Victor Marx won the Republican primary for Colorado governor on Tuesday, edging state senator Barbara Kirkmeyer by fewer than 2,500 votes and setting up a November matchup with Democrat Phil Weiser.
The result gives Marx the nomination after a campaign that drew as much attention for his claims as for his candidacy. Marx is a marines veteran and self-described high-risk missionary who runs a non-profit focused on hunting predators and rescuing, restoring and empowering women and children held captive by traffickers and other abusers. He also built a sideline in viral videos showing him rapidly disarming people with guns pointed at his head, a style that made him instantly recognizable and repeatedly controversial.
That scrutiny sharpened during a televised Republican primary debate last month when Kyle Clark pressed Marx on a long list of extraordinary statements. Clark said Marx claimed to have been armed and rescuing women and children around the world, to have stopped human smugglers at the Mexico border, to have called in a US military airstrike that killed 70 Isis fighters, to have been the first American into Gaza during the war with Israel and to have completed 150 high-risk missions. Marx answered that he could not help having lived an extraordinary life. Clark replied that the dog he cited was not running for governor.
What Marx would not do mattered as much as what he said. During the campaign, he refused to provide evidence for his boasts about overseas work, refused to say how many people he has killed and would not back up his claim that, when he was seven years old, his abusive stepfather forced him to kill a man. He also said he would continue performing exorcisms, in person and by phone, if elected governor. The campaign left him with a nomination, but not with answers that satisfied the voters who watched the race closely.
Kirkmeyer conceded and declined to endorse Marx. In her statement, she said it appeared to be the closest Republican gubernatorial primary in Colorado history, thanked voters who supported the ticket and said, “for the record, I still haven’t killed anyone.” She added that the voters would make the final decision in November and said she hoped they choose the path that is best for Colorado. The margin suggests a primary decided by a little more than a sliver of the Republican electorate, with Marx advancing despite a trail of disputed and mocked claims that never fully disappeared from the race.
The only question that now matters is whether the same politics that carried Marx through a crowded and skeptical primary can survive a general election against Weiser. Kirkmeyer is out. Marx is in. And the race for Colorado governor now turns on whether voters accept him as a candidate with an extraordinary past or as someone who never proved the parts of that past that did the most damage.
