Nov. 19 (UPI) — Democratic Adam Frisch has conceded his race against conservative Republican firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, ending one of the nation’s closest midterm elections.
Frisch, a former Aspen, Colo., city council member, made the concession Friday in a video news conference on Facebook, saying, “We’ve shown the country what western and southern Colorado can do. We’ve shown that extremist politicians can be defeated.”
“Our plan from the very start was to build a tri-partisan coalition, and we did that in the face of deep national skepticism that we could do this,” he added. “We do not have to let hate win, but we can come together and talk about issues that are important or individual lives in our communities. We have more in common than we differ.”
Boebert, considered one of the most right-wing members of GOP’s congressional delegation, declared victory in the contest late Thursday after most expected her to breeze to reelection as part of a “red wave” of Republican midterm wins across the country.
Republicans did gain a House majority this week, but a far slimmer one than initially expected. Even so, the results placed a significant hurdle in front of President Joe Biden and his administration as the GOP lawmakers aim to challenge what he has done in his first two years and hinder his agenda for the next two.
The extraordinarily close Colorado race was still officially too close to call on Saturday. After tallying the last few remaining ballots, Boebert led Frisch by just 554 votes out of 327,110 cast — a margin of 50.08% to 49.92%, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
The results have triggered an automatic recount through Colorado’s election law, under which Boebert would have needed a winning margin of at least 819 votes to avoid the process.
The first step of the recount involves election officials in the 3rd District auditing and canvassing the election to determine how many ballots had been disqualified, with a deadline of Nov. 30. Their report will be submitted to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who would then have until Dec. 5 to decide whether to order the recount.
Only after that has been completed would the results be officially certified.
Election analysts, however, say it’s unlikely any recount will supply the hundreds of additional votes Frisch needs to change the results — no recount in Colorado has ever resulted in more than a few dozen votes being reassigned.
