The lone survivor: How Jeff Hurd endured the blue wave to become Colorado’s sole Republican in Congress

At one point on election night, things were looking pretty bleak for Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd.

He watched from Grand Junction as results poured in across the country showing a Democratic wave swallowing up GOP members of Congress in districts much safer than his. Early returns had Hurd losing in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, too. 

“It was clear to me that this was a wave election,” Hurd told The Colorado Sun. “There was a moment there where the result was not clear and I recognized that there was a distinct possibility that I could lose.”

But like a surfer miraculously reappearing from deep inside a wave’s curl, Hurd managed to survive the political current, beating his Democratic challenger, former Aspen City Councilman Dwayne Romero. 

Hurd’s victory in the 3rd District, which spans the Western Slope into Pueblo and southern Colorado, almost certainly makes him the lone survivor of an election that claimed the three other GOP members of Congress in the state. While Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s race hasn’t been called by The Associated Press yet, she no longer appears to have a path to victory with just a few thousand votes, at most, remaining to be counted. 

So how did Hurd do it?

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It’s not that the blue wave didn’t reach Colorado’s 3rd District. At least three Democrats running statewide won it this year. 

Hurd just outperformed almost every other Republican on the ticket. 

Whereas voters in three other Republican-held congressional districts all moved at least 10 percentage points toward Democrats this year compared with 2024 — the 5th Congressional District electorate moved the most, at about 19 percentage points to the left — the 3rd District vote only shifted 3 points away from Republicans last week. 

That allowed Hurd to win by 2 percentage points this year after winning by 5 points in 2024. 

But Hurd’s victory wasn’t only an anomaly in Colorado. A Colorado Sun analysis of national election results, using data compiled by The Downballot, shows that Hurd is one of just two Republican incumbents to win this year in congressional districts that President Donald Trump won by 10 percentage points or less in 2024. The other is Republican U.S. Rep. Nick LaLota of New York.

Trump won in the 3rd District by 9 points in 2024 and in LaLota’s district by 10 points. 

A closer look at the 3rd District results

There are two ways to view what happened in the 3rd District on Election Day: Hurd overperformed or Romero underperformed. 

What’s unequivocally true is that, with a few small exceptions, Romero fared worse than Democrats running for statewide office in 3rd District counties this year. 

A few key examples: Romero lost in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold, by 18 percentage points, whereas Attorney General Phil Weiser, running for governor, lost by 10 points there. In Garfield County, Romero won by about 12 points, whereas Democratic U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper won it by 17. 

In Otero County, east of Pueblo, Romero lost by 25 points, while Jefferson County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez, the Democrat running for secretary of state, lost by 20. 

Romero won Pueblo County by about 4.5 points, while Democrat Jena Griswold, running for attorney general, won it by 6.5. 

There doesn’t appear to be a single 3rd District county where Romero outran all five Democrats running for statewide office in Colorado this year. 

If Romero had matched Hickenlooper’s percentage-point margin of victory in just Pueblo, Garfield and La Plata counties, he likely would have beaten Hurd, according to a Sun analysis of unofficial results. 

Romero did outperform Hurd’s 2024 opponent, former Aspen City Councilman Adam Frisch, in several 3rd District counties this year, including La Plata (by 8 points), Archuleta (by about 7 points), Garfield (by 7 points) and Pitkin (by 5 points). 

But Hurd expanded his margin of victory in places like Las Animas, Rio Grande and Otero counties on top of the advantage he already had in the district. 

“This is an incredibly hard district,” Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Shad Murib said.

He highlighted how, for instance, the district has four TV markets: Denver, Pueblo/Colorado Springs, Grand Junction and Albuquerque, which covers the Durango area. That makes it more expensive to try to reach voters. 

Murib said he tried to get national Democrats more involved, but that locally, the party knocked on lots of voters’ doors and focused on down-ballot races in the 3rd District hopes of boosting Romero’s chances.

“We ran a real campaign,” he said. “There were a lot of fundamentals working against us on this one.” 

In a written statement after he conceded to Hurd, Romero said he was “proud of the race we ran and of why we ran it.” 

“Team Romero reached communities large and small across western and southern Colorado,” he said, “and I will never forget it.”

How Hurd thinks he survived

Hurd chalks his victory up to a few factors, including his focus on issues in the district and ability to work with Democrats. But he thinks voters primarily rewarded his willingness to split from his party and Trump. 

The congressman pushed back on Trump’s tariffs, joined Democrats in voting to restore Affordable Care Act subsidies and backed two attempted veto overrides. 

