It’s official: The only Republican elected representative in the entire state of Colorado will challenge Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in the 2022 gubernatorial race.

Campaign representatives for Heidi Ganahl, an entrepreneur and full member of the University of Colorado board of trustees, filed documents early Friday with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office to form her nominee committee, Heidi for Colorado. The committee’s registration form says its goal is to “raise money and support Republican Heidi Ganahl to become governor of Colorado.”

Ganahl’s candidacy for governor has been widely anticipated in Colorado political circles in recent months. She told the Colorado Springs Gazette this week that she planned to make a “big announcement” in her hometown of Monument on Tuesday.

Ganahl was elected to a six-year term on the board of regents in 2016, becoming the most recent – and currently the only – Republican candidate to win office-wide elections in Colorado, following sweeping Democrats in the 2018 election.

“When people tell you you can’t win in Colorado, or we can’t win in Colorado, I just did a few years ago,” Ganahl told a crowd of Republican voters in the Teller County last month. “It just takes a lot of hard work, a really good message and we all come together to be this great team that we talk about in football.”