Colorado deniers did not fare well in the primary

The Monday after the Colorado GOP’S state assembly in April, state Sen. Jim Smallwood wasn’t panicking. Sure, the event amounted to a celebration of election denial, but these gatherings attract die-hards who don’t represent the broader electorate, Smallwood said.

“There wasn’t a single statewide race that surprised me,” Smallwood, a more moderate Republican, said Wednesday morning after a Tuesday election that saw the most vocal Trumpists and aspiring subverters of democracy lose resoundingly.

Tina Peters, the indicted Mesa County clerk and nationally known Big Lie foot solider, was in third place out of three candidates in the GOP primary for secretary of state as of Wednesday morning. The winner of that race, Pam Anderson, raised less money, ran a fairly quiet campaign and unequivocally rejects baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud and stolen elections.

Ron Hanks, who rallied outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is primed to lose by about 10 points to Joe O’dea in the GOP race to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. O’dea does not believe the 2020 election was stolen.

The candidate contrast on the topic of elections was less black-and-white in the GOP race for governor between Heidi Ganahl and

Greg Lopez. Lopez, who said he’d pardon Peters and that the 2020 election was illegitimate, was losing by about 7 points as of Wednesday morning. Ganahl, a University of Colorado regent, dodged questions about election denial for months leading up to the primary and specifically avoided criticizing John Eastman, the former CU visiting professor who was at the center of the coordinated attempt to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost his bid for a second term.

Elsewhere on the ballot, state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer rolled to victory in the GOP primary for Colorado’s new 8th Congressional District, topping a field that included election denier Lori Saine. Dave Williams, a Hanks ally and outspoken conspiracy theorist, challenged U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn from the right in Colorado Springs and lost by about 15 points.

“I think it was a bad night for election deniers in Colorado, and I think that’s good for our democracy,” Bennet said in an interview Wednesday morning.

Democratic groups spent millions on ads and other content to boost the profile of Hanks and other election deniers, who conventional wisdom says would have been the weaker opponents in the general election. Bennet declined ahead of the primary to say whether he was OK with all that spending.

It is difficult, of course, to draw conclusions after the primar y about what Colorado Republicans want.