While most of the political world is laser-focused on November 2026, one Colorado campaign already has its sights set on 2028, when it hopes to usher in a seismic change to the way the state conducts elections. More than two years ahead of the due date, Courageous Colorado’s push for nonpartisan primary elections is conducting listening sessions, working to recruit influencers, and has already aired a television commercial. And though it’s being billed as a way of increasing turnout and decreasing polarization, there’s reason to suspect that Courageous Colorado’s push for nonpartisan primaries is not as altruistic as it seems.
The idea, in its simplest form, is to do away with Colorado’s existing system of open primaries, in which unaffiliated voters may vote in either major party’s primary elections, and replace it with a system of nonpartisan primaries, in which all candidates appear on the same primary ballot (complete with party affiliation, despite the whole “nonpartisan” thing), and the top vote-getters advance to a general election against each other, regardless of party. With Courageous Colorado still conducting listening sessions and not yet wed to any official ballot language, it’s not clear what might be added to or subtracted from that idea in its final form.
Regardless, the ballot initiative planned for 2028 will not be the first time the idea has been floated in Colorado, nor the first time it has received ample financial support from wealthy conservatives and business interests. Voters rejected the idea last time — as Proposition 131 in 2024, which also included a less objectionable ranked-choice voting element — but its deep-pocketed donors appear to be back and, this time, they are apparently willing to fund a two-year campaign to get what they want.
In 2024, the campaign supporting Prop 131 was heavily funded by oil giant Chevron, Walmart heir Ben Walton, Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings, and former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry. Thiry has already publicly affiliated himself with the redux, but its other funders are not yet clear: currently operating as a 501(c)(3), Courageous Colorado has not been required to disclose its donors. When an actual campaign committee is registered to formally back the 2028 initiative, it will be subject to stricter disclosure requirements.
While I’m sure the group’s funders — whoever they might be, beyond Thiry — would prefer we believed that their involvement is driven purely by an interest in the smooth-functioning of democracy, I think a few other motives might make more sense.
Let me indulge a hypothetical: say, hypothetically, that you are a very wealthy conservative with business interests in Colorado. Twenty-plus years ago, you felt confident that the state’s Republican legislative majorities would never jeopardize even a cent of your profits with things like health & safety regulations, excise taxes, and the like. Then things started changing. The state became purple and then – to your horror, try as you and your buddies might, regardless of how much you spent to stop it – it became blue. Now, with Democrats in control of the legislature as far as the eye can see, you worry that things like basic regulations and livable wages might start taking a bite out of your pie.
If you were Phil Anschutz, the state’s wealthiest man, you might do something like create Advance Colorado, a sophisticated political vehicle designed to advance conservative interests in a blue state, usually by way of ballot initiatives. And while that might work to keep your property taxes down and to keep the worst of profit-threatening human decency at bay, for a while at least, it does not address the root problem: all of those Democrats in office, and the voters who keep electing them.
What if a consultant told you they had an idea for solving that problem, too? Well, you might find yourself funding a multi-year campaign for nonpartisan primaries.
Colorado would not be the first state to adopt nonpartisan primaries; plenty of data already exists on what effects the system has, and one of the most prominent effects is that it creates pathways for candidates from the less popular party to win. Take for example the 2016 primary race for state Treasurer in Washington, a state with nonpartisan primaries. Five candidates ran, two Republicans and three Democrats. Collectively, the Democratic candidates secured 52% of the vote, but the general election was a runoff between the two Republicans, because they split the Republican vote fewer ways than the three Democratic candidates split the Democratic vote. As a result, the general election was held between two candidates who received less than a majority of the primary vote combined. This year, this same scenario was a realistic possibility in the bluest of states: California’s gubernatorial primary saw two GOP nominees briefly lead a field of Democratic contenders until the list winnowed down to a standard partisan split.
Thinking back on my hypothetical from above: wouldn’t it be convenient if Colorado, a state where Republicans can no longer secure the majority of votes in most contested elections, adopted a system in which that problem could be circumvented?
But its countermajoritarian tendency is only one of the problems with a nonpartisan primary system – or, only one of the benefits, depending on who you are. Another problem is the incentive to mislead voters even more than is already common. Say you want to run in a nonpartisan primary in a city like Denver where Republicans can barely crack a quarter of the vote. In that case, you might as well just run as a Democrat, raise a bunch of money from wealthy conservative interests, and use it in an attempt to spend your way into the runoff. And, if you are a wealthy conservative interest, what’s to stop you from encouraging your own acolytes to run as Democrats, then supporting them with millions of dollars in outside spending? Democratic majorities become less of a problem when the Democrats aren’t all Democrats.
Maybe the downsides of a nonpartisan primary system are the price we need to pay to accomplish the noble end that most proponents of such systems cite as their aim: increasing voter turnout. After all, a democracy is only as good as its participation. But, if that’s the goal behind Courageous Colorado, why fund or target such a campaign at one of the highest-turnout states in the nation? Our recent primary elections dramatically exceeded national averages, and that was not a first for Colorado voters. In the 2024 presidential election, the only state which surpassed Colorado’s 77% turnout was Minnesota. So why is the Courageous Colorado campaign not Audacious Arkansas, where turnout was just 56%, or Outrageous Oklahoma, where turnout was just 54%?
While right-wing billionaires and oil companies might end up financing the idea once again, it’s worth noting that they aren’t the only ones who support it. The “Courageous Coalition” is an interesting assortment of orgs from across the political spectrum, and while it includes conservative organizations like Advance Colorado and Ready Colorado, who represent nothing so much as the incursion of dark money into politics, it also includes groups like Common Cause, a longtime stalwart in the fight against dark money in politics. Personally, I find the arguments in favor of ranked-choice voting persuasive, and RCV was part of the package in Proposition 131 – perhaps that’s what’s behind the inclusion of some organizations I otherwise would not expect. But if that’s the case, the question is whether RCV is worth the trade-offs that come with nonpartisan primaries, and I’m not sold.
There is a lot of conversation left between now and 2028, a lot of contours to be explored and arguments to be made. Maybe those arguments will be good; maybe they will make a compelling case for accepting the system’s notable downsides in exchange for even better upsides. But if the argument is going to be about turnout and representation, and the undemocratic benefits to conservatives and oligarchs are going to be hand-waved away, consider me a no.
