Even as Colorado Democrats are proposing to join the nation’s bloody redistricting wars, Donald Trump has decided to weigh in.
On the Democratic side.
I’m serious. On the day after Trump’s State of the Union address, you must think my brain has gone to mush after watching him endlessly natter on.
While that is certainly possible, I wrote this column before the address — knowing that Trump had withdrawn his endorsement of Rep. Jeff Hurd, the Republican congressman in the 3rd Congressional District, in favor of one of the Colorado GOP crazies.
In other words, Trump may be in the process of giving Democrats a seat that he and Republicans desperately need to hold if they want to — and I assume they want to — hold on to their slim majority in the U.S. House.
So, why did he do this?
Do you really have to ask?
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SUBSCRIBEIt seems that Trump was miffed at Hurd for voting against Trump’s tariffs, even though the bill passed and he could have simply ignored what was a meaningless vote. But, