{"id":138364,"date":"2026-07-09T20:29:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/victor-marx-wins-the-republican-primary-for-colorado-governor\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T20:32:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:32:19","slug":"victor-marx-wins-the-republican-primary-for-colorado-governor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/victor-marx-wins-the-republican-primary-for-colorado-governor\/","title":{"rendered":"Victor Marx wins the Republican primary for Colorado governor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GOP
GOP gubernatorial candidate Victor Marx greets his supporters Tuesday, June 30, 2026, during a Colorado Primary Election watch party at Spruce Mountain Ranch in Larkspur, Colo. (Christian Murdock\/The Gazette via AP)<\/span>(Christian Murdock\/The Gazette via AP)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Marine Corps veteran Victor Marx won the Republican primary for Colorado governor on Thursday, inching past a state senator who had the establishment’s backing.<\/p>\n

Marx, described as a \u201chigh risk humanitarian\u201d and the fastest gun disarmer in the world, defeated Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, his stiffest competition, in the June 30 election. Too many votes remained outstanding after election night to call the tight race, but most counties, including the largest ones, have now reported their final results.<\/p>\n

In a video posted to social media Thursday, Marx thanked his supporters and invited those who hadn’t voted for him to join his coalition.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you’re frustrated, skeptical, or wondering if anything can actually change,” he said, \u201cI just proved it by winning the primary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marx founded All Things Possible Ministries, and has said he’s \u201cled more than 150 high-stakes missions across some of the world’s most dangerous regions.\u201d That includes, according to his campaign website, a mission into \u201cISIS territory\u201d to save a group of kidnapped girls.<\/p>\n

He has also said his abusive stepfather effectively forced Marx, at 7 years old, to kill a man.<\/p>\n

Kirkmeyer thanked her supporters and volunteers in a statement Thursday evening, signing off by saying, \u201cI\u2019m still proud of the campaign we ran \u2026 and, for the record, I still haven\u2019t killed anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

A third candidate, state Rep. Scott Bottoms, trailed both Marx and Kirkmeyer.<\/p>\n

Marx will face Democrat Phil Weiser, the state attorney general, in November, though the state has become an uphill battle for Republican candidates.<\/p>\n

Colorado hasn\u2019t elected a Republican as governor in more than two decades, and the state backed Democrat Kamala Harris for president by more than 10 points over Donald Trump in 2024.<\/p>\n

Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, is term-limited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GOP gubernatorial candidate Victor Marx greets his supporters Tuesday, June 30, 2026, during a Colorado Primary Election watch party at Spruce Mountain Ranch in Larkspur, Colo. (Christian Murdock\/The Gazette via AP)(Christian Murdock\/The Gazette via AP) Marine Corps veteran Victor Marx won the Republican primary for Colorado governor on Thursday, inching past a state senator who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":138365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5734],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-138364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-associated-press"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138364"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138384,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138364\/revisions\/138384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138364"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=138364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}