to pursue a third-party run for U.S. Senate.
“I knew that neither major party would talk about this issue,” he told CPR News.
He’s running under the Forward Party line, one of the more than half-dozen minor parties recognized by the state.
He tells people he’s running as an independent, which means he’s “free to talk about it in real terms, serious terms, and maybe force an uncomfortable discussion by the Republicans and the Democrats and, overall, give Coloradans a choice of a serious candidate willing to tackle these serious issues.”
Like many other Colorado voters, Chew, a former registered Republican, has grown disenchanted with both major parties.
“Over half of Coloradans are not registered R or D. So I am giving the moderate Rs, the moderate Ds, and the vast number of independents a real option,” he explained.
Democratic U.S. John Hickenlooper and Republican state Sen. Mark Baisley are the major-party candidates for U.S. Senate in Colorado this year.
As of Aug. 1, of the almost 4 million active registered voters in the state, just over 985,000 are registered Democrats, 887,000 are registered Republicans and more than 2 million are unaffiliated, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. Just under 100,000 are registered with one of the minor parties.
Minor party candidates make the ballot through party conventions and will be listed on the ballot after the major-party candidates. The unaffiliated candidates will be next. They had to collect signatures to qualify for the ballot. (The number of signatures needed depends on the office the candidate is seeking.)
Unlike a lot of other third-party candidates, Chew has been able to invest his own money into his campaign, putting in over a million dollars. It has enabled him to reserve $1.3 million in ads on TV through September, something you won’t see from many other minor party candidates.
Adam Withrow of Walsenburg knows how difficult a third party run can be.
Last election cycle, he ran for Congress under the Unity Party line, garnering just over 2,700 votes in the 3rd Congressional District, which spans the Western Slope into southern part of the state.
“I anticipated I’d get somewhere around 20 votes. And so when 2,000 came through, I was like, OK, even with a stripped back, dumbed down message, people were into it — a hundred times more than I thought they would be,” he said.
Still, hes was several thousand votes short of the eventual winner in the race, Republican Jeff Hurd, who won more than 201,000 votes.
This time, Withrow, like Chew, is trying for the U.S. Senate.
He knows the chances of winning are very, very slim, but just making it onto the ballot, he said, means he can help shape the political discussion, highlighting issues he thinks are important, such as politicians not being beholden to donors.
“We live in an era of curated conversation where we have this false dichotomy of two parties, that we have two choices and nothing else is relevant. And we need to, at very least, widen that conversation,” he said.
Eric Mulder, who lives in Aurora, got corralled into running as the Libertarian candidate for governor. He said he decided to undertake the challenge of running as a third-party candidate because, “when you’re running as a third party candidate, it’s primarily about ‘win if you can.’ But if you can’t win, change the conversation.”
“Talk to different people about different things. Talk about stuff that some of the other candidates might either shy away from, or they’re not spotlighting enough,” Mulder said.
For him, that includes water conservation by using more beavers to help wetland restoration and bring up water tables; he’s also against what he describes as the overwhelming presence of Flock cameras.
And in this era of political discontent, Libertarian candidate for the Denver-based 1st Congressional District, Chad Humphrey, is hopeful this means people are more open to a minor party or independent candidate.
“We need a third-party system. Somebody has got to check the Republicans and the Democrats,” he said.
More often than not, however, third-party candidates are often looked upon as spoiler candidates, especially in tight races.
And this cycle, that spoiler candidate may be Dave Wood of Westminster, a long-time Libertarian who is running for Congress in the 8th Congressional District, the state’s only toss-up congressional seat.
In 2022, the Libertarian candidate for the 8th District, which stretches from the northern Denver suburbs northwest to Greeley in Weld County, garnered more than 9,200 votes, which was far larger than the roughly 1,600 votes separating the Democratic and Republican candidates at the time.
To avoid that problem in 2024, the GOP made a deal with the Libertarian Party, keeping a candidate out of the 8th District contest, but two other third-party candidates garnered more than 9,000 votes, again larger than the approximately 2,500 votes separating the Democratic and Republican candidates.
Wood, a former musician and computer programmer, is running his campaign on a shoestring. He said he’s got about $4,000 in donations, far less than the millions that Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans and Democratic state Rep. Manny Rutinel have raked in for their runs.
Wood is a strong believer in the values of the Libertarian Party, which is the largest third party in the state, and supports policies focused on small government, ending overseas deployments and missions for the U.S. military, and freedom for people to make their own choices.
“I hope a significant number of people will vote for me and at least send a signal to Washington that, hey, here’s a different way of looking about government that people think and agree with,” he explained.
Mulder admitted these independent and third-party runs make it harder for the Republican and Democratic candidates and parties.
“That’s the joy of democracy. Because if people don’t like the two options they’ve got, they’ve got option three, four, five, six and seven,” he explained. “So if somebody voted for me instead of a candidate who thought they were entitled to that vote, that candidate needs to take a hard look in the mirror and say, why did they pick this candidate over me instead?”
Former Republican U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez of Elizabeth initially sought the GOP nod for governor before launching an unaffiliated bid earlier this year. He’s flipping the script a bit, saying it’s the Democratic and Republican parties that are minor ones in the state now.
“The major voting block today is the unaffiliated voter, and they need to understand that the unaffiliated voters are sending a strong message across the state,” Lopez told CPR News. “We don’t have faith or trust in either party. What we’re looking for is someone that cares about us, someone that talks about solutions, and someone that will make decisions that are going to make our lives better and not worry about the political bosses or the political ideology.”
Some Republicans have called on him to drop out, and Lopez said that’s because they’re focused on one thing.
“They’re worried about the brand. They’re worried about their team winning,” Lopez said. “They’re not worried about making good informed decisions that transform the lives (of Coloradans) in a positive way. I would tell those individuals that you need to think broader. You need to be a public servant. We’re not here to represent just one side of the equation.”
Chew readily admits he’s about spoiling the Republican and Democratic messaging.
And he’s heartened by a past (kind of) success: Ross Perot’s run for president in 1992. Perot didn’t get any electoral college votes, but did get almost 19% of the vote, and for Chew, more importantly, Perot used his candidacy to focus a political spotlight on balancing the federal budget.
It’s not completely hopeless for third-party candidates. They can and have won, in the right circumstances.
Art Goodtimes, a former San Miguel County commissioner, started as a Democrat before switching to the Green Party. He was re-elected four times on that minor party line before retiring in 2016.
Goodtimes said minor parties should be built from the ground up. In other words, they should start running at the local level and show candidates have support before trying for state or federal elections.
“People don’t really care if you’re Republican or Democrat on the local level,” Goodtimes explained. “If you are a community-involved person who they see at the rodeo, who they see at the post office, who they can talk to at any time. We’re not like the feds or even some states. We manage to be directly responsible to our constituents because we’re visible in the community.”
He said he was proud to carry the third party banner, but he’s not sure he would win now as a Green.
“I think it’s hard to go against the major parties that have money and publicity and organizations,” he said.
CPR’s Bente Birkeland contributed reporting to this story.
This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun, with support from news outlets throughout the state. Startup funding for the Alliance was provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.