Aspen resident Adam Frisch on Wednesday morning held a slight lead over Rep. Lauren Boebert in his bid to turn the 3rd Congressional District blue.

Frisch, the Democratic nominee challenging the Silt Republican, was clinging to 50.59% of the vote as of 8:49 a.m. Wednesday, while Boebert had 49.41% of the vote, according to the Colorado secretary of state. The same update showed Frisch with 149,421 votes and Boebert with 145,946.

“We feel good; we’re not going to get over our skis, but the race will come down to a couple of hundred of votes either way,” said Frisch, a former member of Aspen City Council, earlier on Tuesday night.

---

---

He gathered with supporters at Belly Up, where a large-screen provided updates on the race that handicappers like The New York Times predicted a comfortable victory for Boebert, a Christian nationalist supported by Donald Trump.

She has styled herself as a hard-right Republican supporting a nationwide abortion ban and openly suggesting there shouldn’t be a separation of church and state, the Glenwood Post Independent reported. 

---

---

Frisch is trying to do what no Democrat has done since John Salazar in 2008 — win the 3rd Congressional seat in a district that covers the Western Slope and extends into southeastern Colorado. Grand Junction and Pueblo are the district’s two largest population centers.

“I knew that about 40% of Republican Party kind of wants their party back,” he said. “I knew that if being a pragmatic, bipartisan guy, I thought we could build a tri-partisan coalition of independents, Democrats and Republicans. People resonated across the political spectrum when I talked about wanting the circus to stop, and that if there was a get-stuff-done party, I’d be in that party.”

Boebert was elected in November 2020, edging Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush of Routt County. In that contest, Boebert garnered 220,634 votes, or 51.4%, while Mitsch Bush received 194,122 votes, or 45.2%.

Frisch ran as a moderate Democrat with conservative views toward energy and small businesses and as someone who would cross the aisle and be a consensus builder. He also combed the 27-county district, trying to win hearts and minds.

“We worked incredibly, incredibly hard. We put 23,000 or 24,000 miles on the road,” he said. “Felix (my son) and I just came back a couple of hours ago from 11 days, 27 counties, three state lines, 102 stops, 3,300 miles. Getting people to know, to understand that somebody from the mountains can actually relate and understand and represent them well.”

State Sen. Don Coram, R-Montrose, also endorsed Frisch, writing in the Montrose Press: “Let’s elect someone who cares about representing the majority of people in the middle that are fed up with extreme partisanship and juvenile antics.”

Boebert seized on Frisch’s Aspen address and portrayed him as an out-of-touch, radical liberal.

A Denver Post endorsement titled “Please, don’t give your vote to Lauren Boebert,” credited the Silt resident for “contributing to the toxic political environment in this nation.”

Frisch, said the endorsement, “would be a better representative for the people of the 3rd Congressional District. Yes, he is a Democrat from the affluent enclave of Aspen, a ski town that most voters consider a playground for rich out-of-towners. But Frisch, who served on Aspen City Council and whose wife is on the school board, has no desire to impose liberal policies on the people of his district.”

He spent two terms on Aspen City Council, from 2011-18. He earned an undergraduate degree in economics, with emphases in political science and art history, from the University of Colorado-Boulder.