C.R.S. 1-1-104(22) sets major party status at 10 percent of the governor’s vote

DENVER — Colorado Republican Party chairman Craig Steiner said the party would lose its standing as a major political party if its nominee for governor, Victor Marx, takes less than 10 percent of the vote in November, and Colorado’s election code sets the threshold at that figure. Under C.R.S. 1-1-104(22), a party holds the designation only if it was represented on the ballot at the last preceding gubernatorial election and its candidate there received at least 10 percent of the total votes cast for the office.

“If we were to get less than 10 percent in the race for governor, we would lose our major party status,” Steiner said in an interview on The Kim Monson Show. “And that brings in a whole nother set of headaches.” Title 1 of the Colorado Revised Statutes writes the designation into the primary election, the mailing that goes to unaffiliated voters, party organization from the precinct up, and the state-run presidential primary in 2028.

Losing the designation would cost the party its primary, its caucuses and its free voter lists

C.R.S. 1-4-101(1) makes the primary a major party institution, providing that “except as provided by section 1-4-1304 (1.5), only a major political party, as defined in section 1-1-104 (22), is entitled to nominate candidates in a primary election.” The exception is narrow, since a minor party nominates by assembly or by petition and reaches a primary only when more than one candidate is designated. C.R.S. 1-4-101(2)(b) directs the county clerk and recorder to send each active elector who has not declared an affiliation “a mailing that contains the ballots of all of the major political parties,” so a party outside the designation is missing from the ballots reaching more than 2 million unaffiliated Coloradans.

Article 3 of Title 1 runs party organization off the same definition. Its definitions section, C.R.S. 1-3-100.3(1), provides that as used in that article, “political party” means a major political party as defined in section 1-1-104 (22). Article 3 is where Colorado law establishes precinct caucuses, county and district central committees, the powers of those committees, and the vacancy committees that fill legislative seats between elections. A party outside the designation still fills a legislative vacancy, though through a committee named in its own bylaws under C.R.S. 1-12-203(1) rather than through the Article 3 structure. County clerks also give each major political party a free list of its affiliated registered electors under C.R.S. 1-3-101(3)(a), and a list of canceled registrations after each general election under C.R.S. 1-2-605(8).

A party that falls below 10 percent stops being a major political party, and it becomes a minor political party under C.R.S. 1-1-104(23) if it meets one of the conditions in C.R.S. 1-4-1303(1), a bar the Republican Party would clear easily because one of them is a thousand or more affiliated registered electors. A minor party keeps its route to the general election ballot by petition or by assembly under C.R.S. 1-4-1304(1.5), placed behind the major party candidates under C.R.S. 1-5-404(1).

C.R.S. 1-1-104(22) counts every vote cast for governor and disregards where the candidate finishes

The statute measures nothing but the share of the vote, so any party whose candidate clears 10 percent keeps the designation no matter where that candidate finishes. It carries no top-two clause and says nothing about how many electors are registered with the party. The Colorado Secretary of State’s published guidance for candidates states the definition in the same terms, as a party whose candidate “received at least 10% of the total gubernatorial votes cast.”

Every vote cast in the governor’s race counts toward the total the 10 percent is measured against. The Secretary of State’s unofficial 2026 general election candidate list carries seven gubernatorial tickets, among them Marx for the Republicans, Attorney General Phil Weiser for the Democrats, former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez as an unaffiliated candidate, and tickets from the American Constitution, Libertarian, Unity and Approval Voting parties. Lopez qualified for the ballot in July after submitting the required signatures from each congressional district, Colorado Newsline reported. The Kim Monson Show newsroom has also covered Marx declining the Pikes Peak Center debate and a suit to bar unaffiliated voters from the party’s primary.

The designation in force today was set in November 2022, when the party’s nominee for governor, Heidi Ganahl, took 983,040 votes, or 39.18 percent, of the 2,508,830 cast for the office, according to the Secretary of State’s abstract of votes.

Dan Maes finished third in 2010 and kept the designation with 11.14 percent

Steiner, elected state chairman by the party’s central committee in Buena Vista on May 30, 2026, Colorado Politics reported, pointed to the last time the party faced the threshold. The party ran into the same threat in 2010, he said, and “eked it out.”

The Secretary of State’s Historical Elections Database has the figures. Of 1,793,148 votes cast for governor in 2010, the Republican ticket of Dan Maes and Tambor Williams took 199,792, or 11.14 percent, and finished third. Tom Tancredo, running on the American Constitution Party line, took 36.38 percent, and John Hickenlooper won the office with 51.05 percent. The 10 percent line that year stood at 179,315 votes, so Maes cleared it by 20,477 and the party held its designation while finishing third.

Steiner said he expects a stronger result this time. “Victor Marx is going to do a lot better than our candidate did in 2010,” he said. He added that “Greg Lopez is not Tom Tancredo.”

Colorado’s four-year term for governor holds the November 2026 result in force through 2030

The definition keys to “the last preceding gubernatorial election,” and Colo. Const. Art. IV, Section 1(1) fixes the governor’s term at four years. Colorado’s next two elections for governor fall in 2026 and 2030, so this November’s result sets the designation through the 2030 election. A party that finishes below 10 percent this year regains the designation by clearing 10 percent in 2030. Title 1 lays out no other route back.

That carries the question into the 2028 presidential cycle. C.R.S. 1-4-1202(1) defines “political party,” for the part of the code creating Colorado’s presidential primary, as a major political party under 1-1-104(22), and C.R.S. 1-4-1204(1)(b) ties that ballot to candidates affiliated with a major political party that took at least 20 percent of the Colorado vote at the last presidential election. A party outside the designation gets no state-run presidential primary. Steiner raised that consequence in the interview, saying a loss “affects us going forward to 2028.”

Registered-elector counts decide the congressional redistricting commission under Article V, Section 44.1(12)

Colorado measures parties by registration for one purpose, and that rule sits in a different body of law. Colo. Const. Art. V, Section 44.1(12) provides that “the state’s two largest political parties shall be determined by the number of registered electors affiliated with each political party in the state according to voter registration data published by the secretary of state for the earliest day in January of the redistricting year for which such data is published,” and the section uses that count to seat four commissioners from the largest party and four from the second largest on the independent congressional redistricting commission.

In the Secretary of State’s July 2026 voter registration statistics, a snapshot dated August 1, 2026, Colorado had 887,831 active registered Republicans, 985,531 Democrats and 2,016,174 unaffiliated electors, out of 3,986,025 active voters. Counts like those decide the commission only when a redistricting year comes around, because the commission is seated after each federal decennial census and the constitution reads the January file of that year. The statutory designation under C.R.S. 1-1-104(22) turns on the vote for governor, and the November result decides it.

Asked for a final thought, Steiner turned to the balance of power in the state. “The one party rule hasn’t served us well in Colorado,” he said. “So we need to get some balance there.”