Democrat Philip Weiser won Colorado’s gubernatorial election Tuesday and will follow two-term Gov. Jared Polis (D) as the state’s chief executive. Weiser, the state’s Attorney General, defeated Republican nominee Victor Marx and former congressman Greg Lopez, who ran as an independent.
Weiser took a lead of over 70 percent in early returns, and the race was called by the Associated Press soon after polls closed.
Colorado has become a reliable blue state over the past two decades. The last Republican to win a major race in the state was Cory Gardner, who won a single term in 2014’s Senate race.
Polis, the outgoing two-term governor, was the first Democrat governor to opt in to President Trump’s school choice tax credit program that was included in the Working Families Tax Cuts.
Weiser cuts a more partisan profile, having been a Supreme Court clerk to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and working under the Clinton and Obama administrations in the U.S. Department of Justice.
Marx in October was fined $58,000 for campaign finance violations in the state.
