In nearly every case, the winners were clear as soon as the first batch of primary vote totals were posted soon after polls closed Tuesday in Colorado's primary election.
Unlike in many a hard-fought primary past, there was little suspense and no doubt about which direction voters wanted to take the state's two major parties as Democrats and Republicans gird for the fall campaign.
Adults showed up
"It was a good night for the adults in the room," Democratic consultant Joe Miklosi said on the "We Have Issues" podcast as the dust settled.
The former Denver legislator and one-time congressional candidate told hosts Kyle Blakely and Mark Waller that a series of convincing wins in high-profile races by candidates from both parties' more established quarters demonstrated that the electorate isn't on board with some of the louder voices that sometimes dominate headlines.
Miklosi cited primary wins by Republican congressional candidates Jeff Crank, Jeff Hurd and state Rep. Gabe Evans, who prevailed by wide margins over candidates who embraced former President Donald Trump's brash, confrontational style — state GOP Chairman Dave Williams and former state Reps. Ron Hanks and Janak Joshi, respectively. He also pointed to losses by two freshman Democratic legislators who frequently clashed with the party's statehouse leadership and whose bids were derailed by Denver voters: state Rep. Elisabeth Epps, defeated by Sean Camacho, and state Rep. Timothy Hernandez, shown the door by Cecelia Espenoza.
The obvious exception was U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, the proudly divisive Republican who won a six-way primary and a likely return ticket to Washington after moving into another congressional district after losing favor with voters on her home turf.
While Boebert won the nomination in the deep red 4th Congressional District by a solid margin — running nearly 30 points ahead of her next-closest competitor, former state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg — she did so with a plurality, taking 43% of the vote, meaning a not-inconsequential 57% of the seat's voters preferred someone else.
There isn't much time for candidates to catch their collective breath before the four-month sprint to November. Before the primary recedes too far into the hazy recent past, here are four takeaways from Tuesday's vote.
Here are four more takeaways from the night.
It's Lauren Boebert's Republican Party
If there was any question before votes were counted, Boebert's powerhouse win Tuesday night secured her position as the state's leading Republican, bar none.
Democrats couldn't be happier.
Before Trump took over the party just eight long years ago, Colorado's Republicans were on the ropes — the party has only elected one governor in the last 50 years, and over the past two decades, the GOP has seen its standing steadily erode in a state it once ruled — but the party still had a seat at the proverbial table. Boebert, however, represents a different kind of Republican, who is more likely to preach confrontation than cooperation.
An in-your-face celebrity even before she toppled a five-term incumbent in the 2020 primary, Boebert has cultivated a public persona rarely seen in a state known for its politicians' avowed spirit of collaboration and pragmatism.
She even survived the scandal that spewed headlines for months last year after Boebert was ejected from a performance of the musical "Beetlejuice" for disruptive behavior, including vaping and getting handsy with her date in what she's protested was a "private moment" in the middle of a crowded theater.
Dave Williams is on the mat
Boebert has a kindred spirit in Williams, the former Colorado Springs legislator and party boss who aspired to join her in Congress. Still, despite his best efforts to commandeer the state GOP's apparatus to help him get there, voters rendered the opposite verdict.
Not only did Williams lose the primary to Crank by a crushing 30-point margin, but his hold on the party could be in jeopardy after spending much of June waging an explicit holy war against the LGBTQ community's Pride Month — in a state that elected and reelected the country's first openly gay governor. That sparked a bid to force Williams from his party position, which could accelerate now that voters have rejected his approach nearly across the board.
Abandoning its tradition of staying neutral in party primaries, the state GOP took sides this year under Williams, bestowing endorsem*nts on some Republican candidates and openly attacking others. The party's track record on Tuesday was poor, with just four of the candidates it backed in 18 contested primaries claiming the nomination, including Boebert, whose brand no doubt didn't need a boost from Williams.
A special election that wasn't that special
Unlike in nearly every congressional and legislative special election held nationwide since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade almost precisely two years ago, Democrats didn't see a bump in their share of the vote in Tuesday's vote in the 4th CD to fill the unexpired term of former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, who resigned in March.
Republican nominee Greg Lopez defeated Democrat Trisha Calvarese by 24 points, almost the same margin that Buck managed to win by in the previous two general elections.
Before the vote was counted, Calvarese and her allies were quietly eyeing a potential upset in the state's most Republican district, nodding toward a remarked nearly 20-point shift in the vote toward the Democratic candidate in an Ohio race only a week earlier.
But the dynamics at work in the typical special election — low turnout, leaving only the most zealous voters to decide who fills a vacancy — weren't in play in Colorado's edition, which was held simultaneously and on the same ballots as the state's primary.
Overall, voter turnout slightly lagged previous primaries — possibly because there was only a single statewide race on the ballot, the low-profile at-large University of Colorado regent seat — but Colorado's all-mail ballot system has a history of yielding among the highest voter participation rates in the country, and this year's primary was no exception. Boebert's appearance on the Republican primary ballot, likely compelling both fans and foes to weigh in, also had to have helped drive turnout, making the race between Lopez and Calvarese more like a standard partisan election than anything special.
On the same night, Calvarese won the Democratic nomination to take on Boebert — Lopez ran as a self-described "placeholder" candidate, so wasn't vying for the GOP nomination for a full term — and will do her best to bring national attention to the race, though the district's strong partisan lean means it'll be a decidedly uphill battle to topple the Republican.
Coloradans love their mail ballots
Despite the urging of some Republicans — most prominently Trump, though his position has shifted over the years — to only vote in person on Election Day instead of by mail, voters in a state that pioneered mail balloting more than a decade ago seem to be ignoring the advice.
According to data released Wednesday morning by the Colorado Secretary of State's Office, just 7,496 Coloradans voted in person in the primary out of 1,001,720 ballots cast — or just over 0.7%.
Voters who cast Republican primary ballots — including registered Republicans and unaffiliated voters who opted to vote in the GOP primary — were likelier than voters in the Democratic primary to vote in person, though the disparity wasn't overwhelming. Accounting for ballots logged in just before midnight on primary night, 4,493 Republican ballots had been cast at the state's voting centers, compared to 2,979 Democratic ballots. Another two dozen ballots were cast in person by members of the state's minor political parties, who could vote in the 4th CD's special election but couldn't participate in either major party's primary.
