From Moffat County, the northwest corner of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, south to Montezuma County and east to Pueblo, voters resoundingly came out in support of Jeff Hurd, a relatively moderate conservative, in the Republican congressional primary.
As with any recent election in Colorado, the unaffiliated voters who make up about half the electorate played a critical role.
In District 3, about 56,000 independent voters cast ballots; 20,800 of those were Democratic ballots, 30,200 were Republican ballots and about 5,000 were “in process” as of Friday afternoon.
This is no surprise, given the flurry of GOP candidates who jumped into the race before and after Rep. Lauren Boebert announced she would leave the district and run in eastern Colorado’s more conservative 4th Congressional District.
For voters in La Plata County who could choose which ballot to vote, the CD3 race was the only exciting contest.
But despite the dearth of engaging races on the Democratic side, independent voters in the county did not take a pen to the Republican ballot as some might have expected.
If anything, the opposite was true. Nearly 400 more independents chose to vote the Democratic ballot in La Plata County than the Republican one (100 ballots are still “in process”).
That was a surprise to Paul DeBell, associate professor of political science at Fort Lewis College.
But the results track in line with recent trends, said Dick Wadhams, a Republican political strategist and former chairman of the state GOP.
In blue-tinted La Plata County, even unaffiliated voters picked the Democratic ballot with only a contested Colorado University Board of Regents race to influence; in solidly red CD3, voters opted into the Republican contest.
“It’s been clear for several election cycles now that unaffiliated voters tilt toward Democrats when they vote,” Wadhams said. “I think that is largely due to their antipathy toward Donald Trump. And while the presidential race wasn’t on the ballot Tuesday, I still think that does have an impact on unaffiliated voters in terms of which ballot they take.”
Hurd emerged the winner with nearly 13 percentage points between himself and the second-place candidate, offering a clear statement from conservative voters: enough of the theatrics.
“He campaigned as someone who would, first and foremost, represent the 3rd Congressional District and not get involved in a bunch of wild-eyed stuff in Washington like Boebert did,” Wadhams said.
Boebert earned herself a reputation as a boisterous agitator who has, at times, destroyed her credibility with actions such as taking credit for congressionally earmarked spending passed in bills she voted against – twice.
La Plata County voters supported Lew Webb in the six-way race to replace Boebert. The conservative lives in Durango and likely capitalized on a home-field advantage. Webb was followed by Hurd about 8 percentage points behind, with far-right extremist Ron Hanks 6 percentage points behind him.
The ideological purity test with which Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams tried to discern favored candidates (including himself) failed to prove itself as an accurate statewide barometer of voter preferences. Of the 18 candidates endorsed by party leadership, only four won their primaries.
“You see a lot of folks sort of leaning toward maybe more pragmatic politicians, actually in both party primaries, in certain instances,” DeBell said. “But again, there are some outliers (and) I think that we shouldn’t ignore those because I think there is real ideological diversity right now within both parties.”
Tuesday’s results may have been good for Democrats in La Plata County.
About 5,400 voters cast a vote for Adam Frisch in his uncontested Democratic primary in the CD3 race, and only 440 more people cast a ballot in the contested Republican primary.
Down ballot, uncontested Democrats running for state House and Senate both picked up more votes than their uncontested Republican counterparts.
But with Hurd, a mainstream conservative, as an opponent rather than Hanks, Frisch may have a more difficult road ahead.
“Adam Frisch was a loser on Tuesday night because his pathway to being elected to Congress from the 3rd district was through Ron Hanks being the Republican nominee,” Wadhams said. “… The fact is that the 3rd Congressional District is still a district, overall, that does lean strongly toward Republicans, and so I honestly expect Hurd to end up winning.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com
