Former Republican congressman makes ballot for Colorado governor as unaffiliated candidate
Greg Lopez, who served a six-month stint as a Republican congressman for Colorado’s 4th Congressional District from 2024 to 2025, will be on the November ballot as an unaffiliated candidate for Colorado governor.
The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said Tuesday, July 28, that Lopez had submitted enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Colorado requires at least 1,000 valid signatures from each of the state’s eight congressional districts. Lopez secured just under 12,000.
He will face Republican candidate Victor Marx, a ministry leader, and Democratic Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is widely seen as the race’s frontrunner.
Colorado hasn’t elected a Republican governor since Bill Owens in 2002, and the state’s electorate has continued to shift more blue in the years since. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat who cannot run for reelection this year because of term limits, won his first election in 2018 by a more than 10-percentage-point margin. He was reelected in 2022 by nearly 20 percentage points.
Lopez, in a July 28 video posted to his social media account , said he is willing to work “with both sides of the aisle, because it’s about solving problems. It’s not about pointing fingers.”
Lopez, who, at the age of 27, was elected mayor of Parker in 1992, ran unsuccessfully for Colorado governor in Republican primaries in 2018 and 2022.
Following the resignation of former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck in March 2024, Lopez was nominated by Republican Party committee members to finish the remainder of Buck’s term representing the 4th Congressional District, which includes Douglas County and most of the Eastern Plains. Lopez won a special June election for Buck’s seat, defeating his Democratic opponent, Trisha Calverese, but he declined to run for a full term. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert won the seat in the November 2024 general election.
Lopez left the Republican Party in January, choosing to run as an unaffiliated candidate for governor this year. He told CBS News Colorado in a recent interview that “people want independent candidates. They no longer want to hear about the Ds or the Rs.”
Half of Colorado’s active registered voters are unaffiliated, and an overwhelming majority of them say they reject both major parties and want to see Democrats and Republicans become more moderate, according to a statewide poll released late last year.
The poll of 1,210 active voters was commissioned by a nonprofit founded by Kent Thiry, a multimillionaire who has spearheaded numerous campaigns aimed at giving unaffiliated voters more voice in Colorado elections.
While the survey found that more than 8 in 10 unaffiliated voters said they chose their status intentionally out of rejection for both major parties, most still vote for a Democratic or Republican candidate during elections, and usually lean toward Democrats.
Voter turnout surged in this year’s primary elections, driven in part by a strong showing for Democratic candidates who were aided by unaffiliated voters.