DENVER – Colorado voters on Tuesday will choose between former governor. John Hickenlooper and former Speaker of the State House of Representatives Andrew Romanoff as the Democratic nominee to face Senator Cory Gardner, one of the most vulnerable Republicans for this year’s election with Senate control at stake.
Democratic Senate primaries top Colorado’s list of primary elections. The congressional party primaries on Tuesday are mostly a formality, with six of the state’s seven incumbents unanswered and their potential contenders in November unanswered.
Only Republican Rep. Scott Tipton faces an opponent of the party, while two Democrats compete to run against him in November.
Colorado has shifted to the left since Gardner won his 2014 election in less than two percentage points. No Republican has been elected to state office since then.
While Colorado has been a Democratic trend in the past decade, unaffiliated voters now represent 1.4 million along with 1.1 million Democrats and 969,000 Republicans. The total number of registered active voters is almost 3.5 million.
Hickenlooper has extensive name recognition, and he beat Romanoff by about seven to one. But a series of missteps by the former governor at the end of the campaign gave Romanoff apparent hope of unrest.
Hickenlooper challenged a subpoena from the state’s independent ethics commission investigating private flights and travel benefits he took on as governor. The commission found that Hickenlooper had violated the law by accepting a private flight and limousine travel.
Later, amid protests of police violence against blacks, Hickenlooper confuses the meaning of the slogan “Black Lives Matter”. The following week, an African-American Romanoff supporter tweeted a 6-year-old video by Hickenlooper that jokingly compares politicians to slaves who were flogged to row “an old slave ship.”
Republicans have been openly supporting Romanoff, fearing Hickenlooper’s money, moderate positions, and popularity among Colorado’s general electorate. But Romanoff has argued that he has passion behind him and that Democrats will not stray from the Colorado seat, which is essential in his bid to regain control of the Senate.
In Colorado House of Representatives races, Tipton has represented the sprawling Southern and Western Colorado 3rd Congressional District since 2011. Endorsed months ago by President Donald Trump, the main opponent Lauren Boebert accuses him of not being pro-Trump enough. Rifle businesswoman who bristled and challenged government business closings with the intention of controlling the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
On the Democratic side, Diane Mitsch Bush, a former state legislator who lost to Tipton in 2018, and James Iacino, a Denver businessman who moved to the typically conservative district, are looking to change the seat.
The other two Colorado Republican incumbents, Rep. Doug Lamborn and Rep. Ken Buck, face no primary opposition and are expected to hold on to their seats.
In El Paso County’s fifth district, Democrat Jillian Freeland, a retired businesswoman and midwife, will challenge Lamborn, who since 2007 has represented a district that houses a group of Air Force and Army facilities, as well as Space Command. of the Air Force.
Republicans are also betting on a victory in November in Eastern Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, represented by Buck since 2015. Democrat Ike McCorkle is an 18-year Marine Corps veteran and Purple Heart receiver who served four innings. combat service.
In Denver’s first district, Democratic Rep. Diane DeGette, who has served since 1997 and led the interrogation of federal coronavirus efforts at a hearing in Congress last week, will face Republican Shane Bolling.
In the second district, which includes Boulder, Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse will face Republican nominee Charlie Winn, a retired Navy veteran and flight surgeon.
Democratic front-runner Jason Crow and Republican Steve House, the former state chairman of the Republican Party, are running uncontested in the sixth district.
Democratic Rep Ed Perlmutter has represented Colorado’s Seventh Congressional District since 2007. Also Tuesday, unopposed, is Republican Gulf War veteran Casper Stockham and businessman who twice ran unsuccessfully against DeGette.
