{"id":40049,"date":"2022-06-14T01:59:41","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T07:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/get-to-know-the-republican-candidates-for-colorado-governor-and-where-they-stand\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:53:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:53:25","slug":"get-to-know-the-republican-candidates-for-colorado-governor-and-where-they-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/get-to-know-the-republican-candidates-for-colorado-governor-and-where-they-stand\/","title":{"rendered":"Get to know the Republican candidates for Colorado governor and where they stand"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Republican
Republican gubernatorial candidates Heidi Ganahl, left, and Greg Lopez. (Colorado Sun photos)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Greg Lopez and Heidi Ganahl are the two Republican gubernatorial candidates facing off in the June 28 primary for a chance to unseat Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in November.<\/p>\n

Colorado voters have elected only one Republican governor in roughly a half century, and whoever wins the primary will face a tough opponent in Polis, a deep-pocketed self-funder who polls indicate is well liked.<\/p>\n

We combed through documents and attended several candidate forums to put together this guide to the candidates in the Republican gubernatorial primary.<\/p>\n

Who are the candidates?<\/div>\n

Lopez, 58, is a former Democrat who served two terms as the mayor of Parker in the 1990s. He became a Republican during his mayoral tenure. Lopez ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2016 and for governor in 2018. He was the Colorado director of the Small Business Administration between 2008 and 2014, is an Air Force veteran and lives in Elizabeth.<\/p>\n

Ganahl, 55, is a University of Colorado regent. She was elected to her at-large seat in 2016 and is the only statewide elected Republican in Colorado. Before entering politics, she started Camp Bow Wow, a doggy day care with a national footprint that she later sold. She lives in Lone Tree.<\/p>\n

Two stances on abortion<\/div>\n

With the U.S. Supreme Court poised in the coming weeks to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision protecting the right to an abortion without excessive government restriction, abortion is set to be a central issue in the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Ganahl said she strongly opposes a bill passed by the legislature this year and signed into law by Polis that affirms abortion access in Colorado with very few limitations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to do everything we can to roll it back,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But Ganahl doesn\u2019t endorse a blanket ban on abortion, saying there should be exceptions \u201cfor rape and incest and life of the mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lopez agrees that Colorado\u2019s new abortion access law should be repealed. He thinks the procedure should be completely outlawed without exception.<\/p>\n

Climate change<\/div>\n

Lopez rejects the broad scientific consensus on climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI truly do not believe that it\u2019s caused by human behavior,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When asked at a recent candidate forum if she thinks climate change is caused by humans, Ganahl didn\u2019t say, though she acknowledged that climate change does exist.<\/p>\n

\"Heidi
Heidi Ganahl, a Republican candidate for Colorado governor on Saturday, May 21, 2022. (Steve Peterson\/Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cThe climate is changing all the time,\u201d she said, \u201cbut we don\u2019t have to sacrifice our livelihoods. We all care about clean air, clean land and clean water and we can make that happen without giving up our economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

If elected, Ganahl plans to submit a waiver to the Environmental Protection Agency to try to unwind the EPA\u2019s decision to downgrade the Denver area\u2019s air quality status to severe from serious. Her aim is to prevent implementation of a requirement that specially formulated, and more expensive, gasoline be sold in the metro region.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s education system<\/div>\n

Ganahl is a proponent of school choice and giving parents public funding to spend as they see fit, essentially a voucher program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have got to fix public schools,\u201d she said, \u201cand the way we do that is through competition. So we\u2019ve got to fund the student, not the system. We\u2019ve got to give power back to parents to take their kids out of schools and put them in situations where it works, whether it\u2019s home-school, microschool, private school, charter school.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was the founding member of a charter school.<\/p>\n

Lopez said he wants to get social issues out of schools and argued against teaching students about how the nation\u2019s racist past has contemporary effects.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe educational system has now been converted into state indoctrination centers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Boosting school safety<\/div>\n

The mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, thrust school safety back into the spotlight.<\/p>\n

Lopez said law enforcement is part of the solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am going to put a police officer in every single school across the state,\u201d he said at the Western Conservative Summit.<\/p>\n

Ganahl believes addressing mental health is paramount.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a deep, deep issue that goes back to the family, the community reconnecting with people (and) curing our mental health crisis,\u201d she said at the summit.<\/p>\n

\"Greg
Greg Lopez, a Republican candidate for Colorado governor, on Saturday, May 21, 2022. (Steve Peterson\/Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Ganahl has released a five-step school safety plan that includes implementing the 988 crisis hotline, launching a \u201cschool safety accountability dashboard\u201d for the public and hosting monthly governor\u2019s \u201cschool safety reports\u201d to track metrics.<\/p>\n

Neither candidate has endorsed any new restrictions on firearms.<\/p>\n

Was the 2020 presidential election stolen?<\/div>\n

Lopez said that \u201cI fully believe that President Trump did win the election\u201d in 2020, a claim that\u2019s false. The 2020 presidential election was won by Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Lopez has also said that if he\u2019s elected he will pardon indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, an election denier, if she is falsely accused and convicted of the felony and misdemeanor charges brought against her in a security breach of her county\u2019s voting system. He told a conservative talk radio host that he \u201chas a lot of concerns about what I\u2019ve read in the indictment\u201d leveled against Peters.<\/p>\n

