RJ Sangosti / MediaNews Group / The Denver Post via Getty Images At a local Republican convention in Grand Junction, Colorado, last March, I watched Rep. Lauren Boebert receive not one, but two standing ovations: One for her unparalleled five-minute speech, the other simply for showing up at all. It was a sympathetic crowd, but again, among her base, it was clear she was loved. That — combined with many indicators, including our own prediction, that suggested the Republican congresswoman would be headed for a second term — was why I was shocked to see the race for her seat representing Colorado’s 3rd District turn into a from the closest midterm elections. Colorado’s 3rd District is red, and thanks to redistricting, it’s gotten redder since Bobert last ran — it has a FiveThirtyEight guerilla R+19. As a Republican incumbent in a midterm cycle that looked set to favor the GOP, Boebert was expected to win easily: Our forecast gave Boebert a 97-in-100 chance of winning. From 5 p.m. east of Wednesday, Bobert had a slim 1,122-vote lead over Democrat and former Aspen City Council member Adam Fries. But even if he prevails, it will be a photo finish in a race that no one expected to be close. So what the hell happened? While Republicans overall performed worse than expected this midterm cycle, some things about this race made it particularly susceptible to a potential upset — and they explain why Bobert wasn’t popping champagne on election night. (Boebert’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.) Part of the story here is the fact that Colorado as a whole was hit with a blue wave this election, which even washed into Bobert’s red district. Not only did Democrats win major gubernatorial and Senate races, they also won competitive House races in the 7th District and the newly created 8th District and won seven seats in the state legislature, giving the state GOP its smallest minority ever. Republican state Rep. Colin Larson, who lost his seat, called it an “extinction-level event,” according to Colorado Public Radio: “This was the asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaur, and in this case, the dinosaur was the Republican party.” Although the district as a whole is red, there are blue counties and pockets within it, and enthusiasm for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot may have helped boost Fries’ campaign. We saw this result in other red districts in Colorado, like the 3rd: Incumbent Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Republican, won his race by 16 points, 4 points less than in 2020. In the 4th District, Rep. Ken Buck won The his election by the same margin (24 points) as in 2020, but that was after redistricting made his district even redder. But the blue wave is clearly not enough to explain such a slim margin in Bobert’s race. It also had some weaknesses that were exploited by a surprisingly strong Democratic candidate. Like the rest of the state, a large number of voters in the 3rd District — 40 percent — are unaffiliated, according to an analysis by the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commissions. Some of those voters still vote reliably for one party or the other, but a portion are swing voters or moderates who don’t find candidates too far from either end of the political spectrum appealing. After the 2020 election, we noted that Bobert’s district was unlike the districts where some of the other hard-line Republicans won: He’s less white, less evangelical, and less Republican. That may be why Bobert won with just 51 percent of the vote in 2020 (and why former President Donald Trump did so by just 5.5 points). Although the 3rd District has a strong Republican leaning, it was only represented by a Democrat in the early 2010s (Democrat John Salazar served from 2005-2011), and the last two elections show some cracks in the Republican stronghold. Boebert’s modest victory in 2020 is what inspired her challenger, Frisch, to run. he figured he would need to capture 10 percent of the electorate to have a chance, given the changes trickling in, but that was a margin he felt confident he could influence. “It was never supposed to be a suicide mission,” Frisch said. Throughout the campaign, Frisch cast himself as a moderate, “conservative businessman” who would get things done, in an effort to sway more centrist Republicans disenchanted with Boebert’s headline-grabbing stunts. While Bobert has her fans, she is a polarizing figure, said Zach Rhodey, campaign manager for Colorado Republican Senate candidate Joe O’Dea. “A lot of people like it, and a lot of people don’t,” Roday said. “There are a lot of strong opinions about her, and she’s certainly seen as a Trump-like figure, and so she’s obviously tied to that brand, for better or worse.” That includes critics within her party, such as state Sen. Don Coram, who challenged Boebert in the primary and ended up endorsing Frisch in the general election. Boebert also does not have a strong track record from her first term in Congress. He funded a few dozen accounts, most of which were stunts and none of which gained any traction. The dollars around this race help fill in some of the gaps as well. Frisch and Boebert’s campaigns were fairly evenly funded, with her campaign raising $6.7 million to $5.2 million, thanks in part to Frisch’s own pocketbook: As a millionaire former currency trader, he financed his own campaign amounting to 2.2 million dollars. Where funds diverged was in external spending. In 2020, outside spending against both Boebert and her opponent was fairly even. But this year, more than half a million dollars was spent opposing Boebert, while none was spent opposing Frisch, according to OpenSecrets data. All of this points to one final possible factor: This race may have been overlooked, particularly by pollsters and Republicans who saw Bobert as a winner. Except for three party polls (two of which were funded by Frisch’s campaign), pollsters ignored this race. And despite Bobert being a staunch Trump loyalist, the former president never came out to Colorado to campaign for her like he did for candidates in other races, according to Kevin McCarney, the Mesa County GOP chairman. the second most populous county. in the 3rd District. “He really wasn’t vocal about Lauren at all. It could have been complacency, that they just thought he was going to win, but it’s a little disappointing,” McCarney said. “ Frisch’s centrist platform and incredible ability to self-fund seem to have helped him exploit Boebert’s weaknesses in a district that has a not insignificant pool of moderate voters turned off by the congresswoman’s extremism. Regardless of the outcome, this race showed that the Colorado Western Slope can be competitive given the right — or wrong — candidates, and neither party is likely to overlook that in 2024.
