Voters in Colorado's 3rd Congressional District have gotten used to primaries before electing their congressional representatives.
The sprawling district, covering most of the Western Slope and parts of Southern Colorado, could feature Colorado's marquee 2024 race, with Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert seeking reelection to a third term as the former owner of a gun-themed restaurant in Rifle defends one of just a handful of toss-up seats nationwide.
The Democrat who narrowly lost to Boebert last year, former Aspen City Councilman Adam Frisch, is hoping for a rematch. He jumped out to a big fundraising lead over the incumbent in the first half of this year, hauling in nearly three times as much as Boebert and finishing the most recent quarter with more than $1 million more in the bank.
But Frisch's path to the Democratic nomination got more complicated last week, when Grand Junction Mayor Anna Stout threw her hat in the ring.
Two other Democrats have been in the race for months, including one, Gunnison veterinarian Debby Burnett, who sought the nomination in 2022 but failed to make the primary ballot. First-time candidate Russ Andrews is challenging Boebert in the GOP primary, though she has yet to acknowledge his candidacy.
Although she's untested outside the couple of local, nonpartisan elections she's won in the district's second-largest city — behind Pueblo — Stout has a reputation as a formidable politician and could make it a race for the chance to take on Boebert in what's sure to be one of the country's most competitive and highest profile congressional races next cycle.
As soon as Stout filed paperwork to run, a cry arose from some quarters complaining that she could impede the Democrats' efforts to dislodge Boebert.
"Circular firing squad," grumbled one Democrat, who wondered why the party hadn't interceded to prevent Stout from potentially weakening Frisch, or at least from forcing the candidate to spend money in a primary that would come in handy next fall.
Republicans have been airing identical complaints for years about their candidates' habit of burning time and resources whaling on each other while the Democrats seem to sort things out behind the scenes, often avoiding primaries.
Political strategists differ over the benefit of primaries, with some arguing that the preliminary election is a chance to build a fundraising base with a sense of urgency and hone a field operation on a smaller scale than will be needed in November. On the flip side, primaries can be expensive and often highlight divisions within the party rather than bridge them.
As with most political rules of thumb, it depends.
There are too few data points and too many complicating factors involved in the handful of instances that are available for study to draw firm conclusions.
The short answer is, in some cases a primary can toughen the eventual winner, while in others a primary can yield damaged goods by sapping funds and forcing a candidate to take positions to win the primary that don't play well in the general election.
In the election cycles since 2010 in the 3rd CD, the seven Republican and seven Democratic nominees have had to get past primaries a total of seven times — four GOP primaries and three on the Democrats' side — with at least one more on tap for next year if Stout and Frisch face each other on the ballot.
The seat has been held by two Republicans that entire time, though one of them, Scott Tipton, lost it in a primary when Boebert ousted the five-term incumbent in 2020.
Tipton survived two other primary challenges, from tea party candidates David Cox in 2014 and Alex Beinstein in 2016, and Boebert fended off a primary challenge from then-state Sen. Don Coram in 2022.
A series of Democrats running in the district during that stretch made the ballot without primaries until 2018, when then-state Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush faced and won a three-way contest with Glenwood Springs attorney Karl Hanlon and former Eagle County Commissioner Arn Menconi.
Mitsch Bush won her party's nomination again in 2020, this time by beating seafood executive James Iacino in the primary. She lost to Boebert by a slightly narrower margin than she had to Tipton.
Frisch and his supporters like to talk about Boebert's 546-vote margin in last year's election — making it the closest House race in the country — but don't often mention that he won the nomination in 2022 by an even slimmer margin in the three-way Democratic primary, surpassing Pueblo community organizer Sol Sandoval by just 289 votes out of more than 60,000 votes cast. The third Democrat to make the primary, flashy newcomer Alex Walker, trailed them both by a wide margin.
Primaries for Colorado's U.S. House seats used to be rare but have become more common in recent years.
While Tipton had his share of primaries, Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs wears the delegation's crown for surviving the most primary challenges, having notched seven wins on the way to nine terms in the GOP-leaning 5th Congressional District.
They aren't alone, though. Only the two newest members of the state's D.C. contingent — U.S. Reps. Brittany Pettersen of Lakewood and Yadira Caraveo of Thornton — didn't have to win a primary to get there.
Since the turn of the century, both parties as often as not have had to get past primaries to select nominees in races for major statewide and congressional seats. Whether the nominees have had to fight through a primary or sailed straight to the general election ballot, the results are mixed, however, suggesting that primaries by themselves are neither big pluses nor big minuses on the road to election.
Most of the Coloradans currently holding statewide and congressional office faced primaries on the way. In addition to Boebert and Lamborn, that list includes Democratic U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Gov. jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, and U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse and Jason Crow; and Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Buck.
Only Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold and State Treasurer Dave Young, along with Pettersen and Caraveo, haven't had to navigate primaries.
After being appointed to the seat in early 2009, Bennet beat back a primary challenge from former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in his run for a full term in 2010. Bennet narrowly defeated Republican nominee Buck in the general election after Buck won a primary against former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton.
Hickenlooper, a former two-term governor, also faced a primary challenge from Romanoff in 2020. He then went on to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner in the fall election.
Polis prevailed in a tough three-way primary in 2008 to win the 2nd Congressional District seat he held for a decade before running for governor in 2018. Before wining election to that office, though, he had to navigate a four-way primary against former State Treasurer Cary Kennedy, then-Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne and former state Sen. Mike Johnston, who won election this year as Denver's mayor. Polis' Republican opponent in 2018, then-State Treasurer Walker Stapleton, had also emerged from a four-way primary.
Weiser won the Democratic nomination narrowly in 2018 over then-state Rep. Joe Salazar and then beat then-District Attorney George Brauchler, who hadn't faced a primary to win the GOP nomination.
DeGette, Neguse, Crow and Buck all won primaries on the way to their first terms in Congress, though DeGette has also faced challengers in three of her last four runs for reelection and Buck had a challenger last year.
Ernest Luning has covered politics for Colorado Politics and its predecessor publication, The Colorado Statesman, since 2009. He's analyzed the exploits, foibles and history of state campaigns and politicians since 2018 in the weekly Trail Mix column.
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