Hurd has criticized the Trump administration for withholding disaster funds from Colorado, apparently as a result of the imprisonment of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted of orchestrating a security breach of her county’s election system. He likened it to “using the power of the federal government to coerce a state” to implement the administration’s policy goals — and then to retaliate when Colorado refused to comply.

Hurd didn’t always disagree with fellow Republicans in Congress and the president, though. 

He voted “yes” on the Trump-championed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the massive Republican tax and spending bill passed last year. That made for an easy line of attack for Democrats upset about the measure’s Medicaid cuts.

Murib, for instance, said the idea that Hurd was independent from Trump is an “illusion.”

But the three other Colorado Republicans in Congress tacked much closer to Trump. And all three lost or were losing their reelection bids. Two of them, Boebert and Jeff Crank of the 5th Congressional District, represented districts far more favorable to Republicans than Hurd’s.

“I think voters see me as someone who’s a hard worker, who’s effective, who gets results, and who’s willing to stand up to his party, and even the president, if it’s in the best interest of his district,” Hurd said. “Navigating that balance is tricky. It’s something that I worked hard to do. I wasn’t perfect at it. I think that independence is something that helped me.”

Laura Carno, a Republican activist and commentator, also thinks that Democratic enthusiasm for unseating other GOP members of Congress from Colorado was just more intense, especially as the left looked to win districts they either hadn’t won before or hadn’t won in a long time.

“That’s what it felt like on the ground,” she said.

Romero also had some weaknesses. 

He entered the race relatively late and wasn’t all that strong of a fundraiser. Voters didn’t know him, and he wasn’t as ubiquitous on the campaign trail as Frisch.

Democratic groups invested heavily in Colorado’s other Republican-held congressional districts, but basically left Romero hanging until the final week of the campaign, when the House Majority PAC, which is tied to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, spent about $2.5 million on ads in the race. 

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But by that point, more than 1 million votes had been cast statewide and Republicans had already spent nearly $4 million to help Hurd.

Moving forward, Hurd is still trying to keep in mind that he lost ground in this year’s election. He wants to win those voters back. 

“Voters sent us a clear message,” he said. “And I hear that. I was successful in my reelection, but I am not going to be complacent at all. I think this is a great motivator for me to be a better representative, a more serious legislator, and to not forget why I’m here and who I’m working for.”

The Colorado GOP’s new highest-ranking elected official was once blasted by Trump

Starting next year, assuming Boebert loses, Hurd will be the highest-ranking elected GOP official in Colorado — by a long shot. 

Boebert is currently the longest-tenured Republican member of Congress from Colorado, at nearly six years. She would leave office early next year, alongside one-term Republican U.S. Reps. Crank and Gabe Evans of the 8th Congressional District.

There hasn’t been a statewide elected Republican in Colorado since University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl’s at-large term ended in 2023 after she lost the governor’s race in 2022. 

The irony is that it wasn’t all that long ago that some Republicans in Colorado, and even Trump, didn’t want to claim Hurd as part of the GOP. 

In February, Trump pulled his support for Hurd and labeled him a RINO — Republican in name only — for voting against the president’s tariffs on Canadian imports. Trump backed Hurd’s then-primary opponent, former Colorado GOP Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman, instead. 

A month later, though, facing pressure from congressional Republicans over Scheppelman’s apparent weakness as a candidate, Trump reversed course and reendorsed Hurd. Scheppelman also dropped out of the race to take a position in the president’s administration. 

“We decided that Congressman Jeff Hurd, of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, should in no way, shape, or form, be impeded from winning the district,” Trump wrote on social media.

Also ironic: Trump’s criticism may have helped keep Hurd in Congress.

Other Republicans are taking notice of how Hurd bucked the trend.

“Hurd voted against global tariffs and the voters respected his independence,” outgoing Republican U.S. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said on social media. “This whole election was for a check and balance and against a rubber stamp.”

But Carno doubts that what worked for Hurd in the 3rd District would work in other districts.

“If Jeff Crank opposed the president’s tariffs like Jeff Hurd did, I don’t think that would have made a damn bit of difference,” she said.  

Hurd — who a liberal blog once said is as exciting as a “bread sandwich,” a label the congressman embraced — said his focus is on representing the 3rd District, and not the future of the Colorado GOP. But “if I can help our party be a force for good in our state and for good policy, I will absolutely do that,” he said.

“I think fair-minded unaffiliated voters and Democrats would see the importance of having a healthy Republican Party in Colorado that focuses on things that matter to voters and to constituents,” Hurd said. “And I’m trying to do that by example.”