{"id":40117,"date":"2022-06-08T10:50:26","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T16:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/thousands-of-democrats-in-boeberts-district-change-voter-registration-ahead-of-primary\/"},"modified":"2022-06-08T16:50:26","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T16:50:26","slug":"thousands-of-democrats-in-boeberts-district-change-voter-registration-ahead-of-primary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/thousands-of-democrats-in-boeberts-district-change-voter-registration-ahead-of-primary\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of Democrats in Boebert\u2019s district change voter registration ahead of primary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert at the 2022 Western Conservative Summit on Friday, June 3.<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Thousands of voters have recently left the Democratic Party in Western Colorado \u2013 some as part of a grassroots effort to defeat Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert in her upcoming primary election.<\/p>\n

Among them is Steven Hallenborg of Montrose.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019m a lifelong Democrat, and now I\u2019m unaffiliated,\u201d he said. Because he changed his affiliation, he now can vote against Boebert in the June 28 Republican primary.<\/p>\n

For the last few years, Colorado\u2019s \u201copen primary\u201d system<\/a> has allowed unaffiliated voters to participate in either party\u2019s primary elections. That means voters like Hallenborg can weigh in on Boebert\u2019s primary run \u2013 without actually joining the Republican Party.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very unfortunate what\u2019s going on in this state. So, I mean, she has to go,\u201d Hallenborg said in an interview at a Democratic event. Voters who oppose Boebert have one other option, Republican state Sen. Don Coram, in the June 28 primary.<\/p>\n

In total, the Democratic Party\u2019s voter rolls in the district shrunk by about 3,700 people, or about 2.7%, from February through May, according to an analysis by CPR News. At the same time, the district saw unusual growth in its unaffiliated voter population. One political scientist, Seth Masket, described the findings as \u201cstunning.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to say how many of those switchers are hoping to influence the Boebert-Coram primary. Some may be displeased with the Democrats, or may have simply moved away. But reporters have heard from numerous liberal and unaffiliated voters in the district who want to dump Boebert.<\/p>\n

And, statistically, something unusual is happening. No other Colorado district has seen a comparable change over the last few months; neither party has lost more than a few hundred voters in other areas in that time.<\/p>\n

Any efforts to get Democrats to make the switch have effectively run their course \u2013 Monday was the last day members of a party could change or drop their affiliation in order to participate in another party\u2019s primary.<\/p>\n

The party-switchers are just a small portion of the overall electorate. Even if all 3,600 former Democrats planned to vote for Coram, they would make up less than 1% of registered voters. For comparison, Boebert won her first primary by nearly 10,000 votes in 2020.<\/p>\n

But the former Democrats aren\u2019t the only factor. They\u2019ll be joining a population of nearly a quarter-million unaffiliated voters in the district, all of whom are free to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary.<\/p>\n

The national attention on Boebert\u2019s race could help to draw some of those hundreds of thousands of votes into the contest \u2013 and the outcome may well depend on whom they support.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor unaffiliated voters who really are neutral between the parties, and there are some of those, they may simply decide the Republican Party is the more interesting contest right now,\u201d said Masket, professor of political science and the director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver. \u201cFor primaries \u2013 that is something that could have an effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boebert has grabbed nationwide attention over the last two years for carrying guns, making viral Twitter posts and heckling President Joe Biden over the deaths of service members in Afghanistan during the State of the Union.<\/p>\n

That high profile has helped bring in donations and won the loyalty of many in the district\u2019s Republican base. But Coram is counting on a folksy centrist message to win over those unaffiliated voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are unaffiliated because they are sick and tired of the antics of the far right, and the far left,\u201d he said in an interview. His campaign stressed that he is focused on winning over undecided voters, not convincing Democrats to meddle in the primary.<\/p>\n

In some ways, Coram is an ideal candidate, given his political experience and party connections, Masket said. But he added the candidate hasn\u2019t stacked up the kinds of money and endorsements that often push challengers to victory.<\/p>\n

Coram had raised only $89,000 by the end of March, compared with $4.4 million for Boebert. Boebert has been on the offense against Coram since early in the campaign, launching a series of attack ads and a website criticizing his record in the statehouse.<\/p>\n

In an earlier statement from her campaign, Boebert said these unaffiliated voters shouldn\u2019t have a say in the primary: \u201cMembers of various political parties should choose their nominees in a closed primary system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The winner of the Republican primary will face the winner of the Democratic primary. Candidates Sol Sandoval, Adam Frisch and Alex Walker are running for the Democratic nomination<\/a>.<\/p>\n

CPR reporters Caitlyn Kim and Kevin J. Beaty and intern Will Corneilus contributed reporting for this article<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

total, Democratic Party\u2019s voter rolls in district shrunk by about 3,700 people from February through May<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[981,266,28,2972,934,367,1621],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-40117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-3rd-congressional-district","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-primary","tag-state-sen-don-coram","tag-u-s-rep-lauren-boebert","tag-voting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40117","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=40117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40117"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=40117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}