Dick Wadhams, well known GOP strategist who put Bill Owens in the governor’s mansion, will turn over in his political grave if Victor Marx wins the Republican nomination for governor. The GOP will bury its conservative principles for good if Republican voters elect Marx over state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer. A Marx win will finish any hope for a GOP resurrection. As of now, the race remains too close to call.

If the Republican Party completes its collapse this year, the business community and its GOP executives will have to deal with a Democratic majority in the 2027 General Assembly that’s more progressive than any time in Colorado’s history.

Business interests and others put up lots of money to elect Democrats they deem reasonable. Through campaign finance committees One Main Street Colorado and its subsidiary, American Future, they wanted to defeat too-progressive Democrats and elect moderate “Opportunity Caucus” candidates. Despite these buckets of dollars to their preferred candidates, the primary chips fell toward progressives. Or more-than-progressive, as Melat Kiros, Democratic Socialist, defeated U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette.

As a reminder, the Opportunity Caucus is the group of Democratic legislators who met in Vail at the Sonnenalp Hotel last fall before the 2026 General Assembly to strategize with business leaders on public policy. Common Cause and other citizens objected and brought a civil suit against the group, with State Rep. Sean Camacho as a named defendant. That open-records case remains with the court, but Camacho will not remain with the legislature. He was defeated handily by Iris Halpern despite a $250,000 campaign finance advantage.

Other examples of attacks on progressives include the effort to knock out incumbent Kenny Nguyen in the House. He won his primary with a nine-point margin. School board president Consuelo Redhorse in Summit County won the seat occupied by current House Speaker Julie McCluskie. Redhorse’s opponent, municipal judge Chris Floyd, had support from McCluskie, but that endorsement and $182,000 in independent expenditure funds from One Main Street Colorado to Colorado Mountain Progressives weren’t enough to put Floyd over the finish line.

On the state Senate side, Chela Garcia Irlando defeated Andrès Carrera in a northwest Denver race. His largest donors included realtors and unions representing oil-and-gas drilling interests. State Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, co-chair of the Opportunity Caucus, kicked in dollars to Carrera from her leadership fund.

The negative media content going after progressive candidates wasn’t pretty. It’s going to be a difficult situation for those placing bets on Opportunity Caucus candidates to ask progressive legislators to give consideration on bills. The funding mess out of One Main Street Colorado and American Future will certainly affect the state House’s leadership choices. In recent sessions, Speaker McCluskie and Majority Leader Monica Duran led the Democratic caucus. McCluskie won’t be back and Duran is moving on to the Senate, so both leadership roles will be open.  

Just as important, the state House will be younger than ever. While older Democratic women voters across Colorado leaned left selecting youngish candidates, nowhere was this more evident than in the Denver metro, where older Democrats made up more than 33% of primary voters.

How did this conversion of older Democrats to a whole-hearted embrace of progressive, even socialist, candidates happen? Look to the U.S. House primary pitting 69-year-old Diana DeGette against 29-year-old Melat Kiros. Many warned DeGette she should retire. Voters are worried, disgusted, incredulous, shocked, and angry about the current state of affairs of the nation on its 250th birthday. It appeared neither U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet nor DeGette had done enough to object to and stop President Donald Trump’s many corruptions.

At the state level, voters rejected pseudo-Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’ vetoes of pro-labor legislation and his commutation of Tina Peters’ prison sentence. What’s important to take away is not that Colorado has suddenly turned into a communist enclave. Democratic primary voters, young and old, are looking for candidates who will take strong action to reject President Trump’s corruptions and will put up more than incremental changes to affect health care, housing, education and environmental quality.

A new and rare partnership has emerged in Democratic territories in the state between baby boomers and young Gen-Zers and millennials. Forgive the historic backstory, but baby boomers, sons and daughters of the World War II greatest generation, had to defer their leadership aspirations to those survivors of the Great Depression and World War II from 1960 to 1996. It wasn’t until President Bill Clinton was elected in 2000 that baby boomers had a seat at the big table of decision-makers. At the national level, President Trump will be the last hangover, literally and figuratively, of the baby-boomer reign.

Older Democrats, remembering their generational tumbles with their parents over civil rights, voting rights and the Vietnam War, understand to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. They are ready to have the people who will live late into this century begin the arduous task of making changes to how the nation and the state address public services and policies.

Paula Noonan owns CapitolCommons.ai, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.