This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
Greg Lopez on Tuesday qualified for the November ballot as an unaffiliated candidate in Colorado’s gubernatorial race.
He needed to collect 1,000 voter signatures in each of the state’s eight congressional districts to make the ballot.
Lopez, a former Republican who briefly served in Congress after U.S. Rep. Ken Buck resigned in the middle of his term, is making his third consecutive bid for governor. He lost in the Republican primaries in 2018 and 2022.
Lopez initially entered the race this year as a Republican before dropping his party affiliation.
Some Republicans have vowed to vote for Lopez, who also previously served as Parker’s mayor, in the gubernatorial contest because they don’t want to cast a ballot for the GOP nominee, Victor Marx, a first-time candidate who served in the Marines and runs an evangelical Christian ministry.
Marx’s colorful, albeit mostly unprovable, backstory includes a claim that he was forced by his stepfather to kill a man when he was 7 years old. He also claims to have solicited a deadly U.S. military airstrike in the Middle East despite being a civilian and to have rescued women and children from dangerous situations across the globe.
Lopez also has a past that has drawn scrutiny.
In 1993, he and his wife, Lisa, both were 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. A year later, The Denver Post reported, Lopez and his wife each pleaded guilty to a single charge of harassment.
Lopez was also accused, in a separate case, of driving under the influence.
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.
Prosecutors alleged Lopez “attempted to influence the SBA’s handling of its loan guarantee” to Morreale Hotels, which was owned by Lopez’s friend.
Lopez paid $15,000 to resolve the case and “acknowledged that the United States could prove the facts alleged in the civil action by a preponderance of the evidence,” per a news release from the Trump administration’s Justice Department.
The Democratic candidate for governor is Attorney General Phil Weiser.
