The final days of 2025 saw an unusually high number of Colorado candidates switch parties and races, reshaping at least a few primaries ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

The state has seen its share of switchers over the years, from the grandaddy of them all, the late former U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who became a Republican in 1995 after a decade as a Democratic elected official, to Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who kept her affiliation but switched districts two years ago, half way through her second term, exchanging the Western Slope for Colorado’s Eastern Plains.

The 92-year-old Campbell, who served as a state lawmaker and two terms in the U.S. House before his election to the Senate as a Democrat in 1992 and was reelected as a Republican in 1998, died on the afternoon of Dec. 30. His legacy included being one of only a few Native Americans to serve in the Senate, along with a streak of fierce independence that left him less than firmly attached to either party.

Campbell made his move the day after the Senate voted down a balanced budget amendment, a move that, contrary to his long-held position, made the veteran lawmaker realize he was no longer comfortable as a Democrat.

“I have always been considered a moderate, much to the consternation of the Democratic Party,” said Campbell, announcing his decision. “My moderacy will now be to the consternation of the right wing of the Republican Party.”

Even as his party switch landed like a lightning bolt in a state where such occurrences were rare, Campbell expressed a theme common to switches in decades to come. He hadn’t changed his values or beliefs, he said, but merely exchanged labels. His new party took a while to warm up to their new top statewide elected official, but voters, it turned out, didn’t mind and reelected him to a second six-year term a few years later.

Boebert announced at the end of 2023 that she was moving across the state to seek a third term in safer territory, swapping the district she’d won a year earlier by the closest margin of any House race in the country for the state’s most solidly Republican seat.

The Democrat who had come close to unseating her, Adam Frisch, had spent the year hauling in more campaign cash than any Colorado candidate had ever seen. Boebert made clear she preferred to take what turned out to be an easier and less expensive route back to D.C., though she did have to navigate a tough primary and is facing similarly well-heeled challengers in this year’s election.

The timing of this cycle’s end-of-year switches wasn’t coincidental, as state law requires that major-party candidates be affiliated with the party that nominates them to the November ballot by the start of the year.

This year’s crop included Matt Cavanaugh, an independent congressional candidate who joined the Democrats, citing the urgency of coalescing opposition to U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, a Colorado Springs Republican serving his first term in the state’s most rapidly changing but historically reliable Republican seat.

Among the record number of Republicans running for the office held by term-limited Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, two candidates changed course as the new year dawned.

Former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez, making his third run for governor, dropped his GOP affiliation and declared he was running as an independent. Neither major party had the answers, he said, noting that unaffiliated voters make up nearly half of the state’s electorate but “feel politically homeless.”

Lopez, who won a special election with Boebert’s backing to fill a vacancy in her new district, likened his decision to his change from Democrat to Republican just over 30 years ago, when he was serving as Colorado’s youngest mayor in the town of Parker, around the same time as Campbell’s switch.

At the same time, State Sen. Mark Baisley, a Woodland Park Republican, jumped from the crowded gubernatorial primary to the sparse field of GOP candidates hoping to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, the former two-term governor seeking reelection.

Another switch that garnered less attention could have as much impact on the November ballot.

James Wiley, a former executive director of the Colorado Libertarian Party, was a chief architect of the minor party’s deal with state Republicans last cycle to avoid running “spoiler” candidates if the GOP nominees agreed to abide by a set of principles laid out by the Libertarians.

Wiley, who ran in 2024 on the Libertarian ticket for Boebert’s old congressional seat, declared the pact a success after Libertarians stood down in several key races narrowly won by Republicans. Those included Republican Gabe Evans unseating the Democratic incumbent in the state’s most closely divided congressional district and a handful of legislative victories that prevented Democrats from holding a super-majority in the state House of Representatives.

This time around, however, Wiley has been running for secretary of state and, at the end of the year, rebranded himself as a Republican. He also resigned his position as an alternate repressive on the Libertarian National Committee.

Until Wiley’s move, Republicans had not yet fielded an active candidate for the state’s top election official, a position held by term-limited Democrat Jena Griswold, who is running for the open attorney general seat.

He told Colorado Politics that he isn’t abandoning any of his libertarian principles but feels it’s a necessary, pragmatic response to what he describes as “a pragmatic response to the existential threats facing human liberty from election machines.”

“There are certain elements within the political environment that I think have a degree of urgency and importance which is inappropriate to what for the delayed development of the Libertarian Party in order to address and solve,” Wiley said. “So this is kind of a drastic, emergency action that I feel is necessary to take at this time in order to accomplish the specific political goals that I’ve set out with my campaign.”

Those goals, he said, include working to free Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk serving a nine-year prison sentence on felony and misdemeanor charges for breaching her county’s secure voting equipment.

He also vows to decertify the state’s electronic voting machines and ballot tabulators, and to mandate hand-counted paper ballots. In addition, he wants to put all of Colorado’s public records — from the voter rolls to property records and birth certificates — on a blockchain ledger, ensuring what he describes as “eternal transparency and auditability.”

“I do not want to be a Republican, but that’s what’s necessary now,” Wiley said. “I’m willing to take that step and form coalition with people typically I wouldn’t agree with politically, in order to achieve what i believe is in both of our interests and a common good.”