{"id":16768,"date":"2025-08-26T23:43:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T05:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/candidate-for-colorado-governor-stands-on-a-platform-built-on-rural-discontent\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:01:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:01:19","slug":"candidate-for-colorado-governor-stands-on-a-platform-built-on-rural-discontent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/candidate-for-colorado-governor-stands-on-a-platform-built-on-rural-discontent\/","title":{"rendered":"Candidate for Colorado governor stands on a platform built on rural discontent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Running
Running unaffiliated for Colorado governor, Chaz Evanson speaks at the Cortez Livestock Auction on Aug. 24. Evanson says he plans to run an entirely grassroots campaign traveling across the state, speaking to as many people as he can. (Benjamin Rubin\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Marine Corps veteran Chaz Evanson, an unaffiliated candidate for Colorado governor, held a Q&A session with several dozen attendees at the Cortez Livestock Auction on Aug. 24, sharing a vision shaped by rural voters\u2019 discontent with urban-centered decision-making.<\/p>\n

Evanson stood before the U.S. flag behind a livestock pen, engaging with the crowd for about two hours and regularly citing from a pocket Constitution that he said he has carried since enlisting in the military two decades ago.<\/p>\n

He passionately advocated for bringing Judeo-Christian virtues behind the Constitution back into Colorado politics, reforming the state\u2019s General Assembly and curtailing government overreach and touched on immigration and transgender issues.<\/p>\n

Evanson is one of 33 candidates running for governor ahead of the Nov. 3, 2026 election, according to Ballotpedia<\/a>. Since 2007, the previous three governors have all been Democrats.<\/p>\n

Running unaffiliated<\/div>\n

Although Evanson is openly conservative, he stands solely unaffiliated, saying that he serves not a party, but instead \u201cthe Constitution, the people of Colorado, and the Almighty God.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I travel across Colorado, I meet people disillusioned by the false choice between two broken parties,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Running unaffiliated has its hurdles. The first question Evanson received was how he would overcome the challenges of fundraising and name recognition.<\/p>\n

Evanson said he won\u2019t be taking big donations from special-interest groups, instead embarking on a grassroots campaign. He is gathering the minimum 1,000 signatures from all eight of the state\u2019s congressional districts in order to be placed on the ballot of the 2026 Colorado gubernatorial election, he said. He welcomes donations.<\/p>\n

Evanson, who was born in Durango and grew up in Cortez, now lives in Mesa County with his wife and children. For the next six months, he plans to travel statewide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to be everywhere I can,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to meet as many people as I can.\u201d The campaign ahead will be bolstered by a growing online presence<\/a> too.<\/p>\n

Giving rural counties a voice in Denver<\/div>\n

\u201cCurrently, both chambers of Colorado\u2019s General Assembly are based solely on population,\u201d Evanson said. \u201cThis gives urban centers near-total control over the legislative process and silences the unique concerns of rural and less populated counties.\u201d<\/p>\n

His message appeared to resonate with the crowd.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing Western Slope counties, we often don\u2019t have a lot of voice on the Eastern Slope,\u201d said Lenetta Shull, chairwoman of the Montezuma County Republican Party.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really don\u2019t get heard here in Southwest Colorado,\u201d said Tim Passell, co-owner of the Cortez Livestock Auction.<\/p>\n

Evanson said that as governor, he\u2019d create a system of 64 Senate seats in the General Assembly, one for each Colorado county.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, the state government in Denver can impose sweeping laws affecting your county\u2019s economy, schools, land use and values without ever asking you, the people, for your consent,\u201d Evanson said.<\/p>\n

Gender, gun rights, immigration \u2026<\/div>\n

Enacted into Colorado law in May, the Kelly Loving Act w<\/a>as intended to protect the rights of transgender people. The act, for instance, outlines how schools must follow a student\u2019s chosen gender identity, style of dress and name.<\/p>\n

For Evanson, the act helped catalyze him into a gubernatorial run, he said. Behind that bill and others like it, he said, were blatant violations of constitutional rights, like free speech, that force parents into state obedience.<\/p>\n

Similarly, he said he opposes any state law that seeks to strip citizens of their right to bear arms and practice religion.<\/p>\n

Many of these issues would have to be addressed through state executive orders that cite constitutional violations, Evanson said.<\/p>\n

He also opposes undocumented immigration.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to come to the United States because it\u2019s awesome, go to the front door,\u201d he said. \u201cOtherwise, see yourself to the door or be collected up and moved out of the out of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

At times, Evanson chose evocative words to express his vision. He said he opposes \u201cevery policy that threatens to make us more like Venezuela or California,\u201d and he described abortion as \u201cthe largest holocaust in the world,\u201d saying he would stop Colorado from funding Planned Parenthood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, conveying values from his Christian faith, he said families who\u2019ve chosen abortions in the past should be treated compassionately.<\/p>\n

He is an underdog, compared with Democratic candidates, but he believes in civilized dialogue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a governor and a we need a legislator and just in our communities, we need to get back to saying, \u2018You know what? I still love you, but I just disagree with you on that point.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking at Cortez auction barn, former Marine Chaz Evanson touts a constitutionally conservative vision<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[94,28,1398,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-headlines","tag-livestock-farming","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16768"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20380,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16768\/revisions\/20380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16768"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}