Two days before Colorado’s June 30 primary, two political committees have spent $3.5 million to decide which candidates Republican and Democrat voters get to choose from. The donors funding both operations overlap in ways that should concern every Colorado voter who thinks their primary ballot still belongs to them.
Colorado TRACER filings show the Colorado Affordability Project raised $794,000 to influence Democratic legislative primaries. The Colorado Conservative Leadership Fund raised $1.9 million to do the same in Republican primaries. The two committees were formed within weeks of each other in late 2025. They operate in opposite parties. They share the same donors.
Kent Thiry appears in both TRACER filings, writing $35,000 checks to each. The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce put $110,000 into the Democratic operation and $100,000 into the Republican one. Colorado Advocates for Rural Electrification gave $80,000 to the Democratic committee and $50,000 to the Republican one. Colorado Association of Home Builders wrote checks to both. The same money is working both sides of the ballot simultaneously.
Thiry is not a mystery figure in Colorado politics. The former CEO of DaVita dialysis has spent years and millions of dollars trying to impose open primaries and ranked-choice voting on Colorado elections. His vehicle, Unite America, funded Proposition 131 in 2024 — a ballot measure that would have eliminated closed party primaries entirely and replaced them with a top-four open system. Colorado voters rejected it in November 2024. Thiry did not walk away. He changed tactics.
The argument Thiry made for open primaries was that party bases elect ideological candidates who don’t represent the broader electorate. The solution he proposed was to dilute party primaries by flooding them with unaffiliated voters. When voters said no, the same outcome became achievable through a different mechanism: flood the primaries directly with outside money to neutralize the candidates the base actually wants. The rules didn’t change. The result Thiry is buying is identical.
That logic is worth following into the Republican side of the ledger, where the donor list reveals something beyond Thiry’s election reform agenda. The Colorado Conservative Leadership Fund’s $1.9 million came from Ready Colorado ($200,000), Ben Walton of Englewood ($200,000), Coloradans for Progress ($180,000 combined), Colorado State Shooting Association of Falcon ($225,000), the Colorado League of Charter Schools Action IEC ($300,000), Colorado Unity Project ($15,000), and Prosperity Through Property Rights ($75,000). The single largest outside contribution — $250,000 from the American Conservative Fund out of Alexandria, Virginia — traces back to DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics. Sports betting companies are spending as much as $41 million on state legislative races nationally this cycle, specifically to limit taxation and regulation of their industry. A quarter million of that money landed in Colorado’s Republican primary.
The connective tissue running through both committees is One Main Street Colorado, a nonprofit that does not disclose its donors. One Main Street is the largest funder of Coloradans for Progress, which routed $180,000 into the Republican-side CCLF. One Main Street simultaneously funded six Democratic-side IECs with $1.7 million in May alone. The same organization is bankrolling the moderation operation in both parties, insulating itself behind layers of committees with locally-sounding names.
The CSSA contribution tells its own story. The Colorado State Shooting Association, based in Falcon, wrote a $225,000 check to a committee alongside Kent Thiry, a Walmart heir, and sports betting corporations — to shape which Republicans survive their primary. On the other side of those same races stands Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, which raised its money from members writing $25 and $50 checks and showed up to the fight with $28,000 total. CCLF outspent RMGO’s entire war chest by a ratio of nearly 68 to one. RMGO is backing the base candidates CCLF is working to defeat — Lynda Zamora Wilson in Senate District 9, Bob Davis in House District 44, and Nancy Rumfelt in House District 51. CSSA put $225,000 on the other side of every one of those fights. The contrast between the two organizations is no longer a matter of strategy or tactics. One represents Colorado gun owners. The other represents an institution that used to — and has followed the same path the NRA took nationally: access and accommodation over member interests, organizational survival over constitutional principle, and ultimately a donor list that answers the question of whose interests are actually being served.
Ben Walton is not incidental to this picture. He is a Walmart heir and a documented contributor to Unite America — the same Thiry-cochaired organization that bankrolled Proposition 131. His $200,000 to CCLF places him in the same operation as Thiry’s $35,000, connected through shared donors and an identical objective dressed in different party branding.
The spending is targeted with precision. On the Republican side, CCLF put $363,000 behind Nina Anderson, $223,000 behind former state Rep. Terri Carver in Senate District 9 against incumbent Zamora Wilson, and nearly $150,000 in House District 51 alone against Rumfelt. Rocky Mountain Gun Owners’ entire war chest for the cycle is $28,000. The disparity is not a contest. It is a buyout.
This is the political game Colorado voters were never supposed to see clearly. Two committees with professionally chosen names, formed weeks apart, operating in opposite parties, funded by the same donors — active two days before ballots are due. The goal is not a Republican or a Democrat winning in November. The goal is ensuring whoever wins in both parties already answered to the same financial interests before the general election begins. Proposition 131 failed at the ballot box in 2024. The operation it was designed to achieve is running anyway.
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