Colorado Is Broken
February 2026 | Colorado Governor's Race Analysis
COLORADO IS BROKEN.
THE DATA DOESN'T LIE. AND ONE CANDIDATE HAS THE RECORD TO FIX IT.
A fact-based case for why Victor Marx represents the sharpest break from Colorado's failed decade of single-party government.
THE STATE OF THE STATE: WHAT THE NUMBERS ACTUALLY SAY
Colorado has a problem that its political class does not want to discuss plainly. Beneath the mountains and the marketing, beneath the GDP growth charts and the median income figures that elected officials parade in press releases, the lived reality for ordinary Coloradans has deteriorated significantly - and measurably - across nearly every quality-of-life metric that matters to working families. This is not opinion. It is data.
Democrats have held a governing trifecta in Colorado - controlling the governor's office, the State Senate, and the State House simultaneously - since 2019. They have used that dominance to reshape Colorado in their image. The results are now in.
"The state's economy is now showing signs of cooling after years of leading the nation." - Colorado Chamber of Commerce, December 2025
Housing: From Aspiration to Crisis
The Colorado dream of homeownership has become, for a growing number of residents, a dream deferred indefinitely. The average home price in the Denver Metro area stood at nearly $700,000 in 2024, according to the Colorado Realtors Association. That figure alone would be sobering in any context. In the context of a state that has steadily shed its affordability over a decade of progressive governance, it is an indictment.
U.S. News & World Report's 2025 rankings placed Colorado 48th in the nation for housing affordability - down from 47th the prior year. CNBC ranked the state 47th in overall cost of living, a drop from 46th. Over a quarter of Colorado renters are severely cost-burdened, spending more than half their income on rent. Multifamily housing permits dropped 47 percent in 2024 - the lowest since the Great Recession - while construction costs rose 10 percent in the same year.
These are not weather events or acts of God. They are the downstream consequences of a regulatory and fiscal environment that has made Colorado hostile to the very building activity needed to house its citizens. Colorado is now the sixth most regulated state in the nation, with nearly 200,000 state-level regulations - 45 percent of which a Colorado Chamber of Commerce study found to be excessive or duplicative. Business restrictions affecting Colorado's private industries grew by 7.1 percent between 2020 and 2023 alone - more than five times the rate of federal regulation growth over the same period.
67% of Colorado business owners surveyed by the Chamber of Commerce believe the state economy is on the wrong track — up 14 points since 2022.
45% of Colorado business leaders surveyed plan to invest outside the state.
36,000 jobs and 9,000 firms lost for every 10% increase in state regulations, per the Chamber analysis.
Fentanyl and Public Safety: A Crisis Born in Policy
Colorado's fentanyl crisis did not arrive from nowhere. It arrived through open borders, sanctuary protections that shield criminal actors from federal enforcement, and a criminal justice philosophy that prioritized the comfort of policymakers over the safety of citizens. The human cost has been staggering.
Fentanyl killed 1,184 Coloradans in 2023 - the highest annual total on record, according to CDC data. The economic cost of fentanyl-related overdose deaths in Colorado was estimated at $16 billion in 2023 by the Common Sense Institute - more than ten times the $1.3 billion cost in 2017. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids now account for 61 percent of all overdose deaths in the state.
The rate of fentanyl overdose deaths increased 38 times over between 1999 and 2023, according to USAFacts analysis of CDC data. Colorado saw higher fentanyl overdose death increases than nearly every other state in the nation during this period. It is worth noting that some improvement has appeared in the most recent data - deaths fell to an estimated 801 in the 12-month period ending November 2024 - but that trend line follows federal-level border enforcement changes, not any action taken by Colorado's state government.
Homelessness: A 30% Surge Under Single-Party Rule
The human cost of failed progressive governance is perhaps most visible on Colorado's streets. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2024 Point-in-Time Count, homelessness in Colorado increased 30 percent in a single year, reaching a statewide total of 18,715 people. The Metro Denver count reached a record-high 9,977 people - a 10 percent jump in the region in one year.
