Littwin: In a fever dream election, Republicans in Colorado’s four red districts have much to lose

It’s almost impossible to believe, but Judgment Day — I mean Election Day, which seems like almost the same thing — is finally upon us, and the stakes could not be higher.

For what’s left of the country’s small-d democratic project.

Want early access to
Mike’s columns?

Subscribe to get an
exclusive first look at
his columns twice a week.

For Donald Trump and his unapologetic corruption tour. Not to mention his revenge tour. And his assault-on-architecture tour. And his bizarrely focused male-anatomy, glutes-over-gas-prices tour (see: ass, Jon Husted.)

For the Big Tech boys and girls, who threw in all their chips (literally and figuratively) with Trump. A Democratic Congress would mean endless investigations into how they got quite so rich. And a not so bullish stock market.

For AI — despite Trump’s renaming campaign, SI still means Sports Illustrated to me — and the future of data centers.

For polling, which is putting what’s left of its credibility on the line with numbers suggesting a full-blown Democratic tsunami, with Trump’s approval ratings at record lows.

For Democrats, who blundered their way to a cataclysmic defeat in the 2024 election, allowing Trump to take us ever closer to authoritarianism. Tuesday is their chance for a do-over of a kind.

For the safety of our elections and just how far Trump will go to rig the election. He’s already tried to sabotage the election in 54 ways, according to a pretty thorough, and really scary, report by Dana Milbank in the Washington Sun.

For what’s left of our faith in the big-time election analysts. Nate Silver’s computers have Dems at 94.7% to win the House (with Dems picking up 24 seats) and 78.3% to win the Senate (with Dems picking up six seats.) As he admits, there’s a lot of ways for that to go wrong. But who do you think will remember the caveats?

For what’s left of our sanity. I mean the calls, the TV ads, the online ads, the texts, the emails will be mostly gone soon. I promise. Just hang in a few more days for relief. While the volume will dial back quickly from 11, it won’t go away completely. But I’m ready to settle.

And as if all that weren’t enough, here on the home front, Tuesday could mean another in a series of nightmares for the Colorado Republican Party, whose hold on the last remnants of its power in the state looks more tenuous every day.

As you may know, Republicans hold no statewide offices and haven’t in a while. They’ve elected only one governor in more than 50 years. The state House and Senate are overwhelmingly Democratic and may have supermajorities by the time the counting is done this time around.

What Republicans do have is an equal divide in the state’s U.S. House delegation — a 4-4 split. To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, don’t blame the voters, the districts are drawn that way. It’s almost enough to make you think the GOP is not completely dead — if still mostly dead — in Colorado.

That’s for now. But probably not after Tuesday.

That is, if you believe the polls and the analysts and the chance a blue tsunami would reach into already deep blue Colorado. 

The hottest race in the state, as it has been since the redistricting commission drew the lines in 2022, has been the 8th Congressional District between GOP incumbent Gabe Evans (now seen backing away from being a total Trumpbot) and Democratic challenger Manny Rutinel (who is not a vegan, we think, although I’m not sure why we’d care).

But now according to the well respected Cook Political Report, not to mention Larry Sabato’s also respected Crystal Ball, the 8th is rated Lean Democrat. Not that I have any special expertise, I’ve had it rated that way since the summer primaries. It’s still close, but the heat has definitely gone down.

Now, the hottest race seems to be in the 5th CD, which has been a Republican district for approximately forever. The rankings experts now have the race rated as a tossup. Let me admit straight up, I’ve never had the race even. I still have a hard time believing that in the 5th CD, the focus would not be on the Republican. 

But that’s old-line thinking. Colorado Springs, which now seems to have finally emerged from the last century, or maybe it’s the 19th, is a different place these days. In 2014, the smart folks at MIT and UCLA had it rated as the fourth most conservative city in the country. 

But depending on just how high the blue wave/potential tsunami gets in Colorado, that’s how high the chances are for Dem challenger Jessica Killin to upset GOP incumbent Jeff Crank, who won by 14 points in 2024. (If you don’t live in the 5th CD and can name Crank’s Democratic opponent that year, you are truly a politics junkie and may possibly be in need of help.)

Yes, Killin was an Army captain — although she wasn’t fired by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — but she was chief of staff for three Democrats in the U.S. House and, here’s the kicker, also for Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, spouse to Kamala Harris, who lost the 5th CD by 10 points in 2024. And now the race is a tossup?

Something is happening here. And it doesn’t stop there.

The analysts have the 3rd CD, where Republican (but not MAGA) Jeff Hurd is the incumbent, rated Likely Republican. But Democrats, seeing that the polls are now close, have just poured $2.1 million into challenger Dwayne Romero’s campaign. Romero, who was a West Point graduate — he also has a Harvard MBA — and who served as an Army Ranger, is another military veteran running on the Democratic side.

But here’s the gut buster. If any Republican district were to remain safe, it would be, of course, Lauren Boebert’s 4th CD. As you’ll recall, the carpetbagging canoodler moved from the 3rd CD to the 4th because it is the reddest district in the state and she thought she might lose in the 3rd.

And now, the Cook Political Report has downgraded the district from Solid R to Lean R, skipping over Likely R. So has Larry Sabato. To go from Solid to Lean is like going from the top of a Fourteener to the bottom of Victor Marx’s exorcism business. 

Cook says of the race between Boebert and Democratic challenger, retired Rear Admiral Eileen Laubacher (also not fired by Hegseth), “This district, which voted for Trump by 18 points in 2026, should not be close to competitive. But GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert has left $6 million worth of attack ads unanswered, and some polling now points to a surprisingly close race.”

Why the Cook ranking means so much is because it’s such a trusted brand. According to an internal review, as reported by the Washington Post, in 10,375 called races since 1984, its Likely ratings were 97% correct, and its Lean 94%. In other words, they’re onto something.

Still, hardly anyone can really believe Boebert will lose. Despite the war in Iran. Despite inflation. Despite the Trumpian corruption. Despite Trump’s disastrous poll numbers. Despite the fact that Laubacher has raised more than $13 million and Boebert barely over a million. Despite Boebert’s many scandals. Despite Victor Marx. Despite the fact that even Trump has called Boebert “dumb” and “weak-minded.”

Her seat still feels like it has to be safe because the numbers demand it. Republicans have nearly 100,000 more registered voters in the district than Democrats do.

It would be safe, I guess, in a normal election.

This election is not that. It is a fever dream of an election. And I wish I could be sure what it will look like when we go to sleep on Tuesday night.  

If it does turn out to be Judgment Day, I just hope we wake up among the living.

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.

The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at [email protected].

Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.