After running a clown show state assembly that delayed official results, the Colorado GOP selected State Rep. Scott Bottoms to appear atop their primary ballot for governor in June. In so doing, the Colorado GOP chose to scrape the Bottoms of the barrel.
Bottoms is a far-right conspiracy theorist and bomb-thrower. He chooses to elevate culture wars as Coloradans have routinely rejected them. He would take steps to gut state government and cut services, likely through legally dubious authority.
He would blame the media for any of his own failures and oppose Democrats on any proposal they made, even if it were a resolution declaring the sun rises in the east.
In other words, he is a perfect avatar for what the Colorado GOP has become: a babbling well of incoherent hatred and ignorance.
It would be funny if not both sad and terrifying. For example, in a room full of people that constantly lambast Colorado’s election workers — people who have set the national gold standard for administering free and fair elections — they had to actually debate what to do about 80 actual overvotes. In other words, more people voted than were in attendance and allowed to cast their ballot.
For comparison, the Heritage Foundation, a very conservative think tank, lists only 24 total cases of voter fraud in Colorado over the past two decades. Put another way, with only a few thousand assembly voters, the Colorado GOP somehow managed to triple the number of problems the state has had after tabulating tens of millions of votes across many election cycles.
Eventually the GOP poobahs simply declared “we don’t believe there has been any fraud,” tapped their heels together and disappeared behind a curtain somewhere.
Consequently, the GOP will spend the next two months in what will closely resemble a drunken slap fight between Bottoms and two other candidates on the primary ballot for governor. Victor Marx received enough support at the no-fraud-here assembly to make the ballot; state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer petitioned onto the ballot, skipping the assembly and its accompanying brain damage.
The vitriol and accusations will surely be limited only by the bounds of their imaginations.
In contrast, Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, will likely be traipsing the state competing alternatively for the titles of most congenial or most capable. While neither is a rousing orator, both are brilliant and kind and likely to trounce whatever candidate oozes out of the GOP primary.
That does not mean the Colorado GOP and its candidates will not continue to harm the state in the interim.
Every time they use the campaign stump to amplify dangerous claims or attacks, they poison the political environment. First, their own small silos of supporters will use the campaigns to rationalize their own ugly perspectives. Second, they will make the world more dangerous for everyone.
For example, Bottoms’ crusade against transgender individuals will add fuel to an already toxic fire. Having largely lost the culture wars against both abortion and marriage equality, many of the same far-right activists like Bottoms have trained their targets on transgender individuals. They have seized on unsubstantiated anecdotes, garbage pseudo-science and misinformed enmity to invent an issue.
Thanks to people like Bottoms, that issue is now playing out in two different ballot initiatives already set to appear on November’s ballot. One targets high school student athletes while the other strips parents and children from making choices for their families. This is despite no actual evidence of an existing problem outside the advocates’ own addled amygdalas.
Basically, people like Bottoms only feel comfortable picking on vulnerable populations like kids.
Yet for at least another two months, and maybe another five after that, the gubernatorial race will give his positions a false air of validity. In any rational marketplace of ideas, his positions would be cast into a rubbish bin to rot and be forgotten. Instead they will be presented as an equally valid option by people trying to avoid the accusation of bias.
That is one of the pitfalls of the antiquated caucus and assembly system Colorado still employs. It is exacerbated by the two-party electoral structure we inexplicably maintain. Without either, Bottoms likely would be bottom-tier bottom-feeder without much platform and drowned out by substantive candidates. Instead he is the top-line Republican candidate. He may not beat either Kirkmeyer or Marx, but he still has an outsized platform.
Sadly, that will also mean qualified down-ballot candidates will get painted by the same brush. In 2022, that meant Pam Anderson, an exceptional candidate for Secretary of State, got handily beaten.
This year, it means someone like Kevin Grantham, an affable, mustachioed man who would rather talk about farming and rural development than culture wars, will get sucked into the Bottomless vortex.
Colorado tops the country in many quality of life and economic measurements. We have some exceptional public servants and leaders. But the Colorado GOP? They are headed right to the Bottoms.
Mario Nicolais is an attorney and columnist who writes on law enforcement, the legal system, health care and public policy. Follow him on BlueSky: @MarioNicolais.bsky.social.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.
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