April 23, 2024 10:33 AM UTC

The Republican Field for Congress in CO-05

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• 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…

Click below for our breakdowns of other Congressional Primary races in 2024:

• CO-03
• 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-05 (El Paso County)

Colorado’s fifth congressional district is slowly becoming less partisan with every election cycle, but this is still a Republican stronghold where the winner of the Primary Election can safely start measuring the curtains in their new office before the November General Election. This is also a coveted seat for aspiring Republican politicians because the incumbent has proven to be fairly safe in later election cycles.

Despite regularly being challenged in a Republican Primary — including previous battles with both of the candidates on the ballot in 2024 — retiring Rep. Doug Lamborn had no trouble staying in office since first winning election in 2006. That 2006 election, in fact, featured a six-way Republican Primary for the right to succeed Rep. Joel Hefley, who was first elected in 1986. In short, the winner of the June Primary will probably be able to keep this job for as long as they want.

For all those reasons, we expected a crowded field of candidates when Lamborn announced in January that he would not seek re-election in 2024. But a long list of potential candidates that once included TABOR daddy Doug Bruce steadily dwindled; when State Sen. Bob Gardner learned last week that he had failed to collect a sufficient number of petition signatures to make the ballot, only two candidates remained:

• Dave Williams (top line via assembly)
• Jeff Crank (petitions)

And…that’s it. That’s the field.

We noted last week that both Williams and Crank have an electoral history in CO-05. Williams, of course, served four three terms as a State Representative from the Colorado Springs area, but he also lost a Republican Primary challenge against Lamborn in 2022. Crank, likewise, took second place in that infamous 2006 Republican Primary and then tried again in 2008…finishing second to Lamborn once more. Both candidates have proven that they can get about 30 percent of the vote in CO-05; now we get to find out which one can get to 50% +1.

Crank is doing a better job on the fundraising front than Williams, and he is also the beneficiary of heavy spending from the right-wing group Americans for Prosperity; in the first three months of the year, AFP spent $143,000 on canvassing, mailers, and digital ads in support of Crank. We’d expect AFP to keep pouring money into CO-05 to help Crank across the finish line.

Williams has countered Crank’s AFP support by directing the Colorado Republican Party — of which he serves as State Chairman — to spend money on a mailer and email blast attacking AFP. Williams will also leverage an endorsement from Donald Trump and will likely find a way to direct the Colorado Republican Party to officially endorse him ahead of the Primary Election.

Because Williams challenged Lamborn just two years ago, we have a pretty good idea of what the Primary Election will look like in terms of turnout. A total of 97,599 votes were cast in June 2022, which likely puts the “win number” for either candidate at somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 votes.