April 18, 2024 11:24 AM UTC

The Republican Field for Congress in CO-03

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado will have four major Congressional Primary races in June (CO-03, CO-04, CO-05, and CO-08). Now that the assembly and petition processes for ballot access are complete, it’s time to assess how each of these three races will look on June 25th…starting with the third congressional district

The ballots in each of these districts are a bit different than most political observers would have predicted a few months ago. For example, there are actually more Republican candidates in Rep. Lauren Boebert’s old district (CO-03) than there are in her new district (CO-04).

We’ll include the same caveat as we explore numbers from each district: We’ve only seen results from one election since redistricting changed congressional boundaries prior to 2022, so there’s a limited amount of data with which to make comparisons.

CO-03 (Western, Southern Colorado)

Raise your hand if you thought CO-03 would end up being the race with the most candidate names on the ballot.

Nobody? Yeah, we’re surprised, too.

Republican voters can choose from six different names when mail ballots start to arrive in early June:

• Stephen Varela (top line via assembly)
• Ron Hanks (assembly)
• Jeff Hurd (petitions)
• Curtis McCracken (petitions)
• Russ Andrews (petitions)
• Lew Webb (petitions)

This is an interesting field that lacks any candidates with great fundraising ability or name ID (we literally learned the name “Lew Webb” just this week). Here’s a look at the cash on hand numbers for each candidate after the April 15 fundraising period:

As The Colorado Sun noted in its “Unaffiliated” newsletter, Jeff “Bread Sandwich” Hurd has also received at least $81,000 in support from the Koch-funded group “Americans for Prosperity.” Hurd is the only candidate who seems to be able to raise money and has collected a bunch of notable endorsements from Republicans across the state, so we’re still listing him as the likely frontrunner at this point. But weird things can happen with a crowded field of candidates, and both Varela and Hanks have support from the kind of right-wing Republican voters who consistently show up on Election Day.

In the 2022 Republican Primary in CO-03, Lauren Boebert defeated Don Coram by 22 points. Out of a total of 130,808 ballots cast, Boebert earned 86,322 compared to 44,486 for Coram. That vote total should increase in a Presidential election year, but if we use 2022 as a baseline, a six-candidate race should be winnable with somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 total votes.