Democrats are looking to elevate a candidate in the GOP primary for a House seat set to be vacated by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) in the hopes of flipping it in November.
A Democratic-aligned super PAC and Democratic candidate Adam Frisch’s campaign have aired ads in the GOP primary for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District either touting hard-line Republican candidate Ron Hanks as “too conservative” and tying him to former President Trump, or raising scrutiny on the establishment-backed Jeff Hurd.
“It’s no surprise that the Democrats desperately want Ron Hanks to be the nominee because he would be a certain loser to Adam Frisch. There’s no doubt in my mind,” explained former state GOP Chair Dick Wadhams.
Hurd, Hanks and Colorado State Board of Education member Stephen Varela are considered the leading candidates among a handful of contenders vying for the Republican nomination in the western Colorado congressional district. They’re running for the seat since Boebert opted to run in a different district this cycle.
Rocky Mountain Values PAC, a liberal group, started airing advertisements last month using clips of Hanks speaking about his position on immigration, with the narrator in the ad at one point saying that “Ron Hanks and Donald Trump are just too conservative.” The ad also notes that both candidates were endorsed by the Colorado GOP.
Meanwhile, Frisch’s campaign more recently aired an ad about Hurd, claiming the candidate was “hiding,” “ducking Republican debates” and declining to say where he stood on several issues such as abortion, the Second Amendment and whom he voted for in the last few election cycles.
The strategy is apparently to elevate Hanks in the primary and make him sound like the more appealing conservative candidate while hurting Hurd’s chances. Democrats hope that Hanks’s controversial stances on issues like the 2020 election, which he maintains was stolen, will turn off moderate Republicans and unaffiliated voters in November.
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