Self-declared exorcist of demons and swashbuckling rescuer of 45,000 innocent women and children, Victor Marx narrowly won the Republican nomination for governor despite claiming he had a 44-point lead just weeks before the election. 

Marx received 39.9% while state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer won 39.4% and state Rep. Scott Bottoms was at 21%.  Marx won by a margin of just 2,500 votes out of 520,000 cast in the Republican primary. 

On May 11, just seven weeks before the June 30 primary, the Marx campaign breathlessly declared “VICTOR MARX DOMINATES — FIRST PUBLIC POLL SHOWS COMMANDING LEAD IN COLORADO GOP PRIMARY.” 

Marx claimed he led Kirkmeyer by a whopping 44 points, 59 to 15, with Bottoms at just 6.  He called for his opponents to “get out of the race because the primary is over.” The independent expenditure committee supporting Marx, Freedom IEC, paid for the poll. 

If Marx truly led Kirkmeyer by 44 points, 59 to 15, his campaign must have cratered over the next seven weeks when he got only 39.9% while Kirkmeyer received 39.4%. 

The only other explanation for this wild swing in the numbers would be that the poll, as has been the case with so much of Marx’s exaggerated personal and professional background, was another dose of fake news that did not really exist to begin with. 

So what happened?  How did the vaunted Marx campaign — that he declared led in all the “campaign metrics” while raising $2.7 million — find itself barely hanging on in the primary? 

If the poll was correct in showing a mammoth Marx lead of 44 points, how did he decline from 59% to just 39% in just seven weeks while Kirkmeyer went from 15% to 39%?  Marx plummeted by 20 points while Kirkmeyer surged by 24. 

Marx spent more than $800,000 on hiring a huge stable of political consultants from across the nation, whom he extolled as running the most effective, dominant campaign in Colorado political history.  Uh-huh. 

Until May, the Colorado news media largely ignored the Republican primary for governor while being fixated on the epic Democratic battle between U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser, although Marx’s nonsensical boasts were well known among Republicans. 

During this time, Marx refused to debate his opponents and restricted his campaigning to tightly scripted, exclusive events where only his most fervent supporters attended. He failed to define his positions on the issues other than disjointed AI-generated responses. 

But the tide finally turned when Marx had to answer tough, specific questions about his outlandish claims.  Marx was forced to substantially backtrack or outright admit so much just wasn’t true about his background. 

Meanwhile, Kirkmeyer demonstrated she would be the strongest Republican candidate for governor since Bill Owens, who was elected in 1998, and he is the only Republican governor to be elected in the past 54 years. Kirkmeyer would have forced Weiser and his Democratic Socialist sympathizers to defend eight years of neglect and decline under total Democratic control. 

Kirkmeyer ran a disciplined, substantive campaign while serving on the powerful Joint Budget Committee where she successfully confronted a dominant Democratic majority.  She was outspent by Marx $2.7 million to $600,000. 

Marx’s plummet is a harbinger of what will happen in the general election.   

It is mind-boggling that a plurality of Republican primary voters cannot see the phony bluster of Victor Marx will not sell in a state dominated by a majority of unaffiliated voters who have deep antipathy for President Donald Trump. 

Do those voters really believe a candidate who claims to be an exorcist of demons — even over the phone; who claims to have been forced to murder someone when he was seven years old even though no law enforcement record of it exists; who said he “rescued” 45,000 women and children from war-torn countries but then backtracked and said he offered them stuffed animals or who would not answer a direct question from 9News anchor Kyle Clark about how many people he had killed during his daring escapades — is even remotely electable in Colorado? 

The danger of Victor Marx goes beyond a Republican losing another governor’s race. Marx’s absurd rantings will undermine every Republican candidate running in a competitive statewide, state legislative or congressional race.   

Weiser and the Democrats get a free ride while Republican candidates get smothered in Marx’s fantasies. 

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who managed campaigns for U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, and Gov. Bill Owens.  He was campaign manager for U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota in 2004 when Thune unseated Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle.