The way Scott Bottoms tells it, he doesn’t even want to be involved in politics.
The two-term Republican state representative from Colorado Springs said he hates going to the Capitol every day, “but I know this is what God called me to do.”
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Politics for Bottoms, an evangelical pastor and candidate for governor, is a deeply spiritual endeavor, and he regularly infuses religion into campaign speeches, remarks before the legislature and policy briefs. He has referred to Colorado Democrats as “satan” and frequently pitches political differences as a battle between good and evil.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing pastors say, ‘I don’t get involved politically,’ ” Bottoms said in a 2024 speech at Texas’s Nelson University. “They have a problem. We’re losing our children. We’re losing our states. We’re losing our country.”
Bottoms, one of the most conservative lawmakers at the state Capitol, won top billing for governor on the Republican primary ballot at the party’s statewide convention this spring. He’s one of three candidates — along with state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and political newcomer Victor Marx — seeking to return his party to the governor’s mansion for the first time in two decades.
Bottoms, though, has an uphill climb in an ever-deepening blue state that largely rejects Republican standard-bearer President Donald Trump.
He is the lead pastor at the Church at Briargate, an evangelical church in Colorado Springs that rejects homosexuality and believes a person’s gender is established by God in the womb and “is not subject to personal choice or change.” In sermons, he has compared Islam and Hinduism to Nazism, saying, “You’ve got to hate the evil that is Islam.”
He has been the prime sponsor of just one bill in his four years at the Capitol — a 2023 measure to create a new license plate that says “In God We Trust.” Even on that bill, he was not initially a sponsor, but instead was added to the legislation by Republican leadership, who wanted him to get a win.
In an interview with The Denver Post’s editorial board last month, Bottoms said his greatest legislative achievements were providing leadership and helping lawmakers effectively communicate their ideas.
“It wasn’t passing bills,” he said wryly.
Rep. Ken DeGraaf, one of Bottoms’ Republican colleagues in the statehouse, said the pastor is “very smart, very principled, with a strong ethical base.”
“If he tells me he’s going to do something, I would take that as being effectively done,” DeGraaf said in an interview. “He’s going to keep his promises.”
Bottoms has campaigned against what he says is reckless spending, rising crime and failing schools in Colorado. He promised a version of the federal Department of Government Efficiency, which drastically cut spending across the government.
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He maintains that Trump won the 2020 election, despite there being no evidence to support it. He wants to give parents more rights in their children’s lives; invest more in oil, gas and coal; repeal state health insurance mandates; and make Colorado a leader in artificial intelligence technology.
“I know I’m gonna be sued constantly as governor,” Bottoms told The Post.
The pastor also speaks frequently about pedophilia and protecting children from trafficking. He has repeatedly said state lawmakers are buying children, while offering no evidence to support his shocking assertions.
The candidate claims to be working with the FBI and “private companies” to put offenders in prison, but will not reveal any details. An FBI spokesperson would not confirm whether the agency is working with Bottoms.
Pressed by The Post’s editorial board, Bottoms admitted that “we haven’t found any victims. We really haven’t been looking for them.” He was unable or declined to answer questions about how he’s rooting out this problem.
In a debate earlier this month, Bottoms acknowledged when pressed by a moderator that he was mistaken when he claimed more than 45,000 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were present in Colorado. He had conflated the total number of Venezuelan migrants who had come to the state, after applying for asylum, with gang members.
With the Republican primary just weeks away, political watchers in Colorado say Marx has become the frontrunner in the race. A poll commissioned by an outside group supporting his campaign last month showed Marx commanding 59.2% of Republican and unaffiliated primary voters. Kirkmeyer received 15.1%, while Bottoms came in third at 6.3%. There have been no other public polls.
Marx has also dominated the fundraising battle, pulling in $2.7 million through late May, compared with $556,000 for Kirkmeyer and about $200,000 for Bottoms.
Both Bottoms and Kirkmeyer have said they won’t support Marx if he’s nominated, with Bottoms calling his opponent a “con man.”
Dick Wadhams, a veteran Republican operative in the state, said if the party nominates Marx or Bottoms, they will not only lose, but they will take down other Republicans on the ballot.
Wadhams, who’s backing Kirkmeyer, said Bottoms’ characterization of himself as “God’s candidate” simply won’t sell in a state where less than half of residents say they believe in a higher power with absolute certainty.
“He is way out of the mainstream in Colorado,” Wadhams said.
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