This story by Chase Woodruff appeared on Colorado Newsline on February 14, 2023.
Adam Frisch, the former Aspen City Council member who nearly pulled off a shock upset of controversial Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert last year, confirmed Tuesday that he will challenge Boebert again in 2024.
“It was the honor of a lifetime building a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters who rejected Boebert’s extremism with their vote in 2022. But our work in (the 3rd Congressional District) is not done,” Frisch said in a statement. “November’s election results show us that Boebert is weak and will be defeated, which is why I have decided to launch my 2024 congressional campaign.”
In her first reelection campaign since winning the 3rd District seat in 2020, Boebert held off Frisch by just 546 votes out of over 327,000 ballots cast, a margin that prompted a week of closely watched late ballot counts in the 3rd District’s 27 counties and Colorado’s first automatic recount in a congressional race in 20 years.
Frisch conceded to Boebert on November 18, calling Colorado’s election system “safe, accurate and secure.”
Boebert’s razor-thin margin of victory confounded expectations for the race in the 3rd District, which had grown more conservative in Colorado’s redistricting process and was widely viewed as a safe seat for Republicans. Though both candidates raised millions of dollars in campaign funds from individual donors, neither received major support from national super PACs, which in Colorado were focused mainly on a battleground contest in the newly created 8th District.
Boebert unseated incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton in the 3rd District’s 2020 Republican primary and soon rose to national prominence as a member of the congressional GOP’s far-right wing. A leading proponent of debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories, she came under scrutiny in 2021 for her rhetoric and actions in relation to the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. She has affiliated with leaders of the Christian “dominionist” movement and told followers last year that “we are in the last of the last days (before) the second coming of Jesus.”
Frisch, who defeated activist Sol Sandoval and Alex Walker in last year’s Democratic primary, pitched himself as a “conservative businessman” and broke with his party on issues like student debt relief and oil and gas extraction. In his statement Tuesday, he pledged to join the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus if elected.
“I humbly ask for your support as I get back to work to give CO-3 a representative who will take the job seriously and work across the aisle,” he said.
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