By C.J. Garbo | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
On July 28, Colorado election officials confirmed that Greg Lopez and Taralyn Romero had qualified for the November general election ballot as unaffiliated candidates for governor and lieutenant governor. Their campaign submitted 11,948 valid signatures, exceeding the requirement in every congressional district.
That accomplishment alone deserves serious coverage. Petitioning onto a statewide ballot requires money, organization, geographic reach, and thousands of individual acts of voter participation.
The ticket also appears to represent a genuine first in Colorado history. Lopez and Romero are Hispanic, making them the state’s first known all-Hispanic gubernatorial ticket.
Yet Colorado’s political press has treated this historical development with striking indifference.
The problem is not a complete absence of coverage. The problem is the allocation of significance.
The Colorado Sun reported that Lopez had qualified for the ballot. Its headline named Lopez alone. The article discussed his former Republican affiliation, previous campaigns, legal controversies, and possible effect on Republican nominee Victor Marx. Romero was effectively erased from the story. The historical composition of the ticket received no attention.
CBS Colorado offered a more substantive discussion of unaffiliated candidates and Colorado’s growing rejection of the two-party structure. Yet it also failed to identify the historical significance of the Lopez-Romero ticket.
Other reports similarly framed the event as another chapter in Greg Lopez’s political career. The most consequential facts became his previous party, his prior campaigns, and which major-party candidate he might hurt.
This is how media bias often operates.
It does not always require a false statement. It does not require an explicit endorsement. It does not even require reporters to coordinate with one another.
It works through selection, repetition, placement, omission, and emphasis.
The press decides which facts constitute history and which facts become trivia. It decides which candidates receive personal profiles and which receive background checks. It decides which demographic milestone symbolizes social progress and which barely warrants a sentence.
A historic first that barely registered
Consider how Colorado media treated Jared Polis.
When Polis became the first openly gay man elected governor in the United States, the historical nature of his election became a central part of the coverage. Colorado Public Radio described his victory as making history. The Colorado Sun published stories about the state’s many historical firsts, the meaning of his inauguration, and the barriers his election had broken. The milestone appeared in headlines, profiles, inaugural coverage, retrospectives, and later stories about his administration.
The coverage was not wrong. Polis had made history. That fact deserved recognition.
Now consider Yadira Caraveo.
When the Democrat became Colorado’s first Latina member of Congress, her achievement received prominent and repeated attention. Colorado Public Radio emphasized the milestone during the campaign, after the election, and throughout her congressional service. The Colorado Sun placed it directly in its headline and published additional reporting about how she became Colorado’s first Latina in Congress.
Again, the coverage was appropriate. Her accomplishment was historically significant.
When representation depends on politics
The problem arises when the principle changes with the political affiliation of the person making history.
If identity and representation possess legitimate public importance, that importance cannot disappear when the candidates are unaffiliated, conservative, heterodox, or inconvenient to the preferred political narrative.
Imagine that Phil Weiser was Hispanic, selected a Hispanic running mate, and produced Colorado’s first all-Hispanic Democratic ticket for governor and lieutenant governor.
Would the development have been framed primarily as another line in Weiser’s political biography?
Would coverage have omitted the lieutenant governor candidate almost entirely?
Would reporters have ignored the ticket’s ethnic and historical significance while devoting extensive space to controversies from decades earlier?
That outcome is difficult to believe.
More likely, Coloradans would have received days of coverage about representation, inclusion, generational progress, Latino political influence, and the changing face of Colorado. Historians and advocacy organizations would have been interviewed. The candidates’ family histories would have been explored. The milestone would have appeared in headlines, television introductions, political newsletters, and election analysis.
The difference would not arise from the ethnicity of the candidates. That remains constant.
The difference would arise from who receives institutional permission to represent progress.
For much of Colorado’s political media, diversity appears most newsworthy when it validates the Left’s understanding of itself. A Democratic first becomes evidence of social advancement. A similar first outside the Democratic Party becomes incidental, inconvenient, or invisible.
That is not neutral journalism. It is ideological gatekeeping over the meaning of history.
Colorado’s media institutions have increasingly assumed the authority to determine which political movements possess legitimacy before voters make that determination themselves. Democratic proposals are frequently introduced through their intended benefits. Conservative proposals are more often introduced through their alleged risks. Democratic divisions become debates over policy. Republican divisions become evidence of dysfunction. Unaffiliated candidates become spoilers whose importance lies primarily in which major party they might damage.
This framing quietly protects the two-party system while appearing to analyze it.
The independent candidate is rarely treated as a potential governor. He is treated as a variable in a contest between the candidates the political establishment has already declared viable.
