{"id":50632,"date":"2020-11-04T20:20:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T03:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-boebert-beats-democrat-mitsch-bush-in-colorados-3rd-congressional-district\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:52:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:52:28","slug":"update-boebert-beats-democrat-mitsch-bush-in-colorados-3rd-congressional-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-boebert-beats-democrat-mitsch-bush-in-colorados-3rd-congressional-district\/","title":{"rendered":"Update: Boebert beats Democrat Mitsch Bush in Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Lauren
Lauren Boebert, Republican candidate for Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District, high-fives Senator Cory Gardner during a get-out-the-vote-rally at the Grand Junction Motor Speedway in Grand Junction on Monday.<\/span>Barton Glasser\/Special to The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Republican Lauren Boebert<\/p>\n

Boebert held a lead at 51% to 46% over Mitsch Bush in the massive district, which spans the Western Slope and reaches around to Pueblo at 1 a.m. the morning after Election Day, according to preliminary results.<\/p>\n

The candidates were split by more than 22,000 votes, and most forecasters considered the race was still too close to call at the time Boebert declared victory and Mitsch Bush conceded. At 7:20 a.m. on Wednesday, The Associated Press called the race in Boebert\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n

Boebert declared victory as the clock neared midnight on Tuesday. \u201cI am heading to Washington to help secure our rights, drain the swamp and make sure our children never grow up in a socialist nation,\u201d Boebert said in a letter to supporters.<\/p>\n

Mitsch Bush conceded<\/a> soon afterward. \u201cThe voters have spoken. I did not get enough votes to win,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The battle for the open seat was Colorado\u2019s most competitive congressional race this year, and either candidate would have been the first woman to represent the district.<\/p>\n

Pueblo is likely to be the deciding factor in the race\u2019s final outcome. Mitsch Bush needed to win by a large margin in the county in order to make up for the Republican strongholds elsewhere in the district, including Grand Junction.<\/p>\n

By Wednesday morning, Mitsch Bush was leading Boebert in Pueblo with 50% of the vote to Boebert\u2019s 47%. Experts suggested Mitsch Bush needed to win Pueblo by as much as 10 percentage points to be victorious in the district.<\/p>\n

The final tally from the county is not complete. Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder Gilbert \u201cBo\u201d Ortiz told The Colorado Sun that he won\u2019t finish counting ballots until Wednesday at the earliest. Ortiz urged people to be patient.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to count them as fast as we can,\u201d Ortiz said. \u201cWe\u2019re expecting to be counting votes on Wednesday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ortiz said his office counted ballots after Election Day in both 2016 and 2018 and that it\u2019s not out of the ordinary for the tally to take some time.<\/p>\n

Jim Carpenter, a Democratic political consultant who has worked on several 3rd Congressional District races, called Pueblo \u201cessential\u201d for Mitsch Bush. \u201cIt\u2019s a numbers game,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2026 It\u2019s really important to get those votes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Diane
Diane Mitsch Bush, a Democratic candidate in Colorado&#x2019;s 3rd Congressional District, speaks to supporters during a rally in Montrose on Oct. 27, 2018.<\/span>William Woody\/Special to The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Mitsch Bush ran against incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton for the 3rd District seat in 2018 but fell short by 8 percentage points. She was one of only two Democrats on the ballot in Pueblo two years ago to lose, which dragged down her campaign.<\/p>\n

Boebert, a first-time candidate, ousted Tipton \u2014 a five-term incumbent \u2014 in the primary this year after suggesting he wasn\u2019t conservative enough. The win shocked the political establishment and gave Democrats hope that they could finally win back the district for the first time since U.S. Rep. John Salazar was beaten in 2010.<\/p>\n

That competitiveness was reflected in campaign spending. The race broke both candidate fundraising and outside spending records for the district. Mitsch Bush raised $4.2 million to Boebert\u2019s $2.4 million, records show.<\/p>\n

