Colorado Republican Greg Lopez Marx wins governor primary after tight recount race

Victor Marx won the Colorado Republican gubernatorial primary and will face Democrat Phil Weiser in November after a week of close counting left the race hanging by only a few thousand votes. The result gives Republicans a high-profile nominee in a state where the party has not won a governor’s race since 2002.

Marx, a Marine Corps veteran and first-time candidate, beat state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer in the June 30 primary after unofficial tallies tightened into a recount-adjacent margin. Latest counts placed his lead at roughly 2,000 to 2,500 votes, with Colorado Public Radio putting it at 2,516 and Denver7 saying the AP projection showed a margin of at least 2,142. NBC News projected Marx as the winner on July 9, setting up the November 3 general election against Weiser, the state attorney general.

The race carries added weight because Gov. Jared Polis is term-limited and cannot run again, leaving Colorado with an open governor’s seat in a year when 36 governorships are on the ballot nationwide. For Republicans, Marx’s nomination offers a chance to break a 24-year losing streak in statewide gubernatorial races, but it also places the party behind a candidate whose personal story has become a central part of the campaign.

Marx founded All Things Possible Ministries in Colorado Springs, a nonprofit that says it focuses on rescuing and restoring abused and trafficked women and children. The ministry has been closely tied to his public identity, and so has the extraordinary claim that he was forced as a child to kill a man at age 7. That account has drawn both attention and skepticism as Marx has described severe abuse in his upbringing.

Scrutiny intensified in June when 9News reporter Kyle Clark pressed Marx on the subject and he did not clearly answer how many people he had killed. The exchange pushed questions about Marx’s biography back into the center of the race just as Republicans were trying to unify behind their nominee.

Marx now enters the general election with the advantages and risks that come from being an outsider. His ministry background and personal narrative may help him connect with voters looking for a candidate outside Colorado’s political establishment, but the same biography also gives Democrats a ready line of attack in a race that will test whether Republican primary voters’ appetite for a dramatic personal story can hold in a purple state in November.