Midway between state elections, Colorado's top-ticket 2024 primary lineup takes shape | TRAIL MIX

Remember the old riddle that asks how far you can run into a forest? The answer is halfway, because after that, you're running out of the woods.

That's where Colorado's political juggernaut is poised.

Marking the precise midpoint between last year's general election and next year's state primary, Sept. 1 is the day when the next major election begins to draw ever closer than the last, receding one.

Of course, politics is a nonstop, year-round affair now. Colorado's calendar is crowded with elections, none of which can be considered minor or inconsequential.

From the Nov. 8, 2022, general election — when voters elected a governor, U.S. senator and a full slate of federal, state and county officials — to the state-level primary on June 24, 2024, Coloradans will have had a chance to cast ballots in numerous municipal elections, November's upcoming statewide off-year election and the presidential primary in March.

This spring, Denver and Colorado Springs elected new mayors, and in a couple of months on Nov. 7 Aurora voters will decide that city's direction, as will voters in cities, towns and school boards across the state. Statewide, voters will get to weigh in at the same time on Proposition HH, a controversial ballot question involving property taxes and the state's Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Fast forward to March 5, and Colorado and at least 14 other states and territories voting for the major parties' presidential nominees on Super Tuesday.

The next main event, however, looms a few months later on the last Tuesday in June, when voters will pick the Republicans and Democrats bound for the November election for the U.S. House, the state legislature, county officers and district attorneys.

While it's still early — a lot can happen in the nearly 10 months until Colorado's 2024 primary — the contours of next year's statewide and congressional contests are already beginning to emerge.

Colorado's sparse 2024 election lineup only features a handful of races that can be considered competitive at this point, with a pair of U.S. House races topping the list.

It only happens every 12 years that state voters are faced with as few top-ticket choices as they'll have next year, when neither a U.S. Senate seat nor Colorado's executive offices — governor, attorney general, secretary of state and state treasurer — are up for election.

The state's 10 electoral votes will be on the ballot in the race for the White House, but barring the wildly unforeseen, they won't be up for grabs. Colorado has voted for the Democratic nominee in each of the last four presidential elections — including handing President Joe Biden a 13-point win over former President Donald Trump in 2020. There's no sign that might change next year.

Other than the presidential race, Colorado voters will only find a single statewide competition on their ballots next November, for the open University of Colorado Board of Regent's at-large seat.

The part-time, unpaid position rarely attracts the kind of attention it might next year when there won't be many other races vying for the spotlight — political news abhors a vacuum — but so far it isn't shaping up to be a barnburner.

In its current configuration, the nine-member CU board elects one regent from each of the state's eight congressional districts and a single regent at-large to six-year terms.

The race could hold at least symbolic importance for Colorado's beleaguered Republicans, since an at-large regent seat is the last statewide office won by a Republican nominee and the last statewide office held by the party.

Douglas County entrepreneur Heidi Ganahl, who lost last year's race for governor to Democrat Jared Polis, was the only Colorado Republican to come out on top on the statewide ballot in 2016 when she won the at-large regent's race. She held the office until after last year's election, when the at-large seat she occupied disappeared, a casualty of redistricting after Colorado gained an additional U.S. House seat and the number of at-large seats dropped from two to one.

Until a couple of weeks ago, Democrat Elliott Hood, a Boulder attorney who specializes in education law, was the only declared candidate for the remaining at-large seat. The seat is currently held by Democrat Lesley Smith, who is running for a state House seat rather than seek a second term.

A Republican named Dennis Smith, who lists a Denver address, filed paperwork to run for the seat in late August, but neither the state GOP nor other Republican regents were aware of his candidacy this week, so it remains to be seen whether he'll give Hood a run for his money.

Leading Republicans have recently told Colorado Politics that they're working to recruit a regent candidate, so it's possible Smith could face a primary. While Hood has raised big bucks for the regent's race, it isn't too late for another Democrat to get in.

There's no doubt, however, that Colorado's two battleground congressional districts will take up any slack if the state's presidential and at-large regent's races turn out to be snoozers.

Ranked among the closest congressional races in the country last year, Colorado's 3rd and 8th districts — the former represented by Silt Republican Lauren Boebert and the latter represented by Thornton Democrat Yadira Caraveo — promise to be home to some of next year's most expensive and hard-fought U.S. House races. Both are considered key to determining which party controls the chamber after the election.

The two seats are considered toss-ups by national election forecasters and House Democrats' and Republicans' congressional campaign arms, and both look like they'll feature high-profile primaries.

In the 3rd CD, which spans most of the Western Slope and parts of Southern Colorado, Boebert, the state's most prominent Republican, is seeking a third term after winning her second by a mere 546 votes — the closest scrape nationwide in a House district — over Democrat Adam Frisch, the wealthy former Aspen city councilor who announced in February that he's seeking a rematch.

Boebert's and Frisch's fundraising has so far lapped the state's other congressional incumbents' and challengers' — Frisch has raised nearly $4.4 million and had almost $2.5 million on hand at the end of the last reporting period, while Boebert brought in a little over $1.5 million and had almost that much on hand — both are facing primaries so won't be able to bank everything for the home stretch next summer and fall.

Neither are strangers to primaries. Boebert first won the seat in 2020 after ousting five-term incumbent Scott Tipton in the GOP primary, and last year she prevailed by roughly two-to-one over then-state Sen. Don Coram, a moderate Republican from Montrose. Frisch won the 2022 nomination by the skin of his teeth in a three-way primary, defeating Pueblo community organizer Sol Sandoval by just 289 votes.

Frisch, who calls himself a conservative alternative to Boebert, drew a primary challenge a month ago from Grand Junction Mayor Anna Stout. She told Colorado Politics that she doesn't expect to match her rival's jaw-dropping fundraising, but instead plans to contrast her roots in the community and record in the district's second-largest city, behind Pueblo.

Grand Junction attorney Jeff Hurd jumped in the GOP primary in mid-August, backed by some of the old-fashioned Republicans who ruled Colorado a generation ago, including his campaign co-chairs, former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown and former state House Majority Leader Tim Foster, a former president of Colorado Mesa University.

Although the 3rd CD leans Republican, with GOP candidates historically running an average of 9 points ahead of Democrats among its voters in benchmark races, the Cook Political Report this summer moved the district to toss-up territory, citing Boebert's continued combative approach to politics, her close call in the last go-around and Frisch's massive fundraising lead.

Colorado's other sure-fire competitive congressional seat is also its newest, gained last year during redistricting due to the state's growing population. Covering parts of Adams, Weld and Larimer counties north of the Denver metro area, the 8th CD is nearly evenly divided between Democratic and Republican voters and has a history of going its own way, having favored Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

Democrat Caraveo, a former state lawmaker, narrowly won her first term last year by a slim 1,632-vote margin over state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican.

It's nearly certain that Caraveo won't face a primary next year, but it's a different story on the Republican side.

The day after Kirkmeyer announced in mid-July that she wasn't going to run again in the district, Weld County Commissioner Scott James, a veteran radio host and then-chairman of the Weld County GOP, threw his hat in the ring, but he isn't expected to have the field to himself for long.

State Rep. Gabe Evans, a first-term Republican from Fort Lupton, is widely expected to launch his candidacy right after Labor Day.

Republicans tell Colorado Politics there's a good chance the former police officer and Army combat veteran will soon be joined in the primary by Steve Moreno, a former two-term Weld County commissioner and three-term county clerk and recorder, making for an competitive there-way race for the nomination.

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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