By Dennis Anderson | publisher@deltacountyindependent.com Jan 3, 2024 Updated Feb 9, 2024
Fresh off of the news that incumbent Rep. Lauren Boebert, who currently represents Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, will run for the same position but in the 4th Congressional District, her 2022 general election challenger, Adam Frisch, a Democrat from Aspen, says he was as surprised as anyone.
Frisch, a self-proclaimed conservative Democrat, stated that prior to Boebert’s actions at the Buell Theater in Denver, in which Boebert and a date appeared to be groping each other and Boebert also appeared to be vaping, polls showed Frisch to be leading Boebert by 2% in their bid for the congressional seat. He believes the incident hurt Boebert in her bid for reelection. And she was already in tough territory — after redistricting occurred in 2022, Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District was projected to be at a 9% advantage for the Republican candidate, up from 6% prior, but Frisch lost by 546 votes in 2022’s general election.
No one took him seriously until election night, Frisch claimed in an interview with the Montrose Daily Press/Delta County Independent on Thursday. Frisch stated he was on the road 25 days out of each month during the campaign and got the sense that the constituents were tired of the far right and far left’s rhetoric politics. He labeled that branch of the political scene as ‘angertainment,’ in which he says Boebert is a key fixture.
Is Frisch happy that Boebert is running in a different district? The short answer is yes, but not for competitive reasons. He feels now the remaining candidates can focus on local issues that affect residents of the district. He views those issues as energy production and consumption, western and southern Colorado water conservation and jobs.
While Frisch wants to focus on local issues and not the national issues that dominate the political coverage he understands that there are issues that need to be addressed.
“The border is a disaster.” Frisch said. “When people from China, eastern European countries and others are flying in to cross our border it’s a problem.”
When Hamas invaded Israel on Oct 7 of this year. Frisch, a Jewish American, said it affected him personally. His daughter spent most of the summer in Israel at a church camp. Some of her camp counselors were at the music festival where many Jews were injured, kidnapped and killed. His son worked for the Israeli Ambassador in Washington D.C. When he hears the slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ chanted by far left members of his party, he believes they are wanting to eradicate all Jews. He said he sees the results of his campaign against Boebert and her leaving the district as a wake up call to the far wings of both parties — the majority of voters from either party don’t have an appetite for extremist positions, he said.
As far as the district, Frisch says he hasn’t faced discrimination because of his faith. His biggest hurdle is being from a resort town, but believes after conversations with voters while on the campaign trail that most see him as a moderate with rural values.
“For most of the past thirty to forty years a moderate has held this seat, including John Salazar, a Democrat and Scott Tipton, a Republican. Being on team red or team blue isn’t as important as representing rural values,” he said.
As an example, Frisch notes the recent release of wolves in Western Colorado as a flawed policy of Colorado Democrats and vows to be bipartisan to achieve the results 3rd District voters are looking for moving forward.
While it seems early on in the aftermath of Boebert’s announcement to assume Jeff Hurd from Grand Junction is the Republican front runner, the candidate was already attracting attention, but Frisch believes that more Republicans will enter the race. Asked if he has had any conversations with Hurd, Frisch stated that he and Hurd had connected prior to Hurd’s entry into the race and after. Primarily the conversation has focused on campaign life as a husband and a father and not much else. According to Frisch both have been focused on their own campaigns.
Frisch believes that a lot of dark money will leave the campaign now that Boerbert is exiting the district. Frisch states that he has raised more that $7.5 million dollars mostly from in-district and in-state donors more than Boebert was able to raise.. He also states that there will be less money raised off the backs of hard working Western Colorado voters and businesses because the race will have less of a national focus.
Frisch credits his time last year pounding his body traveling the district to reach the voters for his success so far.
“This guy from Pitkin County connected with the voters which surprised people,” Frisch said. “I ran a non-egotistical campaign. Everyone seemed to blow me off until election night. Now my opponent is taking her campaign and carpetbagging to eastern Colorado.”
Dennis Anderson is the publisher of the Delta County Independent and Montrose Daily Press.
