Colorado Treasurer Race 2026: Jeff Bridges vs Kevin Grantham, and the Douglas County Numbers

The treasurer is the state's bank. The office describes itself that way on its own site: it holds and invests Colorado's money, makes sure "every tax dollar gets to the right place at the right time," runs the unclaimed property program, and puts the treasurer on the board of PERA, the public pension. It is the least visible statewide office on your ballot, and this year the two major candidates disagree about what it is for.

What the office does

Beyond the bank function, the treasury runs programs most people meet only once: the Great Colorado Payback for unclaimed property, the SecureSavings retirement program for workers without an employer plan, the property tax deferral program for seniors and others, loans to school districts and financing for school construction. The treasurer sits on the PERA board and, as Colorado Politics put it in its October profile, advises state boards on financial matters. Democrats have held the office since 2018.

The Colorado Politics profile frames the race in one sentence that both candidates would probably accept: Grantham wants the office to keep "its traditional focus on managing and investing state money," while Bridges wants to expand it "to investments in areas such as housing and infrastructure" and add oversight of state spending.

Jeff Bridges, Democrat

Bridges, of Greenwood Village, was first elected to the state House in 2016, appointed to the Senate by a vacancy committee in 2019, and elected in 2020 and 2024. He has chaired the Joint Budget Committee, the six-member panel that writes the state budget, and before that the Senate appropriations, finance and education committees. His site says this year he balanced a $16.5 billion budget "despite more than $1 billion in required cuts because of TABOR." He has a Master of Divinity from Harvard, which explains the line he uses everywhere: "the budget is a moral document."

His pitch is one idea. "Colorado's Treasurer manages billions of dollars of our state's investments. Right now those billions are parked in Wall Street and Washington." He would "bring those dollars home" into housing for "nurses, teachers, and firefighters," infrastructure and clean energy "that lower your utility bills," and Colorado companies. He points to Vermont, Illinois and Nevada as states that already do it, and to his own bills, the 2022 Middle Income Housing Authority and the 2025 BUILD Authority for local infrastructure financing.

On the questions Colorado Politics asked all three candidates, he opposes using the unclaimed property fund to balance the budget, as the legislature did for 2026-27 ("we also can't solve structural budget problems caused by TABOR and federal cuts by repeatedly spending money that literally belongs to Coloradans"), and on PERA he would stay the course: the fund ended 2025 about 69 percent funded and on track to full funding by 2048, and his JBC "invested more state dollars in PERA than any previous JBC." His endorsements run from Ken Salazar and Roy Romer to Jason Crow and former treasurer Cary Kennedy. We found no Douglas County officeholder on the list.

Kevin Grantham, Republican

Grantham grew up on a hog farm in Crowley County, which he turns into the campaign's best line: "I know a little something about how to cut the fat." He was on the Canon City council in 2007, in the state Senate from 2010 to 2018 where he also served on the Joint Budget Committee, and Senate president in 2017 and 2018, the last years Republicans held the chamber. Fremont County elected him commissioner in 2020 and again in 2024. His site's results list is short: cut property taxes in Fremont County, "stopped multiple attempts at billion-dollar tax hikes" as a senator, balanced budgets without tax increases as president. He was the only Republican to file.

His answers to Colorado Politics are shorter than Bridges's and sharper. On unclaimed property: "I'm opposed to the state taking money that it doesn't own. To me, this is a tax increase without a vote of the people who rightly deserve the money back." On PERA: meet the obligation, manage risk, and "lower overhead and stop paying exorbitant salaries and bonuses to those managing our investments," because "there are private funds and accounts that perform well without the overhead we're paying now." His closing shot is at his opponent: Bridges "has said he does not want to grow the state's investments and in fact, wants to minimize their returns," and is "leading the charge to increase taxes again on Coloradans." Bridges's site says the opposite about returns, that investing at home can be done "while earning strong returns for taxpayers"; we have not found the statement Grantham is referring to.

The other two

Jodie Barr, the Libertarian, answered the same questionnaire: the treasurer should be "a fiduciary for taxpayers, not an extension of the legislature's spending appetite." She opposes the unclaimed property transfer, calls PERA's roughly $30 billion unfunded liability a problem that needs more than legislative patches, and would close the defined-benefit plan to new hires in favor of portable accounts. Marilee Langner Sturgis of the Approval Voting Party did not respond to Colorado Politics; we have found no platform for her.

The money

The state's mid-October reports, filed October 19 and covering the cycle through October 14, have Bridges at $476,466 in contributions, $294,072 spent and $182,393 on hand. Grantham reports $149,909 raised, $123,973 spent and $25,936 on hand. Barr's TRACER page shows no contribution report on file. It is a low-money race: the two attorney general candidates on the same ballot have raised about five times as much between them.

The county's numbers

Douglas County has gone Republican for treasurer both times Dave Young ran, by less each time. In 2018 Brian Watson beat Young here 101,526 to 67,711, 58.7 to 39.1 percent, while losing the state 44.9 to 52.2. In 2022 Lang Sias carried the county 101,807 to 78,875, 54.9 to 42.5, while Young won statewide 53.7 to 43.0. The Republican margin here fell from 33,815 votes to 22,932 in four years, the same shrinking pattern as the attorney general line.

June adds one more number. Neither man had a primary opponent, so the treasurer line is a clean count of who picked which ballot: 44,955 Douglas County voters cast a Republican treasurer ballot and 42,563 a Democratic one. Statewide the Democratic count was 713,633 to the Republican 447,614.

More: every race and measure on your ballot, the November ballot guide, the attorney general race and where to vote. We do not endorse candidates. Campaigns can send corrections to hello@discoverdougco.com.