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Leading Off
Colorado
Colorado Democrats have a chance to run the table this year as Republicans head into the midterms dragged down by a toxic nominee for governor whose own party is abandoning him.
That nominee is Victor Marx, a Christian ministry founder who, among many other things, responded to a question from News9 earlier this year asking how many people he’d killed as an adult by saying, “Does it matter?”
Marx’s fellow Republicans have largely kept their distance from a candidate who continues to draw the kind of national attention that no one should ever want. But former Rep. Ken Buck, a conservative hardliner who became an unlikely Donald Trump critic, went even further on Wednesday by crossing party lines to endorse Attorney General Phil Weiser, Marx’s Democratic opponent.
Weiser would have been favored to defeat any GOP nominee in Colorado, a former swing state that has shifted sharply to the left over the last decade, but the downward pressure from Marx’s disastrous campaign is being felt especially acutely in all four of the state’s Republican-held congressional districts.
Democrats had always planned to target the 8th District, a swing seat that Republican Gabe Evans narrowly flipped two years ago. They also had reason to think that Donald Trump’s weak approval ratings might give them an opening in the more conservative 3rd and 5th Districts even before Marx became the GOP’s standard-bearer this summer.
The GOP’s mighty struggles across the state, though, have now given Democrats an unexpected opportunity to go after Rep. Lauren Boebert, one of the most infamous Republicans in Congress, in Colorado’s reddest district.
Two years ago, Trump scored a 58-40 victory in the 4th District, which includes Colorado’s rural eastern communities and Denver’s conservative exurbs.
Boebert had originally represented the 3rd District on the other side of the state, but last cycle, fearing a repeat of her unexpectedly close shave in 2022, she jumped over to the 4th District after Buck chose not to seek reelection. Still, she ran several points behind Trump with her 54-42 win.
Boebert, one of the rare officeholders to endorse Marx during the primary, now faces Democrat Eileen Laubacher, a former Republican who retired from the Navy as a rear admiral. Though she faces a tough race, Laubacher has taken advantage of Boebert’s national notoriety to raise millions, just as prior Democratic challengers have.
Most notably, though, deep-pocketed outfits on both sides are also directing money to the contest.