Jeff Hurd leads in high-profile Republican primary election for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District

Republican Jeff Hurd, a Grand Junction attorney, will run against Democrat Adam Frisch in the November election to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District after he won his party’s primary Tuesday. 

Unofficial results showed Hurd winning 42% of the ballots cast in the primary as of 8:20 p.m. on June 25. Former state lawmaker Ron Hanks won about 28%. The four other candidates, Stephen Varela, Lew Webb, Russ Andrews and Curtis McCrackin each received less than 10%. 

The Associated Press called the race for Hurd at 8:15 p.m.

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For Pitkin County voters, Hurd leads Republicans with 321 votes (35.08% of voters); Andrews is in second place with 223 votes (24.37%); Hanks is in third with 159 votes (17.38%); Varela is in fourth with 131 votes (14.23%); Webb is in fifth with 39 votes (4.26%); and McCrackin is in last with 42 votes (4.59%).

Of the 13,108 registered voters in Pitkin County, so far 3,054 ballots have been cast.

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National political strategists from both sides of the aisle seem to believe Frisch had a more likely chance of defeating Hanks, a former state lawmaker known for his hardline conservative views on abortion and immigration. Hanks attended the rally that later turned into a riot on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol and has falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

Rocky Mountain Values, a Democratic Super PAC, paid more than $400,000 to air television ads boosting Hanks’ profile and attacking Hurd, a move that drew ire from Western Slope political leaders. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a national Republican political group, also ran ads attacking Hanks and accusing him of being too liberal. 

Frisch, who lost to Rep. Lauren Boebert in 2022 by only 546 votes, also funded ads against Hurd and Hanks in the final days of the primary.

A poll in June showed more than half of the people likely to vote in the Republican primary were undecided on who they would support. In Colorado, unaffiliated voters choose which party’s primary they will cast a vote in. 

Among those who had decided on their vote, Hurd had a significant leg up, according to the poll’s results. Other candidates had low name recognition. 

Hurd entered the race when Boebert was still running for reelection in the district. When Boebert was removed from a Denver performance of “Beetlejuice” for talking loudly and vaping, several prominent Republicans began donating to Hurd’s campaign. 

Then in December, Boebert announced she would abandon her 3rd Congressional District campaign and instead run in the state’s 4th Congressional District, a much safer district for Republicans. Boebert won that primary Tuesday. 

When Boebert was running in the 3rd district, national Democrats seeking to flip the majority of Congress identified it as vulnerable. The 3rd Congressional District spans a huge portion of the southwest area of the state, stretching from Aspen and Grand Junction all the way to Pueblo. 

Elliott Wenzler is the Western Slope politics reporter for The Aspen Times and its sister publications in Glenwood Springs, Vail, Steamboat Springs, Summit County, and Grand County.