As much as I hate it, the governor's race has begun. And I'm not mad that there's a governor's race. I'm just saying it feels like we're always in political season. But next year we will have the opportunity to make a change in the governor's office. And I don't just mean the human being, I mean policy wise. It could be massive. And joining me now is one of those candidates. Representative Scott Bottoms has thrown his hat in the ring.
He will be participating in the debate that Ryan Schuley and I from our assist our brother Station K Howe will be moderating January tenth and Greeley if you want to find out more information about that. And he joins me now to not only talk about his run for governor, but also a little deverbal kerfuffle that we're having right now between he and another candidate. First of all, Representative Bottoms, welcome to the show.
Yeah, thank you for having me. Always enjoy it.
So let's talk about why you decided to put your face in the wood chipper for this election cycle and decide to run for governor. What is your motivation?
Well, I've never heard that description but it's not a bad one. This is so I've been a representative now for two terms, but I've been a pastor all my life since i was twenty years old. I'm fifty five now, and that's that's who I am. That's what I've done. But a few years back, I realized, through a bunch of different things and really praying about it, that I needed to be running for representative. And that was a crazy journey. And now I really felt the same thing
we declared about this time last year. Actually, I've been in the race for a year. I'm the first person to have declared, and I just really feel like I have to do this. This is a spiritual journey for me too. But this is also very much we have got to reclaim Colorado. We're losing our state and everybody's just sitting around watching it happen. And I'm not one of those kind of people.
So I want to start. I'm glad you brought up the fact that you're a pastor and that you're a man of faith, and this is a spiritual journey because I I'm going to be perfectly frank. One of my biggest concerns about a general election for you is how secular Colorado is. We have a higher percentage of atheists and agnostics, we have many people, we have a slight
majority that identify as Christian. I looked up all this data today, But we have a lot of people who are like, yeah, there's probably a God, but it's not centered in my life. Do you feel like that is going to be a drawback and how do you reach out to those people who may not only be non religious, but maybe a little hostile towards religion.
Well, being a pastor for thirty five years, I've experienced hostile toward Christianity. I've experienced that over and over and I've had many conversations with so many different atheists, agnostics, humanist people that just really are you know, they just don't care different religions. I travel all over the world, I'm preaching, teach and those.
Kind of things. So this is not new to me.
But the interesting thing is about being a pastor is I actually understand them better than most people do because I've been having the conversations for so many years and I know, and here's a big thing, is I respect people's rights and I respect people's individual ability for free speech and free expression and spiritual expression. I do believe that Jesus is God. I do believe that, and I do believe that the Bible is the guidebook for all of humanity. But I can't force that upon anyone. I've
never forced that. If I could do that, my church would be in Colorado would be five million people.
I can't even do. I can't even get people in my church, for the.
Most part, to do some of the things that I think the Bible is telling.
Us, which is called job security as a pastor.
But when you're so broken and society is so sinful, it is job description. I mean, is job security. But here's the thing with that is my personality, my lifestyle. Who I am is truly a Christian. It's not just something I do on the side. And so I am very much a moral person. I'm a person I don't lie, I don't cheat, I don't steal. I don't even drink. A lot of pastors drink. I'm not picking on that, but I don't drink. I don't do anything like that.
And so when I have this conversation with people, I'm like, what in that area makes me a bad guy? They think I'm going to somehow force I'm going to somehow force people to go to church or so. I don't know what people are thinking that I'm going to accomplish. I do pray for the state. I pray for the state for years. That's going to continue. I pray in the capital that will continue. I don't force anybody to
pray any of that stuff. So it's kind of a strange question that I get, but I get it all the time.
Well, I think part of it is, and this is just why this is just me spitballing here. I think part of it is when people do have a bad experience, maybe they had a church that didn't live up to the standards that they were putting forward. Maybe they have a negative view of religion. They're just putting that on you, right, because then you become the representative of whatever it is that they don't like. And that's the part that I
that concerns me. Not because I think everything you just said was really smart from a pastor's point of view, but I'm concerned that it's going to be more challenging to say, Look, I am a Christian, I believe in God. I'm assuming that you pray for guidance you know, as most Christians that I know do. But there are people who are not Christians who say, oh, he wants a theocracy, which is absurd. But I do think that criticism is going to be there.
