The frontrunner in Colorado’s Republican primary for governor refused to say how many people he has killed in a stunning TV interview.
During a 30-minute sit-down on Denver’s 9News on May 27, anchor Kyle Clark questioned gubernatorial candidate Victor Marx about his 2015 claim on PBS Hawaii’s Long Story Short With Leslie Wilcox that his abusive stepfather had forced him to fatally shoot a man in the head when he was 7 years old.
“Is that the only person you’ve ever killed?” Clark, 42, asked Marx, 60, who paused for 10 seconds before taking a deep breath and responding, “Well, I would say, as a child, yes, without question, but I’ve been in other situations where, you know, possibly people — or persons — died as a result of me defending myself in other countries. There’s no count on that. There’s no photos.”
Clark then rephrased his question, asking, “Do you think that you’ve killed people as an adult?”
Marx replied, “Does it matter?”
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Clark opined, prompting Marx to ask, “Why?”
“Killing somebody’s a pretty weighty thing,” Clark responded.
Marx, who is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, wondered aloud whether murder is still considered “weighty” when “someone’s trying to kill you or you’re in combat,” to which Clark argued, “It’s still a weighty thing to take somebody else’s life. I mean, it could be self-defense, it could be justified, but it’s still a weighty thing.”
The journalist proceeded to ask Marx one more time, “How many people have you killed?”
“Well, if I did, I wouldn’t be telling a reporter sitting here in my training center,” the founder of All Things Possible Ministries, which aims to protect orphaned children in Haiti, replied with a smirk before calling the question “odd.”
Marx is running against Colorado Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and Rep. Scott Bottoms in the GOP primary, which is scheduled to take place on June 30 ahead of the state’s gubernatorial election on November 3.
Both Kirkmeyer, 67, and Bottoms, 55, have said they would not support Marx if he wins the primary.
“I don’t think he’s fit to be governor, and I think he would be a disaster for our state, quite frankly,” Kirkmeyer said during a debate on May 26.
Bottoms, meanwhile, called Marx a “con man” at the same event, claiming, “He’s lied to me personally. He’s lied to other people.”
Marx chose to sit out of the debate, calling one of its moderators biased, but he later condemned his opponents for saying they would not back him.
“They’re effectively saying they’d rather see a radical liberal Democrat in the governor’s office than stand with a fellow Republican chosen by the voters,” he said in a statement to Colorado Politics. “That doesn’t put Colorado families first, and it certainly doesn’t put our conservative principles first. … It puts their own egos and ambitions ahead of the party and the state.”