Most damning is the family homelessness number. Colorado saw a 134% increase in homeless families in 2024 - one of the highest in the nation, placing the state among only four where family homelessness more than doubled. Over the prior decade, chronic homelessness in Colorado increased 150 percent. The Metro Denver Homeless Initiative estimates the real number of people experiencing homelessness in the region throughout the year is closer to 30,000 - the point-in-time count being only a snapshot of a single night.
"People are staying in homelessness longer and longer, and there is just not enough supply of affordable housing." - Colorado Coalition for the Homeless
Colorado's homeless crisis is not a weather-driven tragedy. It is the logical endpoint of policies that simultaneously restricted housing supply through regulation, attracted migrant populations with sanctuary protections and publicly funded shelters, and treated homelessness as a social services delivery problem rather than a public order and accountability problem.
THE ROOT CAUSE: SEVEN YEARS OF UNCHECKED ONE-PARTY GOVERNMENT
Every one of the crises documented above can be traced to a common source. Since Democrats secured their governing trifecta in 2019, Colorado has been a laboratory for progressive policy — and the experiment has produced consistent, measurable failure for the working families who actually live here.
The regulatory explosion - 7.1 percent growth in business restrictions in just three years, dwarfing federal growth rates - began in 2019. The sanctuary state posture, which shields illegal immigrants from federal enforcement and signals to criminal networks that Colorado is a place of refuge, is a deliberate policy choice, not an accident. The fentanyl supply chain that has killed thousands of Coloradans flows through a southern border that Colorado's Democratic attorney general has spent his career litigating to keep open. The housing crisis has been deepened by a zoning and regulatory environment that makes construction prohibitively expensive - an environment created by the same party that now offers government programs as the solution to the problem it created.
As of February 2026, the Democratic Party controls every branch of Colorado state government: the governor's office, the State Senate (23-12), the State House (46-19), the attorney general's office, and the secretary of state. There is no meaningful check on their power. Colorado is, in the plainest sense, a one-party state.
Governor Jared Polis is term-limited. Colorado will elect a new governor in 2026. The 2026 election is therefore one of the most consequential opportunities in a generation for Coloradans who have watched their state slide from a model of Rocky Mountain prosperity to a cautionary tale of what happens when government grows without restraint, immigration enforcement collapses, and the concerns of citizens are subordinated to the ideological commitments of their rulers.
The question for 2026 is not which party is better in the abstract. The question is: who has the background, the record, and the moral clarity to actually fix what has been broken?
VICTOR MARX: THE CANDIDATE BUILT FOR THIS MOMENT
In a field of seven major candidates for Colorado governor in 2026, one stands apart — not because of his political resume, because he does not have one. Victor Marx stands apart because of what he has actually done with his life. And in a state that has suffered a decade of credentialed politicians promising change and delivering decline, a candidate whose credentials are forged in real-world action rather than legislative chambers is worth taking seriously.
Who Victor Marx Is
Victor Marx, 60, is a United States Marine Corps veteran, a black belt martial artist, a survivor of severe childhood abuse, the husband of 37 years, father of five, and grandfather. He is based in Colorado Springs. He is the founder and president of All Things Possible Ministries, a nonprofit he established in 2003 that specializes in high-risk trauma intervention across some of the most dangerous regions on earth.
The ministry has served more than 45,000 women and children - many rescued from captivity in war zones in Iraq, Syria, and North Africa. Marx has personally led more than 150 high-stakes missions into active conflict zones, delivering trauma relief, medical aid, and rescue operations. He has led teams directly into ISIS-controlled territory. This is not a biography manufactured for a campaign. It is a life's work.