Ganahl has not directly answered the question of whether the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe Biden is our president,\u201d she said. \u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of questions about what happened in the election. And for four years the Democrats yelled \u2018Russia! Russia! Russia!\u2019 And, for the last couple years, we had some questions about what happened. I don\u2019t understand why they\u2019re so averse to transparency and people asking questions and gaining confidence again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The candidates\u2019 big policy proposals<\/div>\n

Ganahl says she wants to phase down Colorado\u2019s income tax rate to 0% in her first term while also cutting Colorado\u2019s 22-cent gas tax, which is among the lowest in the nation, in half and still paying for infrastructure projects and repairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s plenty of money, you guys,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But Ganahl has not said what program she would cut to make her campaign promise a reality. Income tax revenue makes up a significant portion of the pool of money that funds the state budget.<\/p>\n

Ganahl also has not answered how she would make the changes if she is elected governor and Democrats control one or both chambers of the legislature.<\/p>\n

Lopez says that 30% to 40% of Colorado\u2019s budget is fraud, waste and abuse, though he hasn\u2019t provided specifics.<\/p>\n

One idea Lopez has floated on the campaign trail is moving Colorado toward a statewide Electoral College system that gives rural areas of the state with less population more political power. 9News, which first reported on the proposal, said the idea would be to give each of Colorado\u2019s 64 counties electoral votes based on turnout, with 11 votes going to counties with the highest turnout and 3 votes going to counties with the lowest turnout.<\/p>\n

Lopez has since distanced himself from the idea saying it is just a \u201cconversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no official proposal on the table,\u201d he said. But Lopez said the plan would lead to \u201ctrue representation\u201d<\/p>\n

What else you should know about the candidates<\/div>\n

Lopez also has had several run-ins with law enforcement, all of which have been previously documented and that he has openly talked about.<\/p>\n

In 1993, he and his wife were both cited in a domestic violence incident in which he was accused of pushing his wife, who was six months pregnant, to the floor and kicking her after she hit him on the top of his head. The Denver Post reported in 1994 that both Lopez and his wife pleaded guilty to a single charge of harassment.<\/p>\n

Lopez was also accused, in a separate case, of driving under the influence.<\/p>\n

Then, in October 2020, Lopez settled a lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors alleging that after he left the Small Business Administration, where he was the Colorado district director from 2008 to 2014, Lopez violated federal law by attempting to improperly influence actions of the agency.<\/p>\n

\"Greg
Greg Lopez speaks during the GOP assembly at the Broadmoor World Arena on Saturday, April 9, 2022, in Colorado Springs. (Hugh Carey\/The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Prosecutors alleged Lopez \u201cattempted to influence the SBA\u2019s handling of its loan guarantee\u201d to Morreale Hotels, which was owned by Lopez\u2019s friend.<\/p>\n

Lopez paid $15,000 to settle the case and \u201cacknowledged that the United States could prove the facts alleged in the civil action by a preponderance of the evidence,\u201d per a news release from the Trump administration\u2019s Justice Department.<\/p>\n

Lopez said he wasn\u2019t aware at the time that he did anything wrong. He said prosecutors brought the case just days before the statute of limitations expired. \u201cThey wanted $157,000 for a phone call and an email,\u201d he said. \u201cI settled for $15,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s Trump-appointed U.S. attorney at the time, Jason Dunn, framed the case differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Lopez\u2019s attempts to exert improper influence over a federal agency on behalf of his friend were serious violations of the rules for former federal officials,\u201d he said in a written statement. \u201cThe American people deserve to have confidence that the federal government runs its programs without favoritism towards former officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sun could find no record of Ganahl being arrested before in Colorado.<\/p>\n

Ganahl\u2019s first husband, Bion, died in a plane crash in the 1990s when she was 27. She remarried and then divorced. She is now married to her third husband, Jason, who runs GQue, a barbeque restaurant with locations in the Denver area.<\/p>\n

Ganahl was diagnosed with a noncancerous brain tumor in 2020 that was surgically removed. Her term as regent ends early next year.<\/p>\n

\"Republican
Republican candidate for governor Heidi Ganahl speaks during the GOP assembly at the Broadmoor World Arena on Saturday, April 9, 2022, in Colorado Springs. (Hugh Carey\/The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
How to beat Jared Polis<\/div>\n

Colorado voters have not elected a Republican governor since 2002, when Bill Owens was elected to his second term. The last GOP governor in Colorado before Owens was John Arthur Love, who was elected to his final term in 1970, 52 years ago.<\/p>\n

Polis has a solid approval rating and a fortune that he\u2019s willing to spend to get reelected. In 2020, he spent more than $23 million to secure his first term. He\u2019s already spent more than $5 million on his 2022 campaign.<\/p>\n

So how do Ganahl and Lopez plan to beat Polis?<\/p>\n

Ganahl said she \u201cwill raise the millions of millions of dollars that we have got to raise to build a movement to beat Jared Polis.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, however, Ganahl hasn\u2019t been able to keep up. Ganahl\u2019s campaign had raised a little more than $1 million through April 27.<\/p>\n

Lopez, on the other hand, is taking a different approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one is going to outspend the governor,\u201d he said, \u201cit doesn\u2019t matter who you are. You\u2019ve got to outwork him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/div>\n

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

Lopez, a former mayor of Parker, and Heidi Ganahl, a University of Colorado regent, will face off in the June 28 primary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,266,819,28,29,265],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-40049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-election","tag-gov-jared-polis","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40049","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=40049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84528,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40049\/revisions\/84528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40049"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=40049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}