{"id":35668,"date":"2023-02-20T04:45:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/with-20-months-to-go-race-for-3rd-congressional-district-begins\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T08:26:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:26:24","slug":"with-20-months-to-go-race-for-3rd-congressional-district-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/with-20-months-to-go-race-for-3rd-congressional-district-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"With 20 months to go, race for 3rd Congressional District begins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Former
Former Aspen City Councilman Adam Frisch visits Steamworks Brewing Co. on Thursday. Frisch announced Tuesday that he will run for the Democratic nomination to challenge Rep. Lauren Boebert in 2024. (Reuben Schafir\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Reuben M. Schafir<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Rep. Lauren Boebert raised her right hand to be sworn in for her second term in the U.S. House of Representatives just five weeks ago \u2013 and she barely had time to lower it before two Democratic candidates announced they are running to challenge her when she is up for reelection in 2024.<\/p>\n

One candidate is familiar. Adam Frisch, the former Aspen city councilman who came within 546 votes of unseating Boebert just three months ago, announced Tuesday<\/a> that he will run again.<\/p>\n

So far, the only other candidate to throw a hat into the ring is Debby Burnett, a Gunnison-based veterinarian and physical therapist who also ran in 2022 but did not make it onto the primary ballot.<\/p>\n

The two Democrats hold starkly different opinions about campaign strategy when it comes to running as members of a party that ranks third in size in the district. Unaffiliated voters make up 44% of the 3rd Congressional District\u2019s active voters, while Republicans make up 30% and Democrats constitute only 23%.<\/p>\n

Frisch surprised pundits across the country with his performance in November, when he nearly unseated the incumbent with no help from the national party. He is once again billing himself as a common-sense moderate who holds little regard for partisan politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what\u2019s resonating \u2013 this moderate, \u2018get stuff done\u2019 thing,\u201d Frisch said in an interview with The Durango Herald<\/em>\u2019s editorial board.<\/p>\n

He is quick to tout the comments from Republicans, who approach him regretful that they supported Boebert for a second time and now see that she appears unhumbled by her surprisingly poor performance, as well as Democrats who did not cast a vote because they felt he was too moderate for their taste and assumed he would lose anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ranchers and the farmers, they\u2019re pragmatic as much as anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Frisch eschews party politics and blames certain statements by Democratic presidents for the emotional aversion that many Western Slope voters have to voting for Democrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe party has done a really horrible job of providing dignity as we make this energy transformation that needs to happen, and is happening,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Burnett\"
Burnett<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Burnett takes the opposite tack.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we need to run as proud Democrats, at the same time making sure that we are understanding that the issues in this district can\u2019t be put into one bucket or the other,\u201d she said. \u201cWe all struggle with the same things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burnett said the 2022 race indicated that Frisch was the wrong candidate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the question that we need to ask is, \u2018Why did we not win?\u2019 We should have won. So why did that not happen?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Given that 2024 will also be a presidential election year, Frisch, Burnett and other congressional hopefuls must consider how up-ticket candidates will impact voter turnout and their race.<\/p>\n

Frisch said he intends to focus on the district, placing some distance between himself and likely candidate President Joe Biden. Burnett said she expects that increased voter turnout would work to her advantage if she were to be the nominee.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdam Frisch, or whoever the Democrats nominate, would probably have to put great distance between themselves in the Democratic nominee,\u201d said Dick Wadhams, a Republican political consultant and a former Colorado Republican state chairman.<\/p>\n

Wadhams said it is possible a more moderate Republican challenger to Boebert may emerge, especially given that Boebert\u2019s recent performance during the beleaguered process of choosing a speaker of the House, the State of the Union and recent hearings with Twitter executives have demonstrated that she has not changed her temperament.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen since she won the election that she\u2019s not going to back off the way she conducts herself as a member of Congress and the issues that she wants to tackle,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any mystery to what kind of candidate she is going to be for the next two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frisch hopes to make this work to his advantage. By his calculations, he needs to charm a much smaller portion of Boebert\u2019s base to defeat her than a Republican would, given his existing base among Democrats and left-leaning unaffiliated voters.<\/p>\n

\"Coram\"
Coram<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Former state Sen. Don Coram, who lost to Boebert by 64 percentage points in the Republican primary, said he had hardly considered whether he would challenge her again in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never know what\u2019s going to happen, but it\u2019s unlikely,\u201d Coram said.<\/p>\n

Boebert\u2019s campaign did not respond to a request to comment.<\/p>\n

Burnett and Frisch recognized that voter fatigue will be a challenge to starting a campaign 20 months before ballots are cast. At an event Thursday at Steamworks Brewing Co. in Durango, Frisch repeatedly told donors handing him checks that he was only there to say thank you, and not to begin to ask voters to open their wallets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an ultramarathon, not just a marathon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats have already emerged to challenge Rep. Lauren Boebert<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[981,266,28,826,774,1126,1722,367,945],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-35668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-3rd-congressional-district","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-political-campaigns","tag-political-candidates","tag-politics-general","tag-regional-elections","tag-u-s-rep-lauren-boebert","tag-united-states-government"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35668","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=35668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83064,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35668\/revisions\/83064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35668"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=35668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}