Calling 2026 an “interesting” year, Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer said the race for the Republican nomination has taken her from a “bizarre debate” to a broader effort to maintain the party’s integrity, while making the case that she’s ready to lead Colorado into better days.

As the primary election season winds down and voters begin casting their ballots, Kirkmeyer said she feels her campaign for governor has hit its stride at just the right time. She faces fellow Republicans Rep. Scott Bottoms and political newcomer Victor Marx on the primary ballot for governor.

The winner of the June 30 primary will face either U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet or Attorney General Phil Weiser. The two Democrats are in a tight race for their party’s nomination to take the state’s top seat with Gov. Jared Polis being term-limited.

Recent debate made it difficult to dig into policy

While Colorado faces a wide range of challenges that will shape what voters want in their next governor, much of the recent attention on the Republican primary followed the June 2 debate hosted by 9News with the University of Denver, Colorado Politics and the Denver Gazette.

Kirkmeyer said the debate focused heavily on clarifying — or debunking — elements of her opponents’ backgrounds, claims and side issues, making it difficult to fully dig into policy.

She understood why moderators Kyle Clark and Marshall Zelinger pressed Marx on his background and questioned Bottoms about claims he has made regarding the state budget, pedophiles and other issues, she said.

From her perspective, the moderators were trying to give voters a clearer sense of who is running for governor, even if that meant the debate took longer to discuss substantive policy. She said she still felt she delivered her answers effectively.

In a recent Denver Gazette editorial, Dick Wadhams warned that if Republican voters nominated Marx or Bottoms, it would amount to a “death wish” for other GOP candidates down the ballot. Kirkmeyer agreed and went further, saying such a result could also shift the balance of power in Washington, D.C. by affecting competitive races in the 8th, 3rd and 5th congressional districts.

“The names at the top of the ballot mean something,” she said. “It does every year, but in the midterms, the president is not at the top of the ticket.”

With Democrats already controlling statewide offices and holding majorities in the legislature, Kirkmeyer said Republicans face an uphill climb and that nominating unqualified candidates would make it even harder.

She said Republicans have become a national punchline after clips from Marx’s interview with Kyle Clark — including his claims about killing people and performing exorcisms — appeared on late-night comedy shows.

“I mean, this is embarrassing,” she said. “This is what people are seeing as running for governor in Colorado. At that point, I knew I just needed to stand there and be as sane as I possibly can be and not get pulled into this.”

Both Bottoms and Kirkmeyer said they will not support Marx if he earns the party’s nomination. Marx, while calling his opponents “mean,” said he would support either of them.

‘The kids are the Democrats’

When campaign discussions turn to substantive issues, Kirkmeyer said she believed she stood well above her opponents. She noted that Marx’s main point on the state budget is simply that he had read the “long bill” and found it “complicated.”

Kirkmeyer contrasted that with her own experience, saying she has not only read the budget but helped write it. As a senator and longtime member of the Joint Budget Committee, she emphasized that she understands how the budget works and is prepared to lead efforts to fix it. Under the state constitution, she noted, the budget must be balanced and adopted every legislative session.

Kirkmeyer said the real issue is the Democratic-led legislature’s spending decisions. She said Democrats have blamed President Donald Trump for the state’s $1.2 billion deficit, but Colorado was already facing a $1 billion shortfall in 2024 and she believes warning signs were visible as early as 2021.

She argued that Democrats often fall back on blaming Trump and the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, when, in her view, the solution is straightforward — cut spending and restore fiscal discipline.

Kirkmeyer compared the situation to “kids with credit cards while the parents are out of town.”

“The credit cards are now maxed out,” she said. “In this case, the kids are the Democrats and that’s what they did. They started a bunch of new programs, opened a bunch of new offices and used a lot of one-time spending.”

Now, she said, those “credit cards” have to be cut and the state must review programs one by one to determine which should be scaled back or eliminated.

Rural Colorado feels invisible

When asked what she has heard most directly from Colorado residents, Kirkmeyer said she has no doubt that rural communities feel increasingly invisible to the state’s urban and metro areas.

She said roads remain a major point of frustration, farmers and ranchers feel isolated and rural healthcare is shrinking, as services are cut and patients bear the consequences. As Medicaid pressures continue to strain the state budget, Kirkmeyer said rural hospitals are being reimbursed at only 60 to 70 cents on the dollar, making it nearly impossible for them to cover operating costs.

Kirkmeyer said that during her time on the Joint Budget Committee, she worked with hospitals to avoid cutting essential services. Still, she said the next governor will have to confront the growing number of medical facilities that are eliminating labor and delivery units and other specialty care programs to stay afloat.

“I think my campaign is peaking at the right time,” she said. “As people get their ballots and they’re starting to fill them out and they’re paying attention.”