Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
With the 2026 election cycle already well underway, Colorado Republicans have no clear challenger to Democratic U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper next year. The state party’s bench is depleted after a long stretch of defeat, caused both by changing demographics and GOP mistakes, and the few people who might be in line for the race are taking a pass because they see a loss as inevitable.
The scenario would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when the GOP held one of Colorado’s two U.S. Senate seats and the offices of attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer. But Republicans have not won a statewide election in Colorado since 2016, and the GOP candidates who have tried to reverse that trend have lost by increasingly wide — if not potentially career-ending — margins.
Democrat Michael Bennet won reelection by 15 percentage points in 2022, the last time there was a Senate race in Colorado. Eight Republicans sought to oust Bennet that year.
One longtime Republican consultant in Colorado, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the political landscape, explained why GOP candidates aren’t lining up to take on Hickenlooper: “They don’t believe that they can win.”
While there is still more than a year until the election — and most of the Republican U.S. Senate candidates in 2022 didn’t get into the race until at least August 2021 — the lack of GOP interest in taking on Hickenlooper is the latest sign of the tectonic political shift that has occurred in Colorado since Cory Gardner, the last Republican U.S. senator from the state, was elected in 2014.
The podium of the Colorado Republican Party stands bare following a watch party of 2022 candidates at the Doubletree By Hilton in Greenwood Village. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election prognosticator, ranks Hickenlooper’s seat “solid Democratic.” That’s the most favorable rating it gives to Democrats.
Just one Republican candidate has filed paperwork to run against Hickenlooper next year. That is George Markert, a retired Marine colonel who is running for elected office for the first time. The Broomfield resident, who moved to Colorado two years ago as he settled his family after leaving the military, calls himself “a constitutional conservative and proud supporter of President Trump’s America First agenda.”
Markert jumped into the race in April. But voters don’t know him — and he doesn’t have the support of the GOP apparatus locally or nationally right now to change that.
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“I’m 100% confident that I can win,” he told The Colorado Sun in an interview. “I am not impressed by John Hickenlooper. He does not intimidate me one bit.”
But there are no Republicans who voters are familiar with who have publicly said they are interested in jumping into the race. And the who-might-run whisper network is quiet.
While national Republicans are recruiting a challenger to Hickenlooper, it’s not a priority — and the race is unlikely to be a spending target even if they do find a candidate. Michigan, North Carolina, Maine and Georgia are expected to be the top-tier U.S. Senate battlegrounds next year. Ohio and New Hampshire are in the second tier. Colorado isn’t in the conversation.
Colorado U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper speaks during an Outside Summit session titled “Common Ground: Shaping Public Lands Policy in a Divided Government” Friday, May 30, 2025 in the Denver Public Library. (Alyte Katilius, Special to The Colorado Sun)Colorado may have been more of a target for Republicans next year if President Donald Trump had fared better in the state in the 2024 presidential election. But he was walloped by 11 percentage points by Democrat Kamala Harris.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP Senate campaign arm, traditionally likes to compete in states where Trump won but there’s a Democrat in the Senate — i.e. Georgia and Michigan. Or where a Republican incumbent is defending a seat, as Gardner did in 2020.
The NRSC did not comment on the GOP’s failure so far to mount a campaign against Hickenlooper.
Eli Bremer, one of the eight Republicans who ran against Bennet in 2022, said another one of the big reasons national GOP groups are so far ignoring Hickenlooper’s 2026 reelection bid is because of how hard it is for candidates to make the statewide ballot in Colorado.
“We have the worst ballot access system in the country,” he said. “That puts a chilling effect on candidate recruitment.”
To make the U.S. Senate ballot in Colorado, candidates must gather the signatures of 1,500 voters from their party in each of the state’s eight congressional districts. Paying people to collect those signatures, the only surefire way to reach the threshold, can cost up to $1 million.
Senate candidates can also go through the caucus process, in which they must get the support of at least 30% of party insiders gathered at a statewide assembly to make the ballot.
Bremer said the candidate who prevails in competitive caucus and assembly processes often winds up losing the primary. For instance, former state Rep. Ron Hanks won the Republican U.S. Senate caucus in 2022, keeping Bremer and others off the ballot, then lost the primary to businessman Joe O’Dea, a self-funder who made the ballot by collecting signatures.
Republican Colorado Senate candidate Joe O’Dea pauses as he speaks to supporters at a Republican election night watch party, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, in Greenwood Village, Colo. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)O’Dea was the only U.S. Senate candidate to make the ballot by gathering signatures in 2022.
“The caucus system in Colorado has a long history of producing bizarre, unelectable candidates,” Bremer said.
The Colorado GOP, meanwhile, has been mired in controversy after controversy.
The party dysfunction and the string of GOP defeats in Colorado has led to an exodus of Republican consultants and operatives, who draft candidates and come up with campaign strategy. Those who remain in Colorado are often doing their work in other parts of the country.
In a more competitive environment for Republicans, one of the state’s four GOP U.S. representatives would be in line, and champing at the bit, to run against Hickenlooper. But they are all seeking reelection to their seats.
Tyler Sandberg, a Republican political consultant, pointed out that three of the four are in their first term in the House. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Windsor, is in her third term, but she’s not considered a viable candidate statewide because of her firebrand personality and role as an agitator.
“There are no overnight sensations historically in the Republican party in Colorado,” Sandberg said, highlighting the careers of Gardner, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and former Gov. Bill Owens. All three took more traditional paths to top political offices.
Senator-elect, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, (R-Colo.), delivers his victory speech to supporters during a GOP election night gathering at the Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center, in Denver, Colo., Tuesday Nov. 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)Sandberg is a proponent of the GOP embracing someone from outside the box who breathes new life into the party — a woman, a candidate of color or someone with a unique background that resonates with voters. Those types of Republicans flipped seats in Colorado in 2024, like Gabe Evans in the 8th Congressional District and Ryan Gonzalez in state House District 50.
“If we run someone that’s outside the box, there’s a very different calculus,” Sandberg said. “The old playbook clearly hasn’t worked.”
The one head-scratcher is the number of Republicans running for governor, a race in which the GOP got trounced even worse than O’Dea did against Bennet in 2022.
Gov. Jared Polis beat Republican Heidi Ganahl, a former University of Colorado regent, by nearly 20 percentage points in 2022. Nevertheless, there is a long list of Republicans — including state Rep. Scott Bottoms, state Sen. Mark Baisley and former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez — running for the job in 2026.
Lopez is running for governor for a third consecutive time after failing to win the primary in 2018 and 2022.
Ganahl is rumored to be interested in running against Hickenlooper. She didn’t respond to a message from The Colorado Sun seeking comment. Lopez has been encouraged to run for Senate, but he appears set on making another gubernatorial bid.
State Rep. Brandi Bradley, R-Littleton, has also been rumored to be interested in running against Hickenlooper. But the controversial state lawmaker, who has anti-trans views and has clashed with fellow Republicans, called the notion “funny.”
“I’m glad I guess that I’m so relevant,” she said in a text message.
While the GOP searches for someone to challenge Hickenlooper, the incumbent Democrat has been raking in the campaign cash. He had $2.2 million in the bank at the end of March. His next campaign finance report is due in mid July, and with no challenger — and thus no reason to deplete his resources — his war chest has likely grown since earlier in the year.
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