Marx launched his gubernatorial campaign on October 1, 2025, before an estimated 1,000 supporters at Phil Long Music Hall in Colorado Springs. His framing was direct: "Colorado has grown cold. Crime is rampant. Faith and freedom are under attack. Families are struggling under the weight of rising costs and government overreach. That is why I am running for Governor of Colorado - to restore safety, strength, and moral clarity to the state I call home."
Why His Background Matters for Colorado's Problems
The crises Colorado faces are not primarily policy puzzles in need of bureaucratic solutions. They are failures of will, accountability, and moral clarity at the executive level. They require a governor who understands what it means to actually rescue people from dangerous situations, who has built and led effective organizations under pressure, who has operated in environments where failure is not an option because people die when you fail.
Victor Marx has done all of those things - not in committee hearings and not in press releases, but in practice, in war zones, on behalf of children who had no one else to advocate for them. That biography is directly relevant to a state that has 18,715 documented homeless residents and counting, a fentanyl crisis that has killed more than a thousand people a year, and a regulatory environment that is strangling the businesses that would otherwise employ the people being crushed by the cost of living.
His Platform: Specific, Consistent, and Pro-Citizen Throughout
Unjust-State analyzed all seven major gubernatorial candidates across 22 policy issues using a factual consistency framework with a clear ideological orientation: Pro-Citizen, Pro-Constitution, and Pro-Law Enforcement positions score highest; Pro-Government control, Pro-Illegal Immigrant protections, and Pro-Socialism positions score lowest. Victor Marx scored 20.25 out of a possible 22.0 - the highest of any candidate in the field. His score reflects not just rhetorical alignment but authentic, documented consistency between his platform and his life's work.
On the Fentanyl and Border Crisis
Marx supports strict immigration enforcement and the elimination of sanctuary state policies that have made Colorado a destination for criminal networks. He has spent two decades rescuing children from trafficking networks in war zones. His ministry background makes him, arguably, the most credentialed anti-trafficking candidate in the race - and trafficking is the direct business model of the cartels moving fentanyl across the southern border and into Colorado communities.
A governor who has personally led rescue missions into ISIS territory to save kidnapped girls understands trafficking at a level that no career politician can replicate. Marx's position - enforcement first, consequences for criminal actors, protection of children and communities - is not a political calculation. It is consistent with everything he has done for 20 years.
On Housing and the Cost of Living
Marx's housing and economic platform centers on market-based deregulation. His Colorado Clarity Act proposal would mandate that every dollar of state spending be publicly tracked and accountable — the kind of fiscal transparency that is the prerequisite for the spending discipline Colorado has lacked under its current leadership. His platform supports significant regulatory rollback to lower the cost of building, operating a business, and living in Colorado.
The math is straightforward: Colorado has 200,000 state regulations, 45 percent of which its own Chamber of Commerce deems excessive. Every 10 percent increase in regulations costs the state an estimated 36,000 jobs. A governor committed to a disciplined, systematic rollback of that regulatory burden would create the conditions for housing supply to grow and business investment to return. Marx's platform is built around exactly that commitment.
On Parental Rights and the Protection of Children
One of the most important distinctions between the candidates in this race is their position on the role of government versus parents in decisions about children's healthcare. Unjust-State's framework treats government-imposed medical decisions for minors as a parental rights issue, not a healthcare issue — because that is what it is. Parents, not the state, bear the consequences of irreversible medical decisions made for their children. Parents must therefore hold the authority.
Victor Marx's entire professional career has been organized around the protection of children from systems - government systems, criminal systems, ideological systems - that would harm or exploit them. His ministry rescues children. His campaign platform protects parental authority. These positions are not in tension; they are the same position applied in different contexts. There is no candidate in this race whose commitment to child protection is more authentically documented than his.
