Victor Marx, a Christian ministry leader, martial arts black belt and Republican nominee for governor of Colorado, knows how to weave a wild story.
There is the one about how his stepfather forced him to kill a man at age 7. Or his claim that he cast a demon out of a teenage girl. Or his accounts of dodging mortar fire in Iraq to rescue civilians from the Islamic State.
“My father was a drug-dealing pimp,” Mr. Marx, 61, said this month as he introduced himself to voters at evangelical church near Denver. “I know what it’s like to put a pistol in my mouth.”
Mr. Marx’s biography, from an abusive childhood in Mississippi to commando-style ministry missions, is the centerpiece of his long-shot run to become Colorado’s first Republican governor in two decades. But his outsized, sometimes hard-to-verify claims have made his campaign a late-night punchline and splintered Colorado’s beleaguered Republican Party.
Grassroots conservative evangelicals have embraced Mr. Marx, who has never held elected office, as a spiritual warrior. But some establishment Republicans call him unqualified and say that his candidacy could be a body blow in a once-purple state where Republicans hold no statewide office. The party is fighting to retain three competitive seats in Congress.
“He is not fit to be the governor,” said Dick Wadhams, a former Colorado Republican Party chairman who plans to vote for an independent. “I want Victor Marx to lose by as large a margin as possible. This party has got to come to its senses.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert, a far-right Republican representing a rural Colorado district, has endorsed Mr. Marx. But most major Republicans have declined, and avoid talking about him altogether.
“There isn’t a strong top of the ticket,” said State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, the establishment favorite, whom Mr. Marx narrowly defeated in the Republican primary. “I’m not saying anything else, because I’m not going to get blamed for his loss.”
Mr. Marx’s Republican critics fear that his candidacy, dogged by campaign-finance violations and questions about truthfulness, could hurt the party in the midterms and reduce it to a superminority in the state legislature.
But Mr. Marx’s supporters say they like him precisely because he is not a regular Republican politician. They are drawn to candidate they see as an outsider with a folksy drawl and a personal shooting range who vows to redeem a fallen state.
Mr. Marx said he believed Colorado’s problems — including its high cost of living, crime and shrinking middle class — did not stem from simple mismanagement, but from a deliberate plan to drive out residents and make way for socialism.
“It’s an insurgency into the state — a well thought-out plan to take over,” he said in an interview. “A takeover by the Socialist Party. I completely believe that.”
Mr. Marx is finding support at biker bars, tailgate parties and in church pews, where working-class voters and evangelicals say they are fed up with Colorado’s spiraling home prices, homelessness and liberal policies on guns and transgender rights.
“It’s gotten out of control,” said Adrian Delgado, pastor of Holy Spirit and Fire Church near Denver, who invited Mr. Marx to speak at a “Bless Fest” revival meeting this month. “We need to get back to our biblical values.”
Mr. Marx’s campaign staff starts each day with a prayer conference call, and in speeches he likens himself to the Apostle Peter. He promises to consecrate Colorado “back to God” on his first day in office.
Several of Mr. Marx’s supporters said his Christianity is more important than his grasp of Colorado’s budget or the veracity of his statements.
“Tell me a story from your childhood that you didn’t embellish,” said Thayne Brenkman, a construction contractor who attended one of Mr. Marx’s recent rallies with dozens of leather-clad bikers. “That part doesn’t matter. These other people running are demonic.”
Mr. Marx’s supporters said they were not bothered by his odder moments, such as when a journalist with 9 News in Denver asked Mr. Marx if he had killed anyone as an adult. “Does it matter?” Mr. Marx answered.
Any Republican candidate for governor would have struggled in Colorado, where polls show President Trump is deeply unpopular. But his Republican primary opponents have not endorsed him, and Mr. Marx is not participating in debates with the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is running as a fighter willing to stand up to President Trump.
Still, Mr. Marx, who calls himself a “conservative centrist,” says he can win if every Christian votes.
About half of Colorado’s adults identify as Christians, according to the Pew Research Center, but they are by no means uniformly conservative. Forty percent of state residents are religiously unaffiliated, and conservative Christian organizations like Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, no longer have the political power they did a generation ago.
Mr. Marx’s ministry, All Things Possible, describes itself as a “high risk” humanitarian group bringing aid to people in chaotic corners of the world. It reported more than $7.5 million in revenue in 2024, and its employees included two of Mr. Marx’s children, according to income-tax returns.
In the interview at the ministry’s training center in the ponderosa woods near Colorado Springs, Mr. Marx insisted his stories were true. He pointed to photographs of himself on ministry missions, surrounded by children in head scarves or standing with security forces in the Middle East.
On one wall of his office, framed under glass, was what Mr. Marx described as a piece of a Hamas rocket and a backpack that belonged to a Hamas fighter. Across the room was a photograph of Mr. Marx praying beside a person he said was a Haitian gang leader.
The five-acre compound features a building for combat training for high-risk missions and a studio where Mr. Marx records videos, podcasts and campaign media hits.
Mr. Marx and his wife sold the property to All Things Possible for $2.9 million in 2024, drawing scrutiny from critics. Mr. Marx said they donated $1 million of that back to the ministry.
Mr. Marx said the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a friend who wrote the foreword for Mr. Marx’s second book, helped spur him to run for governor. Mr. Marx said he could restore Colorado because his entire life had been a struggle to impose order on chaos.
He describes his childhood in Mississippi as a nightmare of abuse. He said he was sexually assaulted by a neighbor and later beaten, given electric shocks and nearly drowned in a bathtub by his stepfather.
When he was 7, he has said, the stepfather took Mr. Marx to a wooden house where a grave had been dug and another man was waiting. Mr. Marx said his stepfather, who has since died, put a pistol in Mr. Marx’s hands and forced him to pull the trigger.
“He told me, ‘Boy, you know, this is your first kill,’” Mr. Marx told a PBS station in a 2013 interview.
Chris Wallace, an investigator with the sheriff’s office in Simpson County, Miss., south of Jackson, said he had scoured records, talked to retired deputies and searched newspaper archives but had found no evidence of the crime.
“Every box I could find, every single file,” he said. “Nothing. I’m not saying the man’s lying, but I can’t say he’s telling the truth, either.”
Mr. Marx served in the Marines and then pursued a career in martial arts, where his claim to fame was snatching a gun at lightning speed. He moved to Colorado in the early 2000s and worked at Focus on the Family. He has had legal and financial troubles, including a plea of no contest to disturbing the peace in California in 2012 and a federal tax lien totaling $83,452 filed against him and his wife during the 1990s.
Mr. Marx said the California charge stemmed from a staff member placing a firearm magazine into Mr. Marx’s bag before a flight, which Mr. Marx called “an honest mistake.” He said the tax lien came after he disputed how much he owed to the I.R.S., and he said he had resolved the issue decades ago.
In videos and podcasts, Mr. Marx and his wife, Eileen, have discussed his struggles with anger and childhood trauma.
His wife often appears beside him in video messages. She recently announced a 21-day fast, to encourage God to heal Colorado as the election nears.
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