The Republican nominee for Governor of Colorado claims he’s mastered the “rules of engagement” for casting off “demonic oppression.” Oddly, that supernatural claim might be one of the least interesting — and most believable — parts of his biography.
Victor Marx runs a multi-million-dollar Christian ministry that’s built on incredible tales of salvation, most of which are no easier to prove than his claim to be a master of “spiritual warfare.”
The stories begin with Marx’s personal narrative of overcoming childhood trauma — including supposedly being forced to murder a man at age seven. Marx has committed these harrowing accounts to his memoir, The Victor Marx Story: People Will Admire You for Your Success… But They Will Relate to You Because of Your Pain (now in its fourth edition) and a slick online movie with the same title but a tweaked subtitle: When Impossible Is The Only Way Out.
The salvation stories extend to what Marx describes as his calling as a “high-risk humanitarian.” In 2022, Marx claimed he’d helped liberate “over 43,000” women and children who were being “sex trafficked” or held in other forms of captivity. “We’re best known,” he told the interviewer, “for recovering women and children from ISIS.”
Then there’s Marx’s work in the spiritual realm, where he’s claimed to have freed hundreds from demonic “attachments” — including the late MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, who wrote the intro to another Marx book, on Christian masculinity, titled The Dangerous Gentleman. Marx has bragged of his undefeatable prayer powers against evil, insisting: “We just don’t lose.”
Marx is sixty-one and deeply tan, with a beard that runs more salt than pepper. He speaks slowly, with a pious intensity and a Cajun drawl. He describes his candidacy as a mission from Jesus: “I know I’m called to this,” he’s written. “It’s clear we’re right in the center of God’s will.”
Marx built his reputation on extravagant claims. (His late mentor, Dr. James Dobson, blurbed his Dangerous Gentleman book by declaring: “Victor Marx may be the world’s most interesting man!”) But during the Republican primary campaign, Marx’s allegiance to the truth emerged as a central question. One GOP opponent — a fellow pastor, no less — called out Marx on the debate stage as “corrupt,” a “con man,” and a liar. His other GOP opponent called him “unfit” and “a fraud,” asserting that Marx “makes up these tall tales, these tall stories, and I just don’t believe him.”
Marx answers such critics with circular aphorisms: “Just because a person does not believe the truth, it does not make it a lie.” To his doubters, he’s added: “I have no need to prove to anyone what we’ve done over the last many years. People believing it or not, it has no bearing on our work.” Marx has been evasive with the press — and did not respond to an interview request from The Contrarian. With no apparent irony, he has put “accountability,” “transparency,” and “ending corruption” at the top of his gubernatorial issue agenda.
With Victor Marx, it is challenging to tease out man from myth.
The Marx story begins with ghastly (but curiously… cinematic?) stories of childhood trauma growing up in the Deep South. There’s the story of how he was sexually abused as a five-year-old on a chicken farm and then abandoned to die in an industrial cooler — before a just-in-time rescue by his family. This assault was allegedly followed by the “country-justice” capture of his tormentor, whom Marx describes as being beaten, “hog-tied,” dragged by tractor, and subjected to a mock execution-by-hanging from a pecan tree.
Then there are the tales about his wicked stepfather, “Mr. K,” who worked as a bail bondsman and salesman, but claimed he’d been trained by the NSA in “torture and methods and mind control.” He allegedly forced young Victor to do the following:
Decapitate a dead cat as a three-year-old, and then wear the carcass on his head so that the “blood dripped down my body.”
Pull the trigger of a revolver, as a seven-year-old, to murder a “vagabond,” who was then buried under the floorboards of an old house.
Watch the mutilation and incineration of a corpse at a morgue.
This same man also allegedly hooked young Victor up to a battery, forcing him to watch a film reel of a child being horrifically abused — delivering electrical shocks to keep young Victor from closing his eyes. Mr. K allegedly also subjected him to near-drownings in the bathtub, and once went on a drunken gun rampage, shooting out the lights in Marx’s home in a fury about the household electrical bill. Along the way, young Victor also fell in with a “groomer” and was victimized in a pedophilia ring that operated from “dark homes where weird rituals were happening, which I didn’t understand.”
In Marx’s telling, he found redemption from this ceaseless abuse by joining the Marines, finding Jesus, and undergoing hours of trauma therapy. Marx writes that he shares the stories of his childhood trauma as a lesson about God’s love, because “Jesus wants to rescue you as he has done for me.”
Does Marx intend readers to take his story as literally true? Or as a parable for redemption? In a recent interview with a Colorado news station, he defended his narrative as completely factual, declaring “all of it” is true.
