Colorado — 3rd District

Dwayne Romero, an Aspen-area resident and Army veteran with decades of local political experience, has an early lead over his opponent, Alex Kelloff, to become the Democratic nominee for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District seat.

Results as of 7:30 p.m. show Romero leading Kelloff by a 16-percentage-point margin in Tuesday’s primary election. Romero was winning 58% of the vote, while Kelloff held onto just under 42%, according to preliminary results from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

On the Republican side, incumbent Rep. Jeff Hurd, a first-term congressman, beat his primary challenger, former state lawmaker Ron Hanks. The Associated Press called the race shortly before 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Preliminary results from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office show Hurd beating Hanks, a former state representative, by a 36-percentage-point margin.

Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, which stretches from the northwestern corner of Colorado throughout most of the Western Slope and also swings east to include Pueblo, favors Republicans and hasn’t been represented by a Democrat since 2011.

Democrats came close to flipping the seat in 2022, when then-incumbent Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican, won reelection by just 546 votes against former Aspen City Council member Adam Frisch. Those margins widened, however, in 2024 after Boebert switched districts. Hurd beat Frisch, who launched a second campaign that year, by nearly 20,000 votes.

But Romero believes this election will be different, hoping that growing discontent with President Donald Trump will help him flip the seat.

If elected, Romero has pledged to reverse cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, that were passed last year as part of Trump and congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

He said he wants to protect public lands from being sold and that he would help reassert Congress’ role as a coequal branch of government that can serve as a check on the Trump administration.

Romero’s career in local and state politics spans three decades and includes stints on the Aspen City Council, Aspen School District Board of Education, his local fire district board and his local water and sanitation board, on which Romero currently serves.

Additionally, he worked for several months as economic development director under former Gov. John Hickenlooper, sat on the state’s economic development commission for three years and served 11 years in the U.S. military. He also currently runs a real estate business, Romero Realty.

Romero raised over $338,000, with $350,000 in loans for his campaign, while Kelloff raised over $661,000, with $550,000 in loans, according to the most recent campaign finance reports. Romero spent over $317,000, while Kelloff spent over $996,000.