On Transparency and Government Accountability
The Colorado Clarity Act - Marx's signature policy proposal - would require that every dollar of state government spending be publicly tracked and accountable to citizens. In a state where 45 percent of regulations are excessive and where the cost of living has slid to near-worst-in-the-nation levels under years of unchecked government growth, a governor who runs on "every dollar tracked" is proposing exactly the kind of structural accountability that has been absent. This is not a slogan. It is a governance framework. And it is the only proposal in the 2026 field that directly addresses the opacity and unaccountability that has enabled Colorado's fiscal drift.
WHAT THE SCORECARD SAYS ABOUT THE ALTERNATIVE
For context, consider where Colorado's two leading Democratic candidates - Attorney General Phil Weiser and U.S. Senator Michael Bennet - land on the same framework. Both scored 3.0 and 3.75 out of 22.0 respectively. Their scores reflect not inconsistency, but consistency - consistent alignment with government expansion, illegal immigrant protections, regulatory growth, and socialist-adjacent healthcare proposals across virtually every issue category.
Weiser's record as attorney general is particularly instructive. He used the resources of the Colorado Attorney General's office to litigate against federal immigration enforcement, to defend sanctuary policies that protect illegal immigrants from deportation, and to fight restrictions on government authority over parents' decisions about their children's medical care. He proposes a TABOR reform that would dismantle Colorado's most important taxpayer protection. He is not a moderate seeking balance. He is the continuity candidate - a vote to extend the policies that produced the crisis this article has documented.
Bennet's 15-year Senate record tells a similar story: consistent votes for the regulatory expansion, healthcare government control, and tax increases that have been structural contributors to Colorado's affordability collapse. His role in the Gang of Eight immigration bill and his opposition to every enforcement mechanism brought before the Senate make him, on immigration, indistinguishable from the status quo that has enabled the fentanyl supply chain into Colorado.
Colorado's problems were not created by accident. They were created by deliberate policy choices. The solution is an equally deliberate change of course - not a repositioning of the same philosophy.
THE CASE FOR VICTOR MARX
Colorado does not need a governor who has spent 15 years in the Senate learning how to talk about problems. It does not need a governor whose record as attorney general is a catalog of litigation in defense of the policies that created the crisis. It does not need a polished candidate whose consistency score is achieved by being consistently wrong.
Colorado needs a governor who has spent 20 years actually rescuing people from dangerous situations — someone who understands that the measure of leadership is not the eloquence of the promise but the competence and courage of the execution. Colorado needs a governor whose commitment to protecting children is not a campaign platform but a life's work. Colorado needs a governor who will track every dollar of state spending, roll back the excessive regulations strangling housing and business growth, restore full cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, and treat Colorado's citizens as the constituents they are - not as subjects to be managed.
Victor Marx scored 92 percent on Unjust-State's Pro-Citizen / Pro-Constitution / Pro-Law Enforcement framework - the highest of any candidate in the 2026 field. That score is grounded in documented, verifiable positions and backed by a biography that no other candidate in this race can match for authentic alignment between stated values and lived experience.
Colorado is at a crossroads. One path leads to more of the same: more regulation, more government expansion, more sanctuary protection for those who violate immigration law, more government authority over families, and more of the cost-of-living crisis that is pricing Coloradans out of their own state. The other path requires a genuine break - a governor whose entire career has been built on the conviction that people, not governments, are the solution to human problems, and who has the record to prove it.
Learn more at victor2026.com
SOURCES & METHODOLOGY: All statistics cited in this article are drawn from primary government data sources, peer-reviewed analyses, and nonpartisan reporting. Sources include: Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE) drug overdose data; U.S. HUD 2024 Point-in-Time Homeless Count; Colorado Chamber of Commerce 2024 Regulatory Impact Analysis (StratACUMEN); U.S. News & World Report 2025 State Rankings; Colorado Realtors Association 2024 data; Common Sense Institute Colorado fentanyl cost analysis; Ballotpedia party control data; Colorado Politics Dec 2025 cost of living report; Victor Marx campaign platform at victor2026.com. Candidate scoring matrix available upon request.