DENVER — Only one candidate for Colorado governor, of any political party, has helped write the state budget, led a state executive branch and spent decades overseeing local government.

Yet state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, a Weld County Republican who checks all of those boxes, is millions of dollars behind the leading primary competitor in fundraising. She’s fighting to make the case that her experience — not a biography of bravado or no-compromise, conspiratorial conservatism — makes her the best person to lead the state.

In a state party frequently consumed by infighting and suspicion toward the establishment, along with anyone who works with Democrats, her resume and record of collaboration have threatened to drag down her candidacy in the June 30 primary against Victor Marx and state Rep. Scott Bottoms.

But according to Kirkmeyer’s supporters, she represents the best chance for the GOP to finally emerge from nearly a decade in Colorado’s political wilderness.

“This governor’s race is going to help answer the question, ‘Is this party serious or not?’ ” Republican analyst and Kirkmeyer supporter Dick Wadhams said.

Wadhams, a former state GOP chairman, served as the campaign manager for Gov. Bill Owens in his first victory in 1998 — when he became the only Republican to win the governor’s office in the last 56 years.

In an interview, Kirkmeyer described her motivation for running for governor as similar to what drove her to run for the state Senate in 2020.

Fresh off her latest stint on the Weld County commission, Kirkmeyer then saw Gov. Jared Polis and the legislature, newly in full Democratic control, as singling out agriculture and the oil and gas industry — and not listening to rural parts of the state.

“I got ticked off, because enough’s enough,” said Kirkmeyer. Earlier, as a commissioner in 2013, she’d played a part in Weld and several other counties asking voters whether they should secede from Colorado — a short-lived movement rooted in the state’s urban-rural divide that she argues was successful in getting state leaders’ attention, at least for a while.

Now, in Kirkmeyer’s view, the problems have only been exacerbated. As Democrats have deepened their control of the legislature, lawmakers regularly need to find $1 billion cuts to the state budget, and opponents can find plenty of surveys that point to lower safety rankings and worsening business conditions — even as some studies rank Colorado’s business environment and overall quality of life favorably.

“I’ve had enough, again,” Kirkmeyer said. “We’ve had one-party control for the last eight years, and they’ve made a mess out of our state.”

Former gov: Kirkmeyer is ‘the total package’

In the traditional sense, Kirkmeyer is easily the most experienced candidate in the GOP race. She spent 20 years as a Weld County commissioner, served a stint as the acting director of the Department of Local Affairs under Owens, and is now in her fifth year as a state senator. In 2022, she also ran a failed — but close — campaign for Congress in the new, hypercompetitive 8th Congressional District.

Owens, who served two terms between 1999 and 2007, again sees Kirkmeyer as the right person for the job — “the total package,” as he put it.

In particular, that long track record would bring a deep set of contacts for her to tap as governor, he noted. A governor makes hundreds of appointments — not just for people to run individual departments but to serve on policy-making boards like the Public Utilities Commission and the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission.

“She will bring in not only folks with government experience, but a lot of additional expertise in the private sector,” Owens said. “I feel like that’s been lacking in recent years. The bureaucracy has been heavily bureaucratized.”

Since late 2022, the senator has served as one of six members on the Joint Budget Committee, helping to steer state spending and digging as deep as anyone into the nitty-gritty of how state government works. The influence she wields on the explicitly collaborative committee, even as one of just two Republicans, has made her one of the most powerful elected Republicans in the state, or even the most powerful one.

Senate Minority Leader Cleave Simpson, an Alamosa Republican and head of the caucus, heaped praise on Kirkmeyer. As a member of the JBC, Kirkmeyer's been able both to hold the line and, despite being outnumbered by Democrats by a ratio of 2-to-1 on the committee, to claim victories in cutting and defending priority programs, Simpson said.

This past year, Simpson credited Kirkmeyer with putting a time limit on how long the state could lower its reserve requirements to cope with the latest budget crunch. She also worked to limit Cover All Coloradans, the Medicaid-like program for immigrants without permanent legal status that had seen its costs explode.

"She's getting beat up sometimes in the primary world because she's JBC and she is voting for the budget,” Simpson said. “But she's doing everything she can from the minority position. … I give her a ton of credit for that."

Asset or weakness?

That experience, however, has also become a potential vulnerability for Kirkmeyer.

Marx, the fundraising leader in the race — and a self-described "high-risk humanitarian" who leads a nonprofit — offered a tongue-in-cheek apology at a recent debate.

“An outsider, who no one knows, wasn’t supposed to step into this race and ruin your next step of being a professional politician,” Marx, who has never held public office, said to Kirkmeyer at a 9News-hosted debate in early June.

RINO Watch, an anonymous blog that polices conservatives to weed out so-called “Republicans in name only,” dubbed her the “Evil Queen of Weld County RINOS” for her work on the state budget and other perceived offenses.

"What a weird paradigm to be in,” Simpson said. “I've heard commentary on radio that she's just part of the problem from a conservative's perspective. Would you rather not have anyone there making arguments about whether the pendulum has swung too far?”

Despite Democrats' near-supermajorities, Kirkmeyer points to a number of accomplishments under the Gold Dome: She was a sponsor on legislation that eliminated the so-called negative factor that long shortchanged funding for education. She was a lead sponsor of legislation that lowered the state’s property tax assessment rates. And she was a lead sponsor of legislation that helped rural hospitals weather the drop-off in patients covered by Medicaid since the end of the pandemic, among others. All of those bills were bipartisan.

“The only people who like to spin (my experience) as a negative are the people who don’t have a record like I do,” Kirkmeyer said.

She also goes to the mat when she sees her values threatened. As a lawmaker, she was at the forefront of the campaign against Proposition HH, the 2023 legislature-referred ballot measure about property taxes and education funding that went down in flames.

She often leads long floor debates when she feels the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the constitutional amendment that limits state spending growth and requires voter approval for tax hikes, may be threatened.

"I'm willing to work with people, willing to listen to them — but when push comes to shove, I'll veto them,” Kirkmeyer said, adding that “we don’t compromise on the constitution."

Keying in on state constitution

That fealty to the state constitution also leads to some positions possibly out of line with other conservatives.

In 2024, Colorado voters overwhelmingly adopted Amendment 79, enshrining the right to an abortion in the state constitution. Kirkmeyer, who describes herself as "pro-life," opposed that change. But she says she respects the vote — while also noting that the amendment does not require the state to pay for abortion services. That was enacted through a separate law passed by lawmakers.

“I will follow the will of the voters, and I will protect the constitution. That's what my job is as an elected official,” Kirkmeyer said. “But it doesn't change where my heart is on abortion."

Owens called Kirkemeyer "a conservative's conservative." And just as importantly, he sees her as having the best chance to win.

"It is a fact that sometimes the experienced candidate is someone who actually has a record that can be criticized. But I would take experience in this case, with a record to prove my point that she is a solid conservative," Owens said.

Wadhams, the former party chair and Owens campaign manager, sees a vote for Kirkmeyer as a vote for a serious policy debate this fall. She would still face an uphill general election against a well-known and well-funded Democrat in blue-trending Colorado, but the debate would at least be focused on things like road quality and the state budget deficit, he said.

He said that nominating Marx, who won't say how many people he's killed, or Bottoms, who's made baseless claims of a statewide pedophile ring, would risk a wipeout for Republicans by miring the general election debate in one about background and fitness for office.

"What I've always seen (in Kirkmeyer) is one tough conservative woman who was very effective," Wadhams said. "There are people in my party, unfortunately, who would rather go with this boisterous, loud temperament that repels voters."

_____

©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at denverpost.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.