Colorado voters are no strangers to ballot initiatives: every two years, at least a handful of them appear on our ballots, giving voters a direct say in changing the state’s laws. It’s the process that gave us things like paid family and medical leave – which came from an initiative created and championed by former Rep. Matt Gray and the late Sen. Faith Winter – and recreational cannabis, and it’s the reason our November ballots are usually about eight pages long.
This year, those ballots might be longer than ever. In 2024, seven initiatives qualified for Colorado’s statewide ballot. This year, five initiatives have already qualified for the ballot, another five are currently collecting signatures to qualify for the ballot, two are awaiting decisions from the Colorado Supreme Court before advancing, and more than 60 others are still dawdling through the earlier parts of the process.
Some of this year’s crop of potential plebiscites were initiated by grassroots activists, like the anti-trans initiatives sponsored by Protect Kids Colorado. Others are sponsored by lobbyists and lawyers, representing client interests. A few are sponsored by the progressive Bell Policy Center, which often uses the ballot initiative process in attempts to undo the damage caused by Colorado’s one-of-a-kind “Taxpayer Bill of Rights,” which, ironically, was also the result of a ballot initiative. The single largest sponsor of ballot initiatives in Colorado this year, though, is not a grassroots group or a lobbying firm or even Bell: it’s Advance Colorado, the billionaire-backed organization which has established itself as the center-of-gravity for conservative politics in Colorado.
The Colorado Times Recorder’s interest in Advance Colorado is no secret: we have been writing about the group since its founding, and have done more to analyze its finances and inner workings than any other outlet. Our work has convinced us that Advance’s emergence as the de facto Colorado Republican Party represents one of the most significant sea-changes Colorado politics has seen in the last two decades, and we frequently find ourselves looking like Charlie Day’s character in the classic Always Sunny in Philadelphia meme when we attempt to convince others of the same thing.
That conviction is why we launched a new resource last week, boiling down our years of reporting and investigating into a simple, streamlined format which voters can understand and digest without needing to spend several days reading the dozens of articles we have published on the topic. That resource is housed at whoisadvancecolorado.org.
Why now? That takes us back to the ballot initiatives.
This year, Advance Colorado is making a play to effect a once-in-a-generation change, one big push to reshape the Centennial State to be more in line with their donors’ wishes, and they are using the ballot initiative process to do it.
Of the five initiatives that have already qualified for the November ballot, two were sponsored by Advance. The first would impose strict mandatory minimum sentencing requirements for fentanyl-related crimes, a vindictive and revanchist throwback to failed Reagan-era drug policies. The second would require – not permit, require – local law enforcement officers to cooperate with ICE or other Department of Homeland Security agencies. The passage of either into law would be a disaster, but the two initiatives which have already qualified for the ballot represent only a fraction of Advance’s 2026 onslaught.
Five ballot initiatives are currently collecting signatures to qualify for the ballot. Of those, two are sponsored by Advance Colorado: one to create a fundamental right to purchase natural gas, and one to cap both the individual and corporate income tax rate.
The real ticking time bomb is represented by the 17 other Advance-sponsored initiatives currently making their way through the earlier parts of the initiative process: those which have cleared the first few hurdles and had language drafted but which have not yet been approved to start collecting petition signatures. These initiatives contain a broad range of proposals to crack down on crime (despite a rapidly declining crime rate), further deregulate the fossil fuels industry, and cut taxes for the wealthy; Advance Colorado’s bread and butter.
Taken as a package, the 21 initiatives Advance Colorado is sponsoring this year are a comprehensive effort to remake Colorado in their donors’ image as a carceral, smog-ridden tax haven.
With Colorado being a fairly blue state these days (Democrats tend to win statewide by 11-15%), it would be reasonable to assume that none of these initiatives have a chance of passing; that the same voters who handed both chambers of the legislature and all four statewide offices to the Democratic Party are unlikely to do Advance Colorado’s bidding – but that’s why Advance Colorado exists in the first place.
The fundamental unpopularity of Republican candidates and policies in Colorado does not come to Advance as a surprise; it’s the organization’s raison d’être. Advance was launched in an attempt to build a structure outside of the Republican Party, one not weighed down by the party’s baggage or failures, able to maneuver on its own to accomplish what the party could not. Everything the brains behind Advance Colorado do, they do with the knowledge that this state’s voters prefer Democrats.
The art, then, is in the packaging, and that’s where Advance Colorado’s network of co-managed, co-funded organizations really shines.
By the time the general election arrives, by the time Advance and its allies know exactly what slate of qualified initiatives they are working with, those initiatives will not be branded as mandatory minimum sentences and forced cooperation with ICE; they will suddenly be transformed into “safer neighborhoods” and “law enforcement partnerships.” A right to purchase natural gas will become “protecting consumer options,” and capping the corporate income tax will somehow be billed as “reducing the burden on families.”
By way of example: this month, Advance Colorado released a report to bolster its natural-gas-as-a-right ballot initiative, arguing that natural gas – a leading contributor to climate change – is “clean, affordable, and reliable.” The sources they relied on to make these claims were almost all industry groups, like the Colorado Oil & Gas Association. Yesterday, the Denver Gazette‘s editorial board endorsed and promoted the report as if it were an actual academic product.
I have written about this process of disingenuous transformation at length, so I will refrain from gilding the lily today, but suffice it to say: selling blue-state liberals on policies favored by right-wing billionaires is what Advance Colorado does best. They have succeeded before – like with the multiple income and property tax cuts we have been convinced to inflict on ourselves in recent years – and they will succeed again.
There are lessons in that fact, and warnings. Lessons about the corrosive effects of dark money on politics, warnings about how easily certain liberal tendencies can be exploited for nefarious purposes. With the year progressing towards November every day, though, the fact itself matters more urgently than either.
RELATED: Fighting for the Rich: A Panel Discussion on ‘The Long and Winding Tentacles’ Advance Colorado
We have been writing about Advance Colorado for years, doing our best to understand what it is and how it works so that readers can also understand it. Now, with a coordinated offensive of ballot initiatives heading our way, understanding Advance Colorado has become more than an intellectual privilege: it has become a necessary part of being an informed voter in Colorado.
All of that to say: why launch the site now? Because in eight months, the damage could already be done.
