{"id":40895,"date":"2022-04-30T01:25:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-30T07:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/don-coram-outraises-lauren-boebert-in-1st-quarter-in-southwest-colorado\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:57:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:57:59","slug":"don-coram-outraises-lauren-boebert-in-1st-quarter-in-southwest-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/don-coram-outraises-lauren-boebert-in-1st-quarter-in-southwest-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Don Coram outraises Lauren Boebert in 1st quarter in Southwest Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Lauren
Lauren Boebert and Don Coram<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Political donors in Southwest Colorado gave more to state Sen. Don Coram than Rep. Lauren Boebert during the first quarter of 2022, though Boebert remains far ahead in total money raised for her re-election campaign.<\/p>\n

Coram\u2019s campaign received $24,100 and Boebert\u2019s campaign received $17,178 from residents of the five-county region \u2013 which includes Archuleta, Dolores, La Plata, Montezuma and San Juan counties \u2013 according to a Durango Herald<\/em> analysis of recent Federal Election Commission financial filings.<\/p>\n

Coram is Boebert\u2019s sole Republican opponent for Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District seat. Three Democrats are running to unseat Boebert in a district that hasn\u2019t elected a Democrat in over a decade and is estimated to have a 9-percentage-point advantage<\/a> for Republicans after recent redistricting.<\/p>\n

At least three of Boebert\u2019s 10 largest donors in Southwest Colorado work in the oil and gas industry.<\/p>\n

Boebert is a vocal proponent of investing in fossil fuels, and her husband owns an oil and gas consulting firm. At the State of the Union address in March, she sported a shawl<\/a> featuring the words \u201cDrill Baby Drill\u201d in gold lettering.<\/p>\n

Hesperus resident Randy LeFever, who owns oil-drilling equipment company Peak Compression Services, donated $1,000 to Boebert\u2019s campaign in January, making him one of the campaign\u2019s largest supporters during the first quarter of 2022 in Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe supported oil and gas production in the whole state of Colorado and in the states around, whether it be mining or drilling or anything like that,\u201d LeFever told the Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

LeFever said Boebert\u2019s support for expanding and deregulating the fossil fuel industry greatly influenced his decision to donate to her re-election campaign. Even actions as simple as installing a compressor on an oil well can be met with dozens of regulations depending on the age and location of the well, LeFever said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m for clean air because I have grandbabies,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we have so many different laws, it\u2019s convoluted. If we have one clean emissions law, it\u2019d be so easy to do and we could save so much money but there\u2019s too many levels of regulations and that\u2019s really where she\u2019s at, too, is eliminating all the regulations and hindrances and still be clean at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

In total, Boebert raised about $838,000 during the first quarter of the year and has over $2.1 million on hand. Most of her donors live outside Colorado<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Coram has raised over $89,000 in the first quarter and has about $55,000 available to spend.<\/p>\n

JD Key, Coram\u2019s campaign manager, said the campaign has now raised over $100,000 from more than 520 individual donors, but he declined to provide a specific dollar figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cFundraising is secondary to getting out, meeting the people and talking about the real issues,\u201d Key said. \u201cIf people believe in the message, we absolutely encourage them to invest in what we\u2019re trying to do here, but talking to the people is the most important thing and that is what\u2019s going to win elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

From January to March, the Coram campaign was focused on obtaining enough signatures to petition onto the June primary ballot and did not actively fundraise, Key said.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, since April 1 and especially since we were certified on the ballot, we have absolutely plussed-up our efforts to bring in money because we know we need it to get out our message,\u201d Key said. \u201cAll the money in the world doesn\u2019t win, people do. People voting do, your message does, and I think that\u2019s what we rely on most.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratic candidates for CD3 struggled to raise money anywhere near the amount of Coram and Boebert\u2019s campaigns in Southwest Colorado, according to FEC filings.<\/p>\n

Sol Sandoval, who leads the trio with over $264,000 in contributions for the first quarter, received $2,203 from donors in Southwest Colorado. She was the only Democrat<\/a> to qualify for the June primary ballot via assembly.<\/p>\n

Alex Walker, a Democratic candidate known for his active social media presence<\/a>, received a single $250 donation from Cortez. Like Boebert, the majority of Walker\u2019s fundraising has come from outside Colorado<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Adam Frisch, who qualified for the ballot via petition like Walker, received no donations from the region. Most of his donations came from his hometown area of Aspen.<\/p>\n

Information about campaign fundraising in the second quarter of the year will be made available in July, after the Republican and Democratic candidates are selected for the general election in November.<\/p>\n

Skye Witley, a senior at American University in Washington, D.C., is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez. He can be reached at switley@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the congresswoman\u2019s biggest monetary supporters work in oil and gas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2811,981,266,28,826,2972,1722,4102,367],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-40895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-campaign-finance","tag-colorado-3rd-congressional-district","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-political-campaigns","tag-primary","tag-regional-elections","tag-state-rep-don-coram","tag-u-s-rep-lauren-boebert"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40895","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=40895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84797,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40895\/revisions\/84797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40895"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=40895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}