Centrist Independent Voter endorses Bob Chew, an independent running on the Colorado Forward Party ballot line, for the United States Senate.
The Alternatives
This is not an endorsement we make because the Democratic incumbent, John Hickenlooper, is unacceptable. Quite the opposite. Hickenlooper is a generally pragmatic senator with whom we agree on a number of important issues. We supported him in the Democratic primary.
The Republican nominee, Colorado state Senator Mark Baisley, also deserves consideration. We agree with some of his emphasis on markets, regulatory restraint and economic growth. But Baisley has associated himself with efforts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections, including speaking at a 2022 rally promoting election-fraud claims after those claims had been repeatedly debunked. His record and rhetoric on several social issues also place him well outside CIVPAC’s centrist approach. He has consistently voted against abortion-rights protections in the Colorado legislature and, in 2025, described LGBTQ legislators as being in “rebellion against the nature of God.” We therefore do not regard him as a preferable alternative to either Chew or Hickenlooper.
That makes Bob Chew’s candidacy more interesting.
Chew is a former Navy nuclear-submarine officer, engineer and businessman who built an engineering and technical-services company that created hundreds of jobs. He entered the race arguing that the two-party system increasingly rewards partisan performance while leaving difficult long-term problems unresolved.
That critique is easy to make. What distinguishes Chew is his willingness to discuss some of those problems in concrete terms.
Social Security and the Federal Budget
His approach to Social Security is particularly refreshing. Rather than promising that benefits can be preserved indefinitely without anyone paying more or receiving less, Chew lays out a range of possible reforms: increasing retirement ages, raising payroll taxes and reducing benefits for high earners. He does not insist that every proposal should be adopted. He insists that some combination must be.
That is political courage.
Chew applies the same realism to the federal budget and national debt. He proposes combining spending restraint, entitlement reform and tax changes while dedicating additional revenue to debt reduction rather than using it to finance new programs. He also argues that additional revenue could come from greater taxation of large intergenerational transfers of wealth. CIVPAC has its own recommendations on estate taxation, and our endorsement should not be read as adopting Chew’s particular approach. What we respect is his willingness to acknowledge that reducing the debt will require politically difficult choices involving both spending and revenue. Republicans who claim that tax cuts always pay for themselves and Democrats who treat every additional dollar of revenue as an opportunity for new spending have jointly helped create the problem.
Trade, Housing and Immigration
We also agree strongly with Chew on trade. He recognizes that tariffs raise costs for Americans and points specifically to their effect on construction materials. Hickenlooper deserves considerable credit here as well; he has opposed Trump’s tariffs, called them taxes and argued that tariff authority belongs to Congress rather than the president.
Chew’s housing analysis is similarly grounded in supply and demand. He identifies tariffs, high financing costs, building regulations and local zoning rules as important contributors to housing costs, and he is skeptical of treating restrictions on private-equity ownership as a substitute for addressing the underlying supply problem.
That supply-side perspective is also relevant to immigration. Immigrants are not merely consumers. They are workers who help build houses, produce goods and expand the economy. Immigration policy should recognize both sides of that economic equation.
Foreign Policy and Presidential Power
On foreign policy, both Chew and Hickenlooper are strong where it matters most to us. Chew explicitly supports Ukraine against Russian aggression and describes Russia as one of several authoritarian states threatening international stability.
He is also sharply critical of Trump’s war with Iran—not because he has illusions about the Iranian regime, but because the president entered the conflict without congressional authorization, a broad international coalition or a coherent strategy. Chew has specifically pointed to the coalition George H.W. Bush assembled before the 1991 Gulf War and argued that Congress should reassert its authority under the War Powers Act.
Political Reform and the Fulcrum Strategy
Chew’s candidacy also matters institutionally. He supports open primaries and ranked-choice voting and other reforms designed to reduce the ability of small, highly motivated factions within the two major parties to determine who appears on the general-election ballot. He wants Congress to reclaim authority surrendered to the executive branch.
More unusually, Chew has embraced what he and other independent Senate candidates call the Fulcrum Strategy. The idea is to elect enough genuinely independent senators that neither major party could assume their votes when organizing or controlling a closely divided Senate. Rather than simply joining one of the existing party caucuses, these senators could organize together and negotiate their support issue by issue. Chew says several independent veteran candidates are already discussing such a governing arrangement.
The potential leverage goes beyond deciding which party’s legislation passes. A sufficiently important independent bloc could influence Senate organization, committee representation, the ability of senators to offer amendments and the balance of power between party leaders and individual senators. It could also use its leverage to strengthen Congress relative to the executive branch.
The strategy may never attract enough senators to hold the balance of power. But it is more than a protest against the two-party system. It is a plausible institutional strategy for giving a small number of independent senators influence far beyond their numbers.
The Spoiler Question
There is, inevitably, a spoiler question. Colorado uses plurality voting in this election: the candidate receiving the most votes wins even without a majority. A strong independent candidacy can therefore affect which major-party candidate prevails. Colorado voters approved a transition toward ranked-choice voting in 2024, but that system is not yet governing this election.
But there is currently no public polling showing whether Chew would draw more heavily from Hickenlooper or Baisley. Chew was a registered Republican until 2025 and now describes himself as representing the political middle. His fiscal and market-oriented positions could appeal to voters who might otherwise support Baisley, while other positions could attract Hickenlooper voters. The risk therefore runs in both directions.
Moreover, Inside Elections currently rates the Colorado Senate race Solid Democratic. We do not think the absence of ranked-choice voting is, by itself, a reason to pretend that a serious independent candidate is not on the ballot.
Why Bob Chew
Hickenlooper is a respectable senator. That makes this endorsement more meaningful, not less. We are not endorsing Chew because his opponents are unacceptable. We are endorsing him because on several of the most difficult long-term issues facing the country—fiscal sustainability, Social Security, trade, institutional reform and the proper division of constitutional authority—he is willing to confront choices that the major parties would rather avoid.
Colorado voters have more than two choices.
We think Bob Chew is the best one.