With early voting underway in Colorado, candidates are making their final pushes to shore up votes ahead of Election Day, Nov. 3.
Much of the country’s attention has been focused on the presidential election. However, Southwest Coloradans have two other choices to determine their representation in Washington.
Colorado’s closely watched Senate race pits two of the state’s best-known names in politics against one another and will likely be instrumental in deciding whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate after the election. Likewise, Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District election will determine who succeeds longtime representative and Cortez native Scott Tipton.
Candidates in both races have spent the past weeks making their last pitches to Coloradans as they enter the final days of a campaign season upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Political mainstays vie for U.S. SenateIncumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner and former Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper are on the ballot to represent Colorado in the U.S. Senate.
The candidates have debated four times and have since focused resources on running ads and rallying support as Coloradans continue to turn in their ballots.
Gardner has been campaigning heavily on his legislative successes during his first term in the Senate, including the passage of the landmark Great American Outdoors Act and the recent signing of a bill to establish a three-digit suicide hotline.
On the campaign trail, he has made it a point to bring up his bipartisan reputation in arguing that he votes for what will be best for Colorado. Gardner also has repeatedly accused Hickenlooper of being in politics for personal gain in debates and through several TV and online ads.
“Governor Hickenlooper has proven time and time again that he’s in politics for his own interests and not for the people of Colorado,” Gardner posted on Facebook and Twitter last month.
Gardner frequently points at when Hickenlooper was fined for ethics violations committed during his time as governor. Hickenlooper has responded by saying that the violations were minor and inadvertent and that he has taken responsibility for the wrongdoing.
Hickenlooper, meanwhile, has been casting Gardner as too close to President Donald Trump for Colorado. Trump has endorsed Gardner’s re-election and campaigned with him in Colorado Springs in February.
Hickenlooper has pointed to Gardner’s votes against the Affordable Care Act and his support of various Trump court appointees as evidence that Gardner is putting the president and the Republican Party ahead of Colorado. He has referenced Gardner’s support of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett as a part of this pattern:
“In 2016, Senator Gardner set a clear standard that the people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice – but now he broke it to stand with the president at the expense of Colorado, as he’s done 100% of the time,” Hickenlooper said in a statement.
On the campaign trail, Hickenlooper has been campaigning digitally with several big names in state and national politics.
He has scheduled campaign events with former Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg as well as with Coloradans like Rep. Jason Crow from Colorado’s 6th Congressional District.
Choosing the right woman for CD3Meanwhile, closer to home, Colorado’s candidates to represent the 3rd Congressional District are continuing to make their very different cases to represent a huge swathe of the state.
Whether the race is won by Democratic former state Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush or Republican restaurant owner Lauren Boebert, the winner will be the first woman to represent the district and will be filling a role that Tipton has held since 2010.
Boebert has established herself on the campaign trail as a staunch Trump supporter and a political outsider. She has spent recent days traveling around the district seeking to rally her supporters as voting begins. Trump spoke in her favor by phone during a campaign event Oct. 13.
“She’ll never forget our values, she’ll never bow down to the establishment in Congress,” Trump said.
Boebert is the owner of Shooters Grill in Rifle and drew national attention as a gun rights advocate in 2019 for telling then-presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke “hell, no, you’re not” in response to his proposed plan to ban assault weapons.
She has dedicated much of her campaign to attacking Mitsch Bush and the Democratic party as far-left.
“For me, this race is about freedom and prosperity versus socialism and more government control,” she said in a statement after Trump’s comments.
Mitsch Bush, on the other hand, is campaigning as a pragmatist who will work in favor of Western Slope interests in Congress. On the campaign trail, she has said that Boebert’s unflinching support of Trump and frequent attacks against the Democratic Party are a sign that she’s a partisan and not someone who will advocate for CD3.
“Boebert has made it clear she’s more interested in picking partisan fights than she is in delivering results for this district,” Mitsch Bush told Aspen Journalism this week.
She also has rejected the suggestion that she’s a socialist and has pointed to her record in Colorado’s House of Representatives, where she worked with a bipartisan range of colleagues to pass legislation.
Mitsch Bush has moved most campaigning online and has been spending the last weeks of the campaign in digital town halls and campaign events because of the ongoing pandemic.
Getting out the voteCandidates for both the House of Representatives and the Senate have been making pushes to drive their supporters to cast their votes since Colorado started sending out its mail-in ballots Oct. 9.
In between posts attacking opponents and touting their own records, candidates have turned to social media to urge supporters to fill out their ballots, send them in and encourage acquaintances to do the same.
“Return your ballot, tell a friend and let’s do this together,” Hickenlooper’s campaign posted.
Boebert’s campaign echoed this, writing: “Tell everyone you know it’s time to get those ballots turned back in!”
Gardner’s page linked voters to resources to track their ballot once it was sent. Mitsch Bush encouraged people to vote in person if they didn’t want to by mail.
Although on the national level, prominent politicians have suggested mail-in voting is fallible, in Colorado, which has voted by mail successfully for several elections, candidates broadly support the system.
Mail-in ballots were sent to Colorado voters starting Oct. 9, and Coloradans can return their votes by mail or to a number of drop boxes around the region.
John Purcell is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez and a student at American University in Washington, D.C.