The Democrats’ eagerness to take on Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District next year has already set new records and prompted the state party to launch an unprecedented voter-contact strategy more than a year before voters will pick the party’s nominee.
At 10 candidates and counting, more Democrats have filed paperwork to run against the first-term Republican from Silt than have ever run in a primary for a House seat in Colorado.
In fact, more candidates have already dropped out of next year’s 3rd CD Democratic primary than typically run at all against House incumbents in Colorado, with three who have already come and gone more than a year before the primary.
It’s a different story for open seats, particularly when they’re brand new, like the eighth congressional district coming ahead of next year’s election, which could also see a flood of candidates from both major parties.
Over the past 50 years, incumbent House members in Colorado tend to draw a few challengers, often including one or more from their own party, though many do little more than file paperwork and post some positions online before fading into the woodwork.
But Boebert is different.
Colorado has seldom seen a politician as polarizing — and one with as wide a reach — as Boebert.
The gun-toting owner of a restaurant in Rifle draws regular and sustained coverage from prominent conservative outlets across the country. She also looks to have tapped into the online throngs of supporters of former President Donald Trump, who threw his backing behind Boebert a year ago and name-checks her regularly, including last week during a speech at his latest rally in Florida.
It’ll be an uphill climb to run against Boebert, a vocal supporter of the Second Amendment and a darling of conservative media, no matter how the district’s boundaries look at the end of the redistricting process, which should produce a final congressional map sometime this fall.
Not only are House incumbents notoriously difficult to unseat — in Colorado, it’s only happened a half dozen times in the last 50 years, including last year when Boebert ousted five-term U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton in the GOP primary — but any congressional district that includes a good share of the mostly rural Western Slope is going to lean Republican.
But that’s why Colorado Democratic Party chair Morgan Carroll said the party is embarking on what she calls an experiment, conducting focus groups for “message guidance” and hiring several full-time, on-the-ground organizers to begin the field work that won’t yield votes until next November.
“Getting involved is sort of not an option. It’s too important not to,” she said at the conclusion of an online meet-and-greet the party sponsored this week featuring the seven Democrats currently running for nomination in the 3rd CD.
“We’ve never done anything like this before,” she said, several times emphasizing that the state party is 100% neutral in primaries.
“If we wait until July of 2022, we will not have done the necessary work to organize and defeat Lauren Boebert.”
Carroll said the party has already spent $16,000 on focus groups run by Democratic pollster Chris Keating of Keating Research and has hired three organizers, who are spread out across the district’s current expanse. “Funds permitting,” Carroll added, the party plans to launch billboards and a digital campaign, as well as conduct a comprehensive poll and hold another focus group of swing voters after redistricting has delivered a final map.
“If we wait until January of 2022, every day that we wait is a missed opportunity,” she said.
Of the seven Democrats who are currently running for the seat, three appear to be most viable — state Sen. Kerry Donovan of Vail, state Rep. Donald Valdez of La Jara and Pueblo activist Sol Sandoval.
Under a very preliminary map released late in June by Colorado’s independent redistricting commission, however, Valdez and Sandoval are drawn into the heavily Republican 4th CD, represented by U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, who recently served a term as state GOP chairman.
Both Democrats say the first draft of the congressional map undercuts Hispanic voting strength and will be arguing that the San Luis Valley and Pueblo County belong in the 3rd CD, where they’ve been for at least 50 years.
Donovan, whose family owns a ranch near Vail where they raise Highland cattle — “those wonderful cattle that look a little bit more like Muppets,” she says — calls next year’s election in the 3rd CD “a race for the soul of the West.”
She hopes to contrast her legislative record with what she derides as Boebert’s efforts “to divide us instead of unite us.”
Valdez, a fifth-generation farmer and rancher in the San Luis Valley, put it more bluntly.
“Our democracy needs us now more than ever, and Boebert’s a disgrace,” he said, adding that he intends to run against “the chaos she brings not only to the district but everywhere she goes.”
Sandoval, whose platform is similar to the one Bernie Sanders espoused in his presidential campaigns, said she decided to dive into politics as a community organizer after working in social services for a decade and hearing “enough stories about how institutions are harming people every day.”
“We all go about our lives feeling there’s nothing that can be done, and we’re all exhausted,” she said, adding: “Our voices will be heard, and I’m ready to bring this fight to Congress.”
Among the other candidates in the running at this point, veterinarian Debby Burnett, who said Democrats need to talk to “the people who live at the end of the dirt roads” to do a better job representing rural Coloradans.
Kellie Rhodes said she’s spent her career working with youth and families dealing with aggression and violence, and sees parallels to how Americans are reacting to shock after shock, from the pandemic to economic woes.
“The fact the whole nation is titrating is why I got in the race,” she said, explaining that titration is when someone’s body shuts down but stressing that the condition isn’t something to fear.
“This moment is exciting because it means America is ready to turn the corner,” she said, adding that “fierce empathy” is the approach that will help the country emerge stronger.
Root Routledge, who calls himself “the rebel climate insurgency campaign or candidate” has run for the seat in the previous two cycles, receiving 2% support at the 2018 district assembly and 3% at last year’s.
“I have an offering. The offering this time on my poster here is this: We are out of time,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder at a detailed document hanging on the wall behind him. “Our climate is rapidly destabilizing.”
Colin Wilhelm, who has run for the state legislature and municipal office, said his status as a recovering alcoholic gives him insight the problems 3rd CD residents face and the ability to help address them.
“You can do anything as long as you put in hard work and dedication,” he said. “Facing my alcoholism has given me the strength to take on any issue I’m confronted with.”
While most of the 3rd CD candidates have yet to file campaign finance reports for the just-ended second quarter, Boebert and Donovan are so far head and shoulders above the others, according to a preview of their filings released earlier this week by their campaigns. Boebert has brought in more than $1.5 million and Donovan has raised more than $1 million — both figures that outstrip anything raised by Colorado congressional candidates at this point in the cycle.
Money isn’t everything, however, as Boebert demonstrated last year when her shoestring campaign surprised the incumbent Tipton in the primary.
And even while outside spending on both sides dwarfed the candidates’ funds in the general election, Boebert’s Democratic opponent, former state Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush, outspent the Republican by more than $2 million — roughly $5 million to Boebert’s roughly $3 million — and still lost.