Colorado’s unaffiliated majority is changing the political landscape
This is particularly revealing in Colorado because unaffiliated voters are no longer a marginal constituency.
According to the Colorado Secretary of State’s July 1 registration report, Colorado had 4,088,906 active voters. Of those, 2,072,121 were unaffiliated. That is 50.67 percent of the active electorate. Democrats accounted for approximately 24.65 percent, while Republicans accounted for approximately 22.25 percent. The remaining voters belonged to smaller parties.
The two parties called “major” now represent less than half of Colorado’s active voters when combined.
That fact should have transformed political journalism. It should have forced newsrooms to reconsider the assumption that every election is fundamentally a conversation between Democrats and Republicans.
Instead, much of the coverage continues to treat unaffiliated Coloradans as a pool of swing voters whose function is to choose between the two established parties.
That interpretation misses what voters are saying.
Unaffiliated registration is not proof of a single ideology. These voters include conservatives, liberals, centrists, libertarians, populists, and people whose views do not fit neatly anywhere.
Their common decision is more important than their ideological differences. They have declined to grant either major party permanent custody of their political identity.
Polling reinforces that conclusion.
A 2025 survey of active Colorado voters found that dislike or distrust of the parties and dissatisfaction with the two-party system were leading reasons voters chose to remain unaffiliated. The same survey found that 66 percent of younger active voters were unaffiliated and that most independents wanted both parties to become more moderate.
Another bipartisan survey found that 58 percent of unaffiliated voters considered the Democratic Party out of touch, while 70 percent said the same of the Republican Party. Seventy percent strongly disagreed that unbiased political information was easy to find.
That distrust did not emerge from a single article, candidate, or election. It reflects accumulated experience.
Voters have watched political parties define the acceptable choices. They have watched donors determine viability. They have watched institutions elevate preferred voices and marginalize others. They have watched reporters celebrate certain forms of representation while overlooking nearly identical achievements by people outside the approved political coalition.
Coloradans sense the arrangement because they live with its results.
Media institutions may not formally belong to the Democratic Party. They do not need to. Their influence often lies in sustaining the appearance that Democratic political power represents Colorado’s cultural center, while every alternative must justify its right to participate.
That appearance becomes self-reinforcing.
The press gives major-party candidates the most attention because they are considered viable. They remain viable because they receive the most attention. Unaffiliated candidates receive less coverage because they have less institutional support. They struggle to build support because they receive less coverage.
The cycle then gets reported as voter preference rather than institutional design.
This is why the Lopez-Romero ticket matters beyond the two individuals involved.
What political independence actually requires
Their candidacy presents Colorado with a test.
Will the state’s largest voting bloc continue behaving as an audience for two minority parties? Will unaffiliated voters merely wait for Democrats and Republicans to select the options from which they are permitted to choose? Or will they begin converting their numerical majority into independent political power?
Registration alone changes nothing.
A voter who registers as unaffiliated but reflexively supports the same party in every election has rejected a label without rejecting the structure behind it. A majority that repeatedly votes according to the instructions of two organized minorities has not yet exercised majority power.
Political independence requires more than dissatisfaction. It requires action.
It requires voters to evaluate every candidate without regard to party entitlement. It requires them to support credible alternatives with donations, volunteer labor, public advocacy, and serious consideration. It requires demanding that qualified unaffiliated candidates receive access to debates and equivalent scrutiny from the press.
Most importantly, it requires withdrawing automatic consent from institutions that have not earned it.
Neither major party possesses a constitutional right to Colorado’s government. Neither owns the votes of those who dislike the other. Neither deserves continued power merely because voters have been persuaded that every alternative is futile.
If more than half of Colorado’s active voters genuinely believe neither party represents them, they should stop sustaining the political dominance of both.
They should stop accepting the premise that independence means choosing which party disappoints them less.
They should stop allowing political media to decide in advance which candidates deserve to be seen as legitimate.
And they should remember what the muted coverage of the Lopez-Romero ticket reveals.
Colorado’s political establishment will celebrate history when history reinforces its preferred narrative.
When history challenges its power, Coloradans may have to recognize it for themselves.
C. J. Garbo is a technology executive, political strategist, public policy writer, and former law enforcement professional. He has managed and advised political campaigns from the local to federal level, chaired the Castle Rock Election Commission, served as vice chairman of the Douglas County Planning Commission, and worked closely with elected officials on policy, communications, and constituent engagement. His writing focuses on government accountability, electoral integrity, political institutions, and the growing divide between voters and the two-party establishment.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.