Cook Political Report ranks Colorado's 3rd Congressional District from “Lesser Republican” to “Likely Republican” | Elections

Without Lauren Boebert as an opponent, Democrat Adam Frisch's chances of flipping Colorado's 3rd Congressional District simply aren't what they once were.

That's according to forecasters at the Cook Political Report, who downgraded the Western Slope seat from “most likely Republican” to “likely Republican” in an update to House race ratings on Friday that otherwise overwhelmingly favored Democrats.

Frisch, a former Aspen City Council member, narrowly missed out on a second term for Republican Boebert in the 2022 midterm elections by 546 votes. En route to a rematch, he used that narrow margin to launch a massive fundraising campaign, raising millions of dollars more than the incumbent last year.

But Boebert thwarted those plans earlier this year by moving across the state to the open, firmly Republican-held 4th Congressional District, where she won a highly contested primary and is considered the favorite for November.

This gave Frisch plenty of campaign cash and a less polarizing Republican opponent: first-time attorney Jeff Hurd of Grand Junction, who was able to attract the support of nearly every prominent former elected Republican in Colorado on his way to the nomination.

According to Erin Covey of Cook, Frisch's huge fundraising lead probably won't be enough to change the habit of voters in this mostly rural district to vote Republican in a presidential election year. Former President Donald Trump is expected to win the district by a comfortable margin.

Without Boebert's “polarizing MAGA figure” on the ballot, Covey said, the more mainstream Hurd – characterized as a “Chamber of Commerce Republican who focused his campaign on energy policy” – will not offer Frisch the same opponent, and voters will have a more partisan choice.

“Trump is expected to win this district by several percentage points, and Democratic strategists acknowledge that Frisch's financial advantage is unlikely to be enough to defeat Hurd,” Covey said.

Frisch's campaign dismissed the ratings shift as irrelevant to a campaign in which the Democrat has renounced party affiliation and declared his independence for more than two years, including in a $2.5 million TV advertising campaign that Frisch launched last month.

“This campaign is aimed at CD3 voters who are tired of partisan politics and will reject Jeff Hurd because he is an out-of-touch corporate lawyer who has spent his career representing wealthy special interests and profiting from price increases at the expense of Colorado's working families,” Frisch campaign spokesman Andy Bixler told Colorado Politics.

Hurd's campaign team welcomed Cook's revised assessment, but acknowledged that nothing was set in stone yet.

“This change finally reflects the reality in the district. Voters can't wait to get to the polls and vote for Jeff,” a Hurd campaign spokesman said in a statement.

“We are not taking anything for granted and will fight for every vote in the election. The people of western and southern Colorado know that Jeff will fight to secure the border, unleash energy production in western Colorado and fight the Democrats' failed economic policies.”

This change of course is consistent with the arguments of other election forecasters who have used similar arguments in recent months to push Colorado's third district toward safer Republican territory.

However, Cook's other campaign updates predict better results for Democratic candidates in the House of Representatives in other parts of the country.

“With two months to go until Election Day, the Democrats' prospects of taking control of the House of Representatives look significantly better than they did two months ago,” Covey said. “Democratic candidates are no longer burdened by an unpopular incumbent president, they can compete in a political environment where Republicans no longer have a clear enthusiasm advantage, and they can continue to fill their campaign coffers while Republicans lag behind in fundraising.”

Although Democrats need to win just four seats to win the House majority in November, Covey noted that the race is “incredibly close” and is concentrated in just two dozen seats that are neck-and-neck. Among those battleground areas is Colorado's 8th Congressional District, where Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo is being challenged by state Rep. Gabe Evans.

Mail-in ballots will be mailed to most Colorado voters in just five weeks, on October 11, and must be returned to the county office by 7 p.m. on November 5.