{"id":36933,"date":"2022-12-05T19:38:09","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T02:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/steve-wells-spent-only-30-of-the-11-million-set-aside-to-beat-polis-colorado-democrats\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:34:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:34:36","slug":"steve-wells-spent-only-30-of-the-11-million-set-aside-to-beat-polis-colorado-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/steve-wells-spent-only-30-of-the-11-million-set-aside-to-beat-polis-colorado-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Wells spent only 30% of the $11 million set aside to beat Polis, Colorado Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Weld
Weld County farmer and rancher Steve Wells talks with a reporter in his office Sept. 9. Wells dedicated $11 million to Republican Heidi Ganahl\u2019s failed gubernatorial campaign but only spent $3.3 million in the effort. He cited the lack of support from other donors as the reason the rest of the pledged donation wasn\u2019t used. (Valerie Mosley, Special to the Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

HUDSON \u2013 Steve Wells, the deep-pocketed Weld County rancher and oil and gas booster who made waves over the summer when he dedicated $11 million toward a long shot effort to unseat Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, ended up spending only about 30% of the money.<\/p>\n

Wells says he has refunded himself about $7 million from the super PAC, Deep Colorado Wells, that he formed to defeat Polis and support Republican candidates, leaving about $850,000 in the committee\u2019s coffers for future political spending.<\/p>\n

Wells said he always intended to spend the full $11 million but that he stopped at $3.3 million about a month before Election Day after he realized other GOP donors weren\u2019t going to open their wallets in Colorado and as he saw how much money Polis, a wealthy self-funding candidate, was dedicating to his reelection bid.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no help from the wealthy Republican people I knew who told me they would help,\u201d Wells told The Colorado Sun in an interview last week at a restaurant in Hudson. \u201cOnce we started seeing all the millions Polis was going to spend on commercials \u2013 and not getting any help from anybody \u2013 is when we kind of decided that it was time to stop. You just can\u2019t compete with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wells, whose fortune comes from oil and gas drilling on his 40,000-acre Weld County ranch, said he has severed ties with some wealthy GOP donors over their unfulfilled financial commitments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s changed who I do business with,\u201d Wells said without getting specific. \u201cIf you want to sit and piss and moan and (expletive) about your taxes and crime and all this (expletive) and do absolutely nothing, then get the hell away from me, because I don\u2019t have time for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polis spent at least $13 million on his 2022 reelection bid after spending more than $23 million to win his first term in 2018.<\/p>\n

Polis this year beat his Republican challenger, University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl, by more than 19 percentage points in the most decisive victory by a Colorado gubernatorial candidate in two decades.<\/p>\n

Ganahl\u2019s fundraising was lackluster and her campaign was marred by a series of unforced errors. Every major statewide GOP candidate in Colorado lost by at least 10 percentage points this year, with Ganahl\u2019s defeat being the most severe.<\/p>\n

Wells said he doesn\u2019t blame Ganahl for her loss, and he doesn\u2019t regret supporting her candidacy rather than directing his money toward other candidates. He figured that supporting Ganahl would provide a boost to all Republicans running this year. Wells also thought other GOP donors would follow his lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe worked real hard,\u201d he said. \u201cShe was limited by finances, and I think that\u2019s huge. I don\u2019t think she got the press she should have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ganahl and her campaign often clashed with reporters. She refused to debate Polis on 9News, Colorado\u2019s most-watched TV news channel, and on the night before Election Day accused reporters of trying to suppress the vote by sharing polling showing she was destined to lose by a large margin.<\/p>\n

If he could do it all over again, Wells said he would have started his spending \u2013 which focused on TV, digital and billboard ads \u2013 earlier instead of waiting until the summer before the election.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t regret anything I\u2019ve done,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s things that we probably could have done differently. Everybody is a Monday morning quarterback.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for where Wells plans to spend the money that remains in his super PAC\u2019s account, he said he will focus on local issues, like city council, county commission and school board races. \u201cI\u2019m not gonna quit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deep Colorado Wells\u2019 final campaign finance report for the 2022 election cycle is due to the Colorado Secretary of State\u2019s Office on Dec. 13.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

says he intended to spend the full amount but refunded the majority after others declined to join him<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,826,265,1304],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-political-campaigns","tag-politics","tag-republican-party"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36933","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=36933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83504,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36933\/revisions\/83504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36933"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}