Oh yeah, it's already there, and I don't shy away from it. I'll answer those questions. It doesn't bother me. Everybody's got a thing that somebody's going to try to pick on or do whatever, and this is going to be the thing they pick on with me. That the other side of this is people don't realize that I have years and years and years worth of preaching online. They can and go find what I actually believe. Most of the other candidates you're not going to get that.
You have to take them at their word at a and I'm not saying just Republican, saying both sides of the aisle.
You have to take them at their word at a town hall or.
Something like that, that this is who they are and this is what they believe. I have three years of a voting record in the House, I have speeches on the floor.
All this is on my website.
I have sermons online that you can go back and listen to for years. I'm consistently been out in the public arena, and it doesn't scare me, it doesn't bother me. I don't have the ability to turn Colorado into theocracy.
It's just not possible.
But I will be a very good, solid, consistently moral looking out for people. A lot of my job as a pastor is the widows and the orphans. That's scriptural, taking care of people, taking care of homeless. I've done that for years and years and years. I sat on the board of a group that after the girls were rescued out of human trafficking, we rehabilitated them for two years. I've been working in these arenas forever, feeding people, homeless shelters.
I go all over the world, helping people get water and food and buildings and stuff, and so I if that, if somebody sees that as a negative, there's nothing I can do about that.
But I'm actually a good guy.
That's a great response, that's a solid response. Let's talk about the issues facing Colorado right now. What do you think is the number one issue facing the state.
I think the number one issue, and this, by the way, is backed up by statistics, but it's also my personal number one issue is mental illness. We have a huge problem across the state and all kinds of things. And here's part of the problem is where we're taking money away. There was just one bill last session this last spring took one hundred and eighty million away from mental health.
Right.
I think there's some intentionality there that does seem a little devious and I'm not okay with it, But we don't want to have good stuff of mental health. We don't want to put money in there. I think there's only one institution in the state of Colorado that is a penal type of mental health institution, and we're shutting all those down because why a couple of things we don't want to actually deal with mental illness. I've dealt
with that for thirty five years. That's like the biggest thing that a pastor does is spiritual slash mental illness. And we're shutting these things down in Colorado. I think part of the reason is the same thing with the bill that people have been talking about HB twenty four, ten thirty four, where we're now letting criminals out much more consistently because we're saying they're incompetent to serve trial.
I voted against that.
I was one of the few people that voted against that because that's a mental illness issue as well as a prosecutorial issue.
I do think the tide has shifted a little bit on that conversation because of the horrible, high profile crimes that have been committed by people who have been let out after being deemed and competent. Are you hopeful now? Are you you'll be back in the House this legislative session. Are you hopeful that meaningful change will happen there and that you may be able to lead the reversal of some of that funding that has been shortchanged outa mental
because for me, I agree with you. I think it's an issue that doesn't just affect the people that are suffering from it. We obviously to see the quality of life in Denver, in Colorado Springs that has been impacted by this stuff. Do you have or are you working on a bill to address some of the stuff.
Yeah, I've tried to do this. When it was voted in.
We had a lot of discussions in our caucus about this, and I was telling the cocus, look, we've got to vote no on this. When it first came through the House, there was only two no votes, me and one other representative. It went to the Senate. Luckily, the Senate amended it, which means it can come back to the House. If the Senate went amended it, it would have passed with
two no votes me and Representative de Graf. When it came back to the House with amendments, then twelve Republicans got on end, which I was very thankful for, but it wasn't enough. The bill passes. We've already got plans to do some things with that. But interestingly, some Republicans and some Democrats got together. I did a press conference in front of the Supreme Court a few months ago about this bill. I've done three press conferences about it, two of them in front of the Supreme Court.
And interestingly, the people that the.
Democrats and the Republicans that got together and had a meeting about this did not include me in the meeting. I didn't even know what was happening. They kept me out of it, and the first round I was one of two people that voted no. I knew I could see down the road, I know what this is going to do, and I was telling people this is going to put people at risk, and they're going to be more criminals attacking people in Colorado because of legislation, and they've left me out of the meetings.
I don't know what to do with that.
Well, sounds like they didn't want you there, going hey, guys, you should have listened to me the whole time. I knew what I was talking about. No, I'm just kidding secondary.
I told you so kind of guy. But I got to say I told him so.
Yeah. So the second thing I want to talk about with you specifically is affordability in the state.
