Republican CU Regent Heidi Ganahl files to run for Colorado governor

It’s official: Colorado’s only remaining statewide elected Republican official will challenge Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in the 2022 governor’s race.

Campaign representatives for Heidi Ganahl, an entrepreneur and at-large member of the University of Colorado Board of Regents, filed paperwork early Friday with the Colorado secretary of state’s office to form her candidate committee, Heidi for Colorado. The committee’s registration form says its purpose is “to raise funds and support for Republican Heidi Ganahl to be the governor of Colorado.”

Ganahl’s run for governor had been widely expected in Colorado political circles in recent months. She told the Colorado Springs Gazette this week that she plans to make a “big announcement” in her hometown of Monument on Tuesday.

Ganahl was elected to a six-year term on the Board of Regents in 2016, becoming the most recent — and currently the only — Republican candidate to have won election to a statewide office in Colorado, following a clean sweep by Democrats in the 2018 election.

“When people tell you you can’t win in Colorado, or we can’t win in Colorado, I just did a few years ago,” Ganahl told a crowd of Republican voters in Teller County last month. “It just takes a lot of hard work, really good messaging, and all of us coming together to be that great team that we talk about in football.”