Former Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams said on a conservative talk radio show last week that he will not vote for controversial Republican gubernatorial nominee Victor Marx in this year’s election. Instead, he said he plans to vote for independent candidate Greg Lopez.
“I do think that Greg Lopez will be a safe harbor for a lot of Republicans, frankly, like me, who will not vote for Victor Marx, and who will not vote for Phil Weiser either,” Wadhams said on The Ross Kaminsky Show on July 29. “I mean, I’m with you, Ross. I like Phil Weiser personally, and I think he’s a smart guy, but I couldn’t vote for him. He’s too far to the left. But I said, I am not going to vote for Weiser, but I do think Greg [Lopez], he’s going to get a good chunk of votes in this election.”
Wadhams, whose term as GOP Chair ended in 2011, has been critical of extreme, conspiratorial factions within the state party.
Wadhams isn’t the only Republican who refuses to support Marx, a ministry leader and self-proclaimed “reluctant exorcist” who refuses to say how many people he’s killed and has accepted donations in excess of campaign finance limits. His primary opponents, state Rep. Scott Bottoms (R-CO Springs), a far-right minister himself, and state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer (R-Weld County), have both said they will not support Marx. Conspiracist podcaster Joe Oltmann, who dropped out of the gubernatorial race before the primary, is also backing Lopez over Marx.
Lopez was also running as a Republican until he dropped his party affiliation earlier this year. He is the former mayor of Parker, and briefly served as a congressman after Ken Buck’s resignation in 2024. He also ran for governor in 2022; during that campaign, he dodged questions about whether he believed the 2020 election was stolen. At a forum last year, Lopez spoke in favor of ending secular education.
“My values have not changed. I am a strong, compassionate conservative,” Lopez told the audience of a GOP candidate forum earlier this year. “But we all know that in Colorado, when it comes to the voting blocs, the unaffiliated voter is now the majority voting bloc.”
Wadhams continued, “There will be a lot of conservative-leaning and unaffiliated voters who say, we don’t like Weiser, he’s too ideologically liberal. We can’t vote for Marx, we’re gonna vote for Greg Lopez. I think there will be some disaffected Democrats who will see Greg Lopez as a kind of a protest vote against Weiser. I mean. There are some [Michael] Bennet people who are pretty bitter over that defeat. But the vast majority, Jeana, I think will come from Republicans who just cannot stomach the thought of voting for a guy who is so ill-fitted for the governorship. It is truly disgusting that we’re in this position right now.”
This isn’t the first time Wadhams has found himself facing an unpleasant choice between his party’s gubernatorial nominee and a third-party conservative alternative. While serving as state GOP chair in 2010, Republican nominee Dan Maes’s candidacy imploded due to his lies about his previous work as police officer and his failure to disclose a bankruptcy, including to Wadhams during the party’s internal vetting process. Former Congressman Tom Tancredo then entered the race after joining the American Constitutional Party. Wadhams ultimately attempted to broker a deal in which both Tancredo and Maes would drop out, allowing the party to nominate a new Republican who could challenge then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper head-to-head. Maes refused and got 11% of the vote, Tancredo took 36% and Hickenlooper coasted to victory with 51% of the state’s voters.
While Wadhams and others have distanced themselves from Marx, other Republicans in high-stakes races have embraced him. U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO) endorsed Marx after his primary victory, and U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO) sent a video message to Marx’s unity rally in which he said Republicans have to “stick together.” U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) supported Marx even before his victory.