It is.
You know, we've got Excel shutting down power lines right now, and in my mind, there are a lot of people who have tried to politicize that and make it into some kind of political issue, when in reality, it's a liability issue for Excel. But it does make me ask questions about when we are one hundred percent renewables, which is the green dream in Colorado, we are going to have reliable power, right, I mean, it just stands to reason that renewables are not reliable, so we're not going
to have reliable energy. If you become governor, what would your energy policy be and what would that look like in terms of trying to bring down the cost of everything in Colorado.
Right, So that's you know, that's a two hour conversation. Though. Let me throw some quick things out.
So first, the shutdown of the electricity, I don't think that is actually I don't think that was nefarious. I think there was some legitimate reasons why they were doing that. But with that being said, this is something that's important. Two years ago, we voted in a law that said that there are going to be entire neighborhoods in the state of Colorado that will be electric only they will not supply gas to them. Gas will not be available because the leftist in the House and the Senate hate gas.
Okay, the hate oil, they hate coal, the hate gas, and they.
Have stood up at the well in the Capitol and said, we will shut down oil, we will shut down coal. Well, the problem is is solar and wind will never accomplish what needs to be accomplished with the grid. And now you add AI to this, that is going to be
putting the demands. I read an article a few weeks ago that said, for our federal government to accomplish the demands that AI is going to put on electric grids across the United States that we're going to have to spend five one hundred billion dollars a year to be able to accomplish that. Well, in Colorado, we think we can do this through wind power. Come on, this is this is craziness. That is it is wind power and solar are not even making positive one penny positive net
games yet and so the government's subsidizing at all. The answer to that long term is small nuclear reactors. We need this in Colorado. This is going to be part of my energy plan. But we also need to drill for oil again. We also need to open up some of these coal mines that have been shutting down, and we've got to go back to coal providing electricity and also natural gas. I've been talking a lot with the energy industry and some of the natural gas distributors.
We're getting another line.
We have one gas line in Colorado sports all of Colorado.
That's not okay.
We need more, and there's another one coming through eastern Colorado that just got approved by the federal government.
So so some of this we're going to be able to do.
But my desire is long term for Colorado. We need data centers in Colorado. We need to put them on mountain streams and rivers so that the natural cold of the mountains and the water will help cool these things. But we have to have small nuclear reactors to support them. And I believe that small nuclear reactors need to be voted on at the local level, not by the federal level. Right now, Senator to Lee out of Utah, which I
like the guy. I think he's a good guy. But he's trying to just plant these in the national forest and then just kind of mandate it. And I think I think local control is always the thing when it comes to affordability and housing and things like that. We've got to stop the taxes, and we've got to stop the regulation. We're the sixth most regulated state in the United States. We've lost forty percent of our businesses under
the Police administration in the last five years. Okay, these are direct decisions the governor Police is making, and that the House and the Senator making. We've gone after private property ownership with about twenty bills in the last three years.
We're going we are raising taxes. The big beautiful bill that Trump came up with, this horrible, bad bill actually said that people that get tips and overtime should not be taxed for those and we went into special session so that Governor Poulos could could could tell the House to make sure that we're taxing people with their tips.
Why are we doing this.
This is attacking people, This isn't helping people, And we just got to take the regulations off. We just now, after an eight year hiatus, we just now last year started building townhomes and condos again. Yeah, because they had we had regulated so much and put so much legislation to make it easy to sue all of these people that they just stopped building. We went eight years without building townhomes and condos, and that is a that's a transitionary housing and concept.
That's how people actually get affordable housing. But we just we just took.
It off the table and said it's not a there's I mean, I could go on and on. We are passing too many laws that are attacking the consumers in Colorado, and I'm going to change that starting day one.
All right, so let me finish this interview. We got about four minutes left. Representative Scott Bottoms is my guest. By the way, I put a link to his website if you want to learn he's actually got policy positions on his website, which I'm excited to see. And honestly, you had me at small modular reactors. I talk about them a lot, and I think they're the future of energy period. But let's talk about the gossipy reason why
unfortunately you're here. And that is part of an interview that was between my colleague grind Shuling from KJOWR, our next door neighbor, and Victor Marx yesterday and I grabbed this one little snippet. Can I buy audio a rod?
Please?
