# Victor Marx Victor Marx (b. July 5, 1965, Lafayette, Louisiana) is the founder of All Things Possible Ministries and the **2026 Republican nominee for governor of Colorado**, running against Democratic Attorney General [[Phil Weiser]]. He had never held or sought office before announcing on October 1, 2025. He won the June 30, 2026 Republican primary by half a percentage point — 39.9% to 39.4% — over state Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer, in a count the Associated Press did not call until July 9. Full race detail: [[CO-Gov-2026]]. ## Background Marx served in the [[United States Marine Corps]] from 1983 to 1986, assigned to the 9th Communication Battalion, enlisting after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings. He and his wife ran a gym and helped start a Christian karate school in Honolulu. In 2003 he founded **All Things Possible Ministries**, a Colorado Springs–based nonprofit he describes as working with abuse survivors and conducting rescue operations abroad. He has written two books, *With God, All Things Are Possible: The Victor Marx Story* (2013) and *The Dangerous Gentleman* (2024), and built a substantial social-media following on videos in which he disarms people holding dummy firearms. He has also said he performs exorcisms, in person and by telephone. ## The contested biography The central feature of Marx's public life, and of his campaign, is a personal narrative of extreme violence survived and large-scale rescue work performed — and the fact that major parts of it have not been independently confirmed. - He has said that at age seven his stepfather made him shoot and kill a man in Mendenhall, Mississippi. Mississippi sheriffs and police have said there is no record of unsolved homicides from that period. Asked directly how many people he has killed, Marx has said he does not know. - His campaign website claimed the ministry had rescued 45,000 women and children. The figure was removed. Marx now declines to give any number, saying it would put people in danger. - In a 9News interview he denied having claimed that his ministry conducted missions in thirty countries, or that he had called in a U.S. airstrike that killed seventy ISIS fighters — claims attributed to him earlier. - Asked by a radio host and debate moderator to document his martial-arts credentials and his accounts of a gun battle with ISIS and of ministry work in the Middle East and Haiti, Marx refused, calling the debate a staged ambush. - Former Colorado governor Bill Owens has said he did not endorse Marx, after the campaign indicated otherwise. The sharpest version came at the **June 3, 2026 Republican primary debate** at the University of Denver, hosted by 9News journalists Kyle Clark and Marshall Zelinger. Clark pressed Marx on the 45,000 figure, the 130-plus missions, the border and Gaza claims, and asked whether he was an extraordinary person or a liar and a fraud. Marx answered that the proof was in the people he had helped and in his team's documentation, that this would never satisfy some people, and that he could not help having had an extraordinary life. His own rivals were blunter. Kirkmeyer said he told "tall tales" she did not believe and that his talk of homicidal and suicidal tendencies made her uneasy about being in rooms with him. State Representative Scott Bottoms called him a fraud and said Marx had lied to him personally. Both said before the primary that they would not support him if he won it. Marx said they were being mean and that he was telling the truth. Marx skipped many primary debates — behavior a University of Colorado Denver political scientist called unusual for a front-runner — and his conceding rival described the primary as the closest Republican gubernatorial primary in state history. ## Platform As presented in the general election: deregulating housing, childcare and energy; protecting the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights; capping property taxes; writing gun rights into the Colorado constitution; opposing [[Flock Safety]] surveillance cameras; cooperating with federal immigration enforcement and opposing sanctuary policies; and strong opposition to abortion. Critics including Republicans note the platform offers few specifics. His endorsers include [[Michael Flynn]] and Representative [[Lauren Boebert]]; his running mate is Marine veteran George Markert. ## Why this candidacy matters Marx is a clean case of a pattern worth tracking by type rather than by candidate: **testimony as credential.** His qualification for office is a story about himself — violence endured, demons expelled, thousands rescued — and because the qualification is the story, requests for documentation register inside the campaign as persecution rather than as vetting. That inversion is what let him survive a primary in which the state's most prominent political journalist asked him on air whether he was a fraud, and in which both of his opponents said they would not back him. The second reason is structural. Colorado is not a state Republicans can win statewide; it has elected one Republican governor since 1975. When a party's nomination carries no real prospect of power, the nomination stops being allocated by electability and starts being allocated by whoever can turn out the most committed slice of a June primary electorate. Marx is what that selection process produces, and the half-point margin shows how narrowly the alternative lost. ## Connections - [[CO-Gov-2026]] — his race - [[Phil Weiser]] — Democratic nominee - [[Lauren Boebert]] · [[Michael Flynn]] — endorsers - [[Christian Nationalism]] — the broader movement context for a ministry-to-statehouse candidacy - [[2026 Governor Races Hub]] · [[2026 Midterms Hub]] ## Sources - [Wikipedia — Victor Marx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Marx) - [Colorado Public Radio — GOP primary debate goes off the rails](https://www.cpr.org/2026/06/03/colorado-gop-debate/) - [Colorado Newsline — Victor Marx wins Republican nomination for Colorado governor](https://coloradonewsline.com/2026/07/09/victor-marx-wins-colorado-governor/) - [NBC News — Ministry founder Victor Marx wins Republican primary for Colorado governor](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/ministry-founder-victor-marx-wins-republican-primary-colorado-governor-rcna352780) - [The Hill — Victor Marx wins GOP nomination for Colorado governor](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5962272-victor-marx-winner-gop-colorado-governor-race-primary/)