A ballot box is seen on Super Tuesday in Denver, March 5, 2024. (Kevin Mohatt for Colorado Newsline)
With only days remaining in the 2024 election, a sweeping election reform measure backed by some of Colorado’s wealthiest donors and corporations is quickly climbing the charts of the most expensive ballot initiative campaigns in state history.
Proposition 131, supported by the group Colorado Voters First, would abolish party primaries and enact a top-four ranked choice voting system for most state and federal elections. It’s one of six similar ballot measures being pushed across the country this year by Unite America, the Denver-based nonprofit co-chaired by former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry.
The campaign had spent over $14.2 million in support of Proposition 131 through Oct. 23, according to campaign finance disclosures filed with the Colorado secretary of state’s office.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
The spending puts Colorado Voters First in rarefied company, as one of only nine statewide issue campaigns in the last 30 years to exceed $10 million in expenditures in a single election cycle. It’s a level of spending typically only reached in ballot fights over proposals that would impact a single business or industry’s bottom line, like national retailer Total Wine’s failed 2022 attempt to deregulate liquor store licensing, or the tobacco industry’s successful opposition to a tax increase in 2016.
With at least another $2 million in last-minute contributions to spend, the pro-131 campaign could end up as Colorado’s third- or fourth-highest-spending ballot measure effort since at least 1993, the earliest year for which reports are available on a state database. It would still fall well short, however, of the record-shattering $38 million that the oil and gas industry spent to defeat a proposal to increase setbacks between homes and drilling sites in 2018.
Unite America is the group’s largest donor with over $5.6 million in contributions. Thiry has directly contributed about $3.2 million, while Walmart heir Ben Walton has given $2 million and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has donated $1 million. Both the Colorado Chamber of Commerce and Chevron, the state’s largest oil and gas producer, have chipped in with $500,000 each.
Rounding out the group’s top donors are a long list of deep-pocketed local political benefactors, including Oakwood Homes founder Pat Hamill; MDC Holdings founder Larry Mizel, who co-hosted an Aspen fundraiser for former President Donald Trump earlier this year; and Boulder resident Kimbal Musk, brother of Elon Musk.
Whatever the result on Election Day, some of Colorado’s best-connected political operatives will have profited from Colorado Voters First’s effort. While the campaign has spent over $10 million on advertising, disclosures show that much of the remainder has gone to a long list of consultants, including 76 Group, a Republican consulting firm, which has been paid over $226,000; former Colorado GOP chair Dick Wadhams, who has been paid $48,750; Democratic operative Ted Trimpa, who collected $27,000; and powerhouse lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which has charged the campaign at least $697,000 for its services since April.
Two issue committees have registered in opposition to Proposition 131. The group Voter Rights Colorado has collected just over $450,000 from a list of left-leaning advocacy organizations and labor unions, including the National Education Association, abortion rights group Cobalt and the Working Families Party. A separate right-leaning opposition campaign, First Choice Counts, has raised less than $8,000.
Other ballot measures
Proposition 131 isn’t the only Colorado ballot measure attracting lopsided campaign spending in 2024.
The group behind Amendment 79, which would enshrine the right to abortion in the Colorado Constitution, had reported over $8.5 million in expenditures through Oct. 23. Cobalt is the top contributor to the Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom Campaign, which has also received a $750,000 contribution from former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and $1 million from the Open Society Policy Center, an arm of the philanthropic network funded by liberal megadonor George Soros.
Meanwhile, three committees registered in opposition to Amendment 79 — Pro-Life Colorado Fund, Coloradans for the Protection of Women and Children and Vote No on 79 — have spent a combined total of $289,521.
The top donors to the anti-Amendment 79 campaigns are the Archdiocese of Denver, which contributed $225,000 to the Pro-Life Colorado Fund, and Andrew Wommack Ministries, the Woodland Park-based organization founded by far-right preacher Andrew Wommack, which contributed $30,000 to Coloradans for the Protection of Women and Children.
Colorado’s third-highest spending ballot issue committee in 2024 is Public Schools Strong, the campaign in opposition to Amendment 80, which would add constitutional language affirming the “right to school choice.” Public Schools Strong has spent over $4.6 million to oppose the measure, the majority of which was contributed by the National Education Association teachers union.
Amendment 80 was placed on the ballot by Advance Colorado, a conservative “dark money” organization that doesn’t disclose its donors. But the campaign committee registered to support the amendment, School Choice for Every Child, had reported no contributions or expenditures as of Oct. 23.
Two other expensive 2024 ballot showdowns have featured seven-figure contributions and expenditures on both sides.
The campaign in support of Proposition 127, a proposed ban on the hunting and trapping of bobcats, mountain lions and lynx, has spent a total of more than $2.8 million to qualify its measure for the ballot and urge Colorado voters to approve it. Its funding has come from a variety of conservation groups, animal rights activists and wildlife rescue organizations, including the Keenesburg-based Wild Animal Sanctuary, which contributed just over $1 million, and the national group Animal Wellness Action, which gave over $833,000.
A committee opposing the measure, Colorado’s Wildlife Deserve Better, has reported over $1.8 million in expenditures. Its top donor is the Concord Fund, a Virginia-based dark-money nonprofit with ties to influential conservative activist Leonard Leo. Hunting advocacy organizations including the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, the Safari Club and Rocky Mountain Elk have also contributed to the opposition campaign.
Finally, an obscure fight over Colorado’s veterinary licensing requirements has developed into the 2024 election’s fifth-most expensive issue campaign.
Proposition 129, an initiative placed on the ballot by the group All Pets Deserve Vet Care, would allow certain veterinary services to be practiced by associates without a full state-issued veterinarian’s license. The campaign is funded largely by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Dumb Friends League, and has spent nearly $1.3 million in support of the measure.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and his husband, Marlon Reis, contributed $2,500 each to the All Pets Deserve Vet Care campaign earlier this month, disclosures show.
But the measure is staunchly opposed by the Keep Our Pets Safe campaign, which is funded almost entirely by the American Veterinary Medical Association. The group has spent nearly $1.5 million against Proposition 129 as of Oct. 23, and reported having another $1 million on hand to spend before Election Day.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.