{"id":25230,"date":"2022-06-29T01:51:33","date_gmt":"2022-06-29T07:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/joe-odea-beats-ron-hanks-in-colorados-republican-u-s-senate-primary\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:13:16","slug":"joe-odea-beats-ron-hanks-in-colorados-republican-u-s-senate-primary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/joe-odea-beats-ron-hanks-in-colorados-republican-u-s-senate-primary\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe O\u2019Dea beats Ron Hanks in Colorado\u2019s Republican U.S. Senate primary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Republican
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe O\u2019Dea discusses health care, abortion and election integrity during a debate with state Rep. Ron Hanks on June 20, hosted by The Colorado Sun and CBS4. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

First-time candidate Joe O\u2019Dea on Tuesday secured the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Colorado despite millions of dollars in Democratic spending to aid his primary opponent, state Rep. Ron Hanks.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press projected at about 7:30 p.m. that O\u2019Dea would win.<\/p>\n

In unofficial statewide results, O\u2019Dea who owns a Denver construction company, had 54.55% of the vote compared with the 45.45 of the vote that went to Hanks.<\/p>\n

In Montezuma County unofficial results Hanks had 56.65% of the vote compared with O\u2019Dea\u2019s 43.35%, or 2,772 votes to 2,121.<\/p>\n

According to the Colorado Secretary of State,<\/a> 7,364 votes were cast in Montezuma County out of 18,866 active voters, or 39.03%.<\/p>\n

Democrat Michael Bennet won his race unchallenged.<\/p>\n

Democratic Colorado, a Democratic political action committee, spent more than $4 million on TV ads during the primary, including $1.6 million in the final days, to boost Hanks\u2019 profile and attack O\u2019Dea. Other Democratic groups paid for mailers and text messages to increase Hanks\u2019 chances of winning.<\/p>\n

Labor groups and the Colorado Democratic Party held a news conference late last week to scrutinize O\u2019Dea\u2019s record as a business owner in what appeared to be a final attempt to sink his campaign during the primary.<\/p>\n

Democrats made it clear that they\u2019d rather Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet face Hanks in the November general election because they saw O\u2019Dea as a more formidable opponent. And in a primary election in which polling showed voters didn\u2019t really know either candidate, there was a potential for the spending to make a big difference.<\/p>\n

But O\u2019Dea and a super PAC supporting him dropped about $1 million on TV ads in recent days to counter the Democratic spending and attack Hanks. And it appears to have worked.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Dea is more moderate than Hanks. He thinks abortions should be allowed early in a pregnancy and rejects claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. He also said that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, shouldn\u2019t be repealed right now.<\/p>\n

\"Republican
Republican U.S. Senate candidates Joe O\u2019Dea, left, and Ron Hanks. (Colorado Sun photos)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Hanks is a 2020 election denier who attended the rally preceding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. He said all abortions should be outlawed and attacked O\u2019Dea as being a squishy conservative, especially since O\u2019Dea has donated to Democratic candidates \u2013 including Bennet \u2013 in the past.<\/p>\n

Unaffiliated voter Sara Normandin, a 43-year-old in Lakewood, voted in the Republican primary for candidates she felt were most likely to lose to Democrats in November, including Hanks, gubernatorial candidate Greg Lopez and 7th Congressional District candidate Tim Reichert.<\/p>\n

\u201cI voted Republican because I\u2019m hoping that the Democrats win,\u201d Normandin said. \u201cI voted for those most likely to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennet will be tough for Republicans to beat in November. He has been a U.S. senator since 2009, when he was appointed to his seat by then-Gov. Bill Ritter, a fellow Democrat, to fill a vacancy left by then-Sen. Ken Salazar\u2019s appointment as Secretary of the Interior.<\/p>\n

No Republican running for statewide office has won more than 45% of the vote since 2016. Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election prognosticator, says Colorado\u2019s U.S. Senate race this year is likely tilting in Democrats\u2019 favor despite the fact that the party is \u201cstaring down one of their worst political environments in nearly a decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a developing story that will be updated.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

O’Dea, a first-time candidate, overcame millions of dollars in Democratic spending to aid his primary opponent, state Rep. Ron Hanks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[266,28,265,1566],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-politics","tag-u-s-senate"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78853,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25230\/revisions\/78853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25230"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}