Recovering from his trauma, Marx also turned to martial arts — becoming what he describes as a “7th degree black belt” in Keichu-do, a form of hand-to-hand combat he calls “Cajun karate.” Marx claims to have trained with elite military operators from Delta Force and SEAL Team in the martial arts, in addition to “over 30 world champions.” In a related skill, Marx bills himself as “World’s Fastest Gun Disarm Man,” for the speed with which he can snatch a weapon from someone holding him at gunpoint.
This background in the Marines and martial arts has helped Marx carve out a unique niche in the landscape of Christian ministry, where Marx bills himself as a “high-risk humanitarian.” As Marx describes the work, his “teams” embed with military or law enforcement units in conflict zones — from the Middle East to South Asia to the Mexican border — and help liberate trafficked women and children. Marx likens his crew to “a special forces unit,” and a fact sheet currently on his ministry website touts having “saved women and children in 30 nations.”
Marx’s descriptions of these rescue missions are at once harrowing and oblique, creating the impression that Marx is a commando for Jesus operating at the edges of civilization. As he recently told a radio interviewer: “Sometimes it does get cowboyish.” He described getting involved in a firefight near Mosul, Iraq. “Our rules of engagement has never been to kick in doors and shoot people,” he said. “But when we’re in the middle of it, you get shot at. You know, you got to hurt people’s feelings back.”
In an appearance on the Christian nationalist Flashpoint broadcast in 2022, Marx claimed to have helped a huge number of the vulnerable: “We help set captives free. I know it’s a biblical term, but we actually do it physically — women and children who are being sex trafficked.” He added, with a veneer of modesty: “We tried to stay quiet about some things. But it didn’t last for very long, by the sheer number of women and kids we were helping. To date it’s over 43,000.”
In more recent years, Marx has added “spiritual warfare” to his story arc. Marx’s roots in Colorado include working for the conservative culture warrior Dobson of Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs. But, different from Dobson, Marx situates himself in the charismatic tradition of Christianity, whose believers hold that the spirit world — and the struggle between angelic and demonic forces — is not at all metaphorical.
In this Ephesians-inflected worldview, there is a hidden supernatural plane of existence where spiritual warfare is ever present, and individuals can be oppressed by evil spirits, leading to suffering in their terrestrial lives. This torment, in turn, can be relieved by casting off demons in prayer, a skill that Marx claims to have perfected, telling an interviewer that he’d become a “reluctant exorcist.” (Marx clarifies that he’s not, in fact, acting like a Catholic priest. “We never use the word ‘possessed,’” he’s said, opting instead to describe the work as setting people free from their “demonic assignments.”)
To describe Marx’s full backstory as far-fetched is an understatement. As the New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg recently put it: “Marx is the sort of character Carl Hiaasen might have conjured if he took mushrooms and wandered into a Pentecostal church.”
But this much is undeniable: Marx has turned his gift at storytelling into booming success for his ministry, All Things Possible. Registered as a not-for-profit rather than a church, the ministry’s financial records are public. From 2020 to 2024, the last year for which tax returns are available, Marx’s ministry raked in nearly $28 million in gifts. A not-insignificant portion of these donations benefit Marx and his family. In 2024 alone, Marx, his wife, two children employed by the ministry, and an entity called Victor Marx LLC collectively received more than $317,000.
Marx’s ministry serves up slick production values — including a snazzy website that solicits donations and sells videos, as well as courses and other merch. The faithful can support Marx’s “Protecting Children’s Innocence Task Force.” The promotional materials promise that each donation sends a message: “Evil Is On Notice.” For more heavenly battles, the ministry recently released a full-length feature film on “spiritual warfare” called The Unseen War — available to purchase for just $19.95.
It is perhaps unsurprising that as he moved into today’s world of politics, Marx proved to be a prodigious fundraiser. In part thanks to an early endorsement from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Marx tapped into a network of donors that staked him to nearly $3 million for the gubernatorial primary campaign.
But as the Republican contest unfolded, the veracity of Marx’s narratives received significant scrutiny — once tales that were true-enough for the purposes of ministry work were subject to the level of fact-checking that any candidate might expect.
During this public vetting, Marx abandoned key claims about his humanitarian work. Pressed by an interviewer about how many women and children he’d actually saved, Marx flatly denied he’d ever suggested the number was in the tens of thousands: “I have never said — ever — that… I rescued 45,000 people,” adding: “I would never say anything like that.” In another interview, Marx blamed the inclusion of this 45,000 figure on a campaign website as the mistake of an “independent contractor.”