Outside groups took major interest in the contest in mid-October, pouring nearly $9 million into the race through Sunday. Republicans spent more than $5 million, most of it opposing Mitsch Bush. Democrats reported spending nearly $4 million, most to oppose Boebert.<\/p>\n

Boebert, 33, is anything but a traditional candidate. She openly carries a handgun on her hip and has an arrest record that\u2019s grabbed headlines in recent months. She has also been the focus of national headlines because she didn\u2019t shy away from the QAnon movement during an interview in May.<\/p>\n

QAnon is a wide-ranging conspiracy theory that started on the notorious internet forum 4chan and has recently pushed the idea that the coronavirus pandemic is part of a government plot to control the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything that I\u2019ve heard of Q, I hope that this is real because it only means that America is getting stronger and better, and people are returning to conservative values,\u201d she said in the May interview.<\/p>\n

Boebert has since distanced herself from QAnon, but Democrats used her remarks earlier this year to paint her as too extreme to be in Congress, despite the fact that the 3rd District leans Republican and definitively backed Trump in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen somebody sways one way or the next, I get hesitant,\u201d said Jay Schivitz of Gypsum at a polling place in Eagle where he was dropping off his ballot on Tuesday. He voted for Mitsch Bush.<\/p>\n

Boebert isn\u2019t too extreme for Woody Walcher, whose white pickup truck stood out in the parking lot in front of the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder\u2019s office on Tuesday. It sat where anyone driving into the lot could see the three American flags flapping from the pickup bed. Wallace said he had rolled up his Trump flags and tucked them in his tool bin to be in compliance with electioneering rules.<\/p>\n

Walcher, a Republican retiree who lives on East Orchard Mesa outside Palisade, was sitting in his truck behind dark tinted windows, partly to fill out his ballot and also to keep a watch out for anyone who might be intimidating voters.<\/p>\n

While he kept an eye on the line of voters outside the polling place, the retired businessman blackened a bubble for 3rd District candidate Lauren Boebert of Rifle.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is an independent thinker. She is for freedom. She is a business owner,\u201d Walcher said, ticking off her perceived virtues as a candidate. \u201cHer opponent is a politician.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walcher is the uncle of Greg Walcher, a conservative Washington, D.C., environmental consultant who unsuccessfully ran to represent the 3rd District in 2004. He also led Colorado\u2019s Department of Natural Resources.<\/p>\n

Woody Walcher said he was a big fan of Tipton, but jumped on the Boebert bandwagon after she won the primary.<\/p>\n

Once his vote was in, Walcher said he would spend the rest of the day driving around the polling stations to watch out for Black Lives Matter and \u201cAntifa\u201d troublemakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have word they are going to be causing trouble,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mitsch Bush tried to woo voters by pitching herself as a pragmatic progressive who is independent of partisan politics. But the final results suggest she couldn\u2019t escape Republican efforts to paint her as a mountain town liberal.<\/p>\n

Plus, while Boebert campaigned in person across the district, Mitsch Bush only held virtual appearances because of the pandemic. For Mitsch Bush, that was a risky play given how the district\u2019s voters emphasize how important it is for candidates to show up.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s been keeping a low profile,\u201d Erick Javaneau, a Democratic voter in Pueblo, said at a rally for Democrat Joe Biden\u2019s presidential campaign a week and a half before Election Day. \u201cShe hasn\u2019t been out in public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert Preuhs, a professor of political science at Metropolitan State University of Denver, sees the outcome of the 3rd District race as critical to the future of Colorado\u2019s GOP.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the spread in the state is greater than 7 (percentage points) for Biden, and Boebert loses \u2026 there will be a strong push by establishment and more moderate Republicans to abandon the conservative and contentious Trump platform and rhetoric,\u201d Preuhs predicted. \u201cBut it will be a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sun correspondent Nancy Lofholm reported from Grand Junction. Staff writer Jason Blevins contributed reporting from Eagle. Sun correspondent Sandra Fish also contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boebert becomes the first woman to hold Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District seat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,266,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-election","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50632","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=50632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87789,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50632\/revisions\/87789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50632"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}