Democrats registered in the 3rd Congressional District are being asked to change their voter registration to “unaffiliated” in a growing campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in the Republican primaries in June.
Indivisible Durango, which bills itself as a nonpartisan organization but promotes progressive ideals, floated the idea to members who are registered Democrats in a Feb. 1 newsletter.
“If you are a Democrat or a Libertarian, you can change your party affiliation to ‘unaffiliated’ in order to vote (on) the Republican primary ballot,” the newsletter read. “If you are already unaffiliated or a Republican, we encourage you to consider voting for a reasonable, centrist Republican in the Republican primary.”
The newsletter identified state Sen. Don Coram, Boebert’s strongest Republican opponent, as the politician whom “some believe (creates) the best chance of having a different representative in U.S. Congress.”
Mario Nicolais, a columnist for The Colorado Sun, posited a similar strategy benefiting Coram.
The strategy comes five months before the Republican primaries, a victory to which unaffiliated voters undoubtedly hold the key. According to the Colorado Sun, 40% of the 3rd District’s 513,000 active voters are unaffiliated. Registered Republicans account for 32% of voters, while 27% are registered as Democrats. Unaffiliated voters gained the right to vote in the primaries with Proposition 108, a 2016 ballot measure approved by voters and enacted by the state Senate.
In an interview Friday, Indivisible Durango Council member Debbie Meyers said the organization wasn’t telling people how to vote.
“It may be that the only option is to primary Lauren Boebert, and she can call it what she will, but it is the law,” Meyers said. “But we’re not telling people how to vote or how to register, we just wanted to provide information so that people would know their options.”
Meyers said the organization’s campaign was intended to clarify voting options only for members of Indivisible Durango, but she acknowledged “the information will seep out there.”
In a statement to The Durango Herald, a spokesperson for Boebert’s re-election campaign derided the strategy.
“Unaffiliated voters are overwhelmingly frustrated by the left’s destructive policies on crime and our economy,” the spokesperson wrote. “Any effort to con them into voting for liberal candidates posing as Republicans will be rejected wholeheartedly.
“Colorado’s (3rd District) will elect Lauren Boebert because she is fighting to open our economy back up, secure the border, manage our forests responsibly, make our communities safe and put an end to the left’s insane policies,” the spokesperson said.
Dave Peters, the La Plata County Republican Party chairman, called the strategy a “weapon to manipulate primary elections.”
“It seems their only hope is to masquerade as Republicans and interfere with the process,” Peters said in an email to Herald.
Brenda Freeburn, a Gunnison resident unaffiliated with Indivisible Durango, said she and five of her close friends are on a letter-writing campaign to inform 3rd District voters of their options if they register as unaffiliated.
“We started talking and other people were saying, well, you know, if you want to vote in the Republican primary, it’s easy enough to switch and it just kind of started snowballing a little bit,” she said.
Freeburn and her friends have published letters to the editor in papers across the 3rd District, she said, in the hopes that unaffiliated voters like herself can oust Boebert.
Ted Johnson, a 71-year-old retired businessman, said he also isn’t connected to Indivisible Durango but heard about the idea of changing one’s affiliation through word of mouth.
Johnson wrote a letter to the editor this week in support of the strategy, encouraging Democrats to change their registration and hand Boebert a loss in the Republican primaries by electing Coram.
Johnson has been registered as an unaffiliated voter for eight years. Before that, he was a Republican. He said Boebert appears to be more interested in the limelight of controversy than working across the aisle to accomplish legislative wins for her constituents.
“I think the gentleman that’s running against her is, from my research and discussions with people that know him, somebody that can work both sides of the aisle,” Johnson said in an interview with the Herald. “But to me clearly Boebert is not interested in that.”
A spokesman for Coram’s congressional campaign said it was unaware of the strategy.
“As Sen. Coram has said from the beginning, he’s running to represent the 80% in the middle who have been ignored by the fringes on both sides,” the spokesman wrote. “It’s clear by the conversations we’ve had on the trail that this is a message that is resonating with voters from every walk of life and political persuasion.”
Skye Witley, a senior at American University in Washington, D.C., is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez. He can be reached at switley@durangoherald.com.
