Weiser elected governor: What he promised, and what he did not price

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

Phil Weiser will be Colorado’s next governor.

The Democrat attorney general defeated Republican Victor Marx. The Associated Press called the race at 7 p.m., minutes after polls closed.

Counting had barely begun. As of 8 p.m., Weiser led with nearly 62 percent to Marx’s just under 33, and Greg Lopez, the former Republican congressman who ran unaffiliated, had less than 3 percent, according to Colorado Newsline. The remaining candidates were in low single digits.

Marx said before Election Day that he would not hold a public watch party. He had not conceded as of 8 p.m.

Weiser succeeds Jared Polis, who is term limited. The result extends a streak in which no Republican has won statewide office in Colorado since 2016, or the governor’s office since 2002.

Weiser spoke to supporters at the Colorado Democrats’ watch party in Denver.

“We launched a campaign that many people didn’t think we could win,” he said. “All the way through, we believed in each other, and the people of Colorado.”

“At a time of rising fear and cruelty, Colorado’s answer is rising hope and compassion. Let us together build a future based on the values that make Colorado special, and meet the urgency of this moment by making long overdue changes.”

He named the changes.

“It’s time to deliver housing and healthcare that Coloradans can afford. It’s time to build a stronger economy that works for all of us and a brighter future for our kids and grandkids. It’s time to protect our freedoms, to protect the safety of our communities and our precious land, air, and water.”

He takes office in January with a 109-page platform and a budget problem.

What he ran on

The Colorado Blueprint is the platform Weiser carried through the general election after beating U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in the June primary. It commits him to increasing the supply of attainable owner-occupied homes by 40,000 units, expanded down payment assistance for first-time buyers, more K-12 funding, a service program called ColoradoCorps, youth mental health programs, and a push to change the state’s constitutional revenue limits.

What the document mostly does not do is say what any of it costs.

Across 109 pages, one forward-looking cost estimate is attached to a proposed commitment. That is the Colorado Water Plan, which the Blueprint says needs up to $3 billion at a pace of $100 million a year, a figure it quotes from a plan released in 2015 rather than updating.

The other large dollar figures in the document describe money Weiser recovered as attorney general. There is almost $900 million from opioid settlements, more than $184 million in AmeriCorps funding he sued to recover, and nearly $32 million from JUUL.

The plan quantifies his record. It leaves his agenda unpriced. That gap is the subject of the costs the plan leaves out.

The budget he inherits

The Blueprint concedes the state faces a shortfall. It does not attribute that shortfall to state spending.

Weiser writes that the General Assembly and the current administration “have made excellent strides in building up the current General Fund reserve to 15 percent prior to the recent special session,” and that the state is now “faced with Congress-induced budgetary pressures (and not from recession-caused revenue shortfalls).”

Elsewhere the plan is more specific, naming H.R. 1 and what it calls the “drastic cuts in federal funds that Colorado relies on.”

That framing points at federal action rather than at the cost of state programs. It is a different diagnosis than the one fiscal conservatives in the legislature have offered. What solutions follow depends on which diagnosis is right.

His platform also proposes new offices inside a government it describes as needing streamlining, including a Chief Innovation Officer invoked across multiple chapters and a separate Chief Housing Officer. That tension is the subject of more offices, in the name of streamlining.

The word that does not appear

On TABOR, the Blueprint’s language is careful.

Weiser writes that he will “work to build support, in a grassroots, bottom-up effort to change our constitutional limits on how we fund our core priorities and on how we are restricted from making critical investments for our future.” The state will consider “a range of options, such as allowing the state to keep and transparently invest excess dollars we collect in good economic times.”

The word refund does not appear anywhere in the 109 pages.

Keeping the excess dollars the state collects in good years is what a TABOR refund is. Weiser has not said he would end refunds, and the document does not say it either. It describes the mechanism without naming the thing, and leaves how it would happen for later.

He did not name it Tuesday night either. The victory speech called for housing and health care Coloradans can afford, both of which the Blueprint promises. It said nothing about changing the revenue limits.

Voters will want to know which it is. So will the legislature.

His running mate has already run that campaign

Lesley Dahlkemper has been a Jefferson County commissioner since 2019. Weiser named her his running mate on July 22.

As commissioner she championed Ballot Issue 1A, which asked Jefferson County voters to let the county keep and spend revenue collected above its TABOR cap instead of refunding it. For FY24 the county estimated that retained amount at $54.4 million.

It passed in November 2024, 197,090 to 143,822, or 57.81 percent. It was the county’s third attempt. Voters rejected similar measures in 2019 and again in 2022.

Getting there cost Jefferson County $302,947.50 paid to the Bighorn Company and Aspect Strategic for advice on how to handle the county’s funding problem, before the third try succeeded.

So a governor who wants to change the state’s revenue limits, and who describes that change without using the word refund, arrives with a lieutenant governor who spent five years making the same argument at the county level and eventually persuaded voters to accept it.

Whether that is experience or a preview is a question the next session answers.

A deadline eight weeks out

One of Weiser’s commitments has a date on it that voters did not get to see before casting ballots.

His Healthy Colorado Plan says he will work to take action on guidance from the Colorado School of Public Health’s study of a state-based universal health care system. That study was commissioned by SB25-045 and reports to the General Assembly by Dec. 31.

The model legislation at the center of that study, drafted independently by the Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care, would establish a single-payer system called Colorado Cares. The School of Public Health says it analyzes that model as one option among alternatives.

Weiser has not endorsed the bill, and neither the Blueprint nor the health plan endorses single payer by name. What he has said is that he will work to take action on the guidance of a study built around it. The timing is the subject of a health care promise tied to a post-election report.

The report lands eight weeks after the election and weeks before the legislature convenes.

Weiser is inaugurated Jan. 12, 2027.