Here's why I'm running. No one else can win in the general but me. If Senator Kurtmeyer could, if she really could, I wouldn't be running. If Scott Bottoms who I know, and I've called her friend, I text someone his father passed away. I wrote on his Facebook page it was his anniversary thirty five years with him and his bride yesterday.
God can't win the general.
He called me the night before I announced and he said, Victor, don't announce.
I said why why?
And I'm talking to him as a friend who I've spoken at his church, Ryan and my life's not been anything but normal, So I'm like, what's going on?
What do I need to know, Scott?
And he said, I've been trying to get a hold of you because you know, I'm running for governor and I want you to be my lieutenant governor.
Ask him direct, So.
I'm asking you direct. Did you ask him to be your lieutenant governor?
No, Ryan asked me direct earlier today too, the same question, played the same clip.
But here's the thing.
I never asked Victor to be my lieutenant governor, and he knows it. I called him and it wasn't the night before, is the day of, about two hours before, three hours before.
He declared, And I said, and I was trying to get a hold.
Of him for a long time because I needed his help on some human trafficking stuff. And I think providentially, now that we're seeing all of the the stuff that's coming out about who he really is as a human trafficking you know, savior guy or whatever, you know, when the truth is coming out, it's I think it's providential that he didn't help me because there's a lot of bad stuff come out. So but no, I told him, I said, Victor, I've been trying to reach you. I
need some help on this human trafficking stuff. And I said, plus I wanted to talk to you about my campaign and maybe even possibly being lieutenant governor. I said, but now you have scuttled that whole thing. You've you've taken that off the table. I said, because you don't know what you're doing. And I said, there are three people
that are using you. They're propping you up and using you so that they can gain some of the notoriety or money because their nonprofit or their political whatever is broke, and including our state party. That's one of the people as our state party chair. And I said, these people
are using you and you don't even know this. And then he calls me, leaves a message a week or two ago saying that he wanted me to give money from my governor campaign to the state party because the state party's broke and they need seventy thousand dollars to have a state assembly.
It is by law they have to have a state Assembly.
So I'm actually looking at some stuff, maybe some legal action or something, because they're not letting us know anything. But Victor is the one they're sending out to try to raise money. Well, he's trying to use my friendship, which I did think we were friends, but he lied about me and he allied to me, and I'm not
okay with that. And then you use my church also, and now we're finding out a bunch of stuff about the human trafficking where it looks like he's conned my church too, And so when you put all that stuff together, this is really bothered me. I called him because we were friends. I called him to try to help him and to warn him. And I never I never said, would you please be my lieutenant Governor. What I said was, I had considered that a couple months ago when I
reached out to you. But there's no way that's gonna happen now. It can't because you are jumping into something that is gonna hurt you. It's gonna hurt the human traffickings, rescuing arena, all this kind of stuff. And now he did say toward the end of the conversation, because I told him, Victor, you're never gonna win, Governor, it's not possible. And he did say, well, you can't win. But here's the thing, because he said this on the radio yesterday, right,
But here's the thing. I'm the front runner in every single category in any kind of social media, any kind of anything. My team is constantly doing analytics. I've had Democrats reach out to me because I am the front runner, and not just the front runner, but I am so far ahead of all the Republicans it's not even same race. I'm more than twice as far ahead as all of
the rest of the Republicans put together. The second place person behind me is Barb Kirkmer, Senator Kirkmer, and she's the only one in double digits, and it's barely into double digits. I'm in the seventy five to eighty percentile. She's in double digits. All the rest of the Republicans are in single digits, including Victor Marx. And so when when he comes out and he uses me or tries to leverage some kind of conversation and twist it and turn.
It that that that's.
First, I don't think a friend should do that, and so I really question I don't I don't I think he was using my friendship.
I don't think we were really ever friends.
All of that has really bothered me, and so that's why I came out and I'm saying this is this is not okay. Yeah, run your governor campaign. But don't try to don't try to leverage me by by changing a conversation saying I say something I didn't say.
Representative Scott Bottoms, I have to cut you off there. I'm running late. Right now, we'll be talking again. It's a long race. You said a lot of stuff that I really like. So thank you for your time today. And if people want to get more information about Representative Scott Botoms up a link to his website Scottbottoms dot org, correct dot org dot com, Scott Bottoms dot com, check him out. Scott, thank you for your time today.
Yeah, thank you, Mandy,