On the debate stage, however, Marx’s opponent Scott Bottoms — a state representative who is also the pastor of a Colorado Springs congregation — accused Marx of having “conned my church” by telling him specifically that he had “rescued 45,000 people.” (From his dais, Marx retorted that Bottoms was “mean,” before deflecting, vaguely, that “accusations without evidence are nothing more than gossip or a lie.”)
So how many women and children has Marx rescued through his ministry? When asked by journalist Kyle Clark of Denver’s 9News, Marx said he couldn’t disclose that figure “for security reasons.” As a range, he offered: “It’s more than one. And less than a bunch.” The true answer, Marx asserted, was immaterial to the people who’ve given his ministry millions. “Whether people think we rescued 1, or 100, or 300, or 3,000,” he said, “I think the response is still gonna be the same.”
In the same interview, Marx refused to stand by his own post on X in which he described completing 130 missions, saying: “That doesn’t sound accurate.” When pressed to name several of the 30 nations where his ministry claims to have rescued women and children, Marx became flustered: “I don’t, I mean… I don’t memorize every place that we’ve gone.”
Marx has previously described his horrific childhood experiences of abuse as “unprovables.” And true enough, there does not seem to be any evidence to support his most dramatic claim of being forced to murder a man. In his book, Marx writes that he confessed, as an adult, about his supposed involvement in the “vagabond” killing to both the local sheriff and the FBI, but that neither agency chose to open an investigation into a cold case with no specific evidence.
In the 9News interview, Marx was pressed on whether he’d killed others — as an adult. He gave the chilling reply: “Does it matter!?” (He then added, obliquely: “I’ve been in other situations where, you know, possibly people or persons died.”)
Clark clearly did not find such answers satisfactory. Later, as one of the moderators in the primary debate, Clark recapped some of Marx’s most incredible assertions:
You claim that you’ve been all around the world armed to the teeth rescuing women and children from captivity. That you’ve stopped human smugglers at the Mexico border and made them ‘pay a price.’ That you, as a civilian, called in a U.S. military air strike that killed 70 ISIS fighters. That you’ve done 150 high-risk missions and everyone has been a success.
He then posed an audacious question to Marx: “How should voters decide whether you’ve lived one of the most extraordinary lives in human history — or whether you’re a liar and a fraud?”
“I can’t help it if I’ve had an extraordinary life,” Marx retorted, adding, nebulously: “The proof is just in people and what we document.”
In the end, the many controversies about Marx’s past didn’t deter his voters. In the primary election, he eked out a victory by about 2,500 votes to advance to the general election. Neither of his GOP opponents has endorsed him, and at least one party official quit rather than support Marx.
What does the rise of Victor Marx tell us about American politics?
The risk is less that this fabulist will become the chief executive of a major state. Colorado is losing its “purple” reputation — and hasn’t elected a GOP governor in nearly a quarter century. The Democratic nominee, Phil Weiser, is the state’s sitting attorney general and won an impressive primary victory over sitting U.S. Senator Michael Bennet. Cook Political Report rates the contest a “Solid D.”
What’s important about Marx is that he represents the evangelical base of the GOP choosing to nominate one of their own for a state’s highest office, rather than rallying behind a more mainstream politician who promises to champion their interests. While not an overt Christian nationalist, Marx has said Christians are called to ”occupy” earthly government until Jesus returns.
Marx also embodies a deepening of post-truth politics on the MAGA right, for whose voters the myth and charisma of a candidate — be it Victor Marx or Donald Trump — is far more important than the reality of the resume.
The ascendance of Marx also underscores how notions of spiritual battle have captivated the far-right in American politics — from the grassroots voters to the Speaker’s office. Academics have long highlighted the danger of applying the angelic-vs.-demonic logic of spiritual warfare to the world of politics, because believers can come to see their partisan opponents as controlled by evil, rather than simply holding different beliefs or ideology.
For a man who fetishizes fighting, Marx sees dueling with demons as the pinnacle of combat. “The supernatural realm is the highest form of warfare known to mankind,” Marx has told his followers. And, as with his campaign, Marx feels himself allied with God when he is batting evil spirits. “We destroy them,” Marx has claimed, and “banish them to perfect judgment from Christ.”
Tim Dickinson is the Senior Political Writer for The Contrarian
What's so depressing is that truthful, factual articles like this one read like satirical articles from The Onion decades ago.
This is a depressing state of affairs. People voted to get this nut job in the primary. I'm a native Coloradoan and I am stunned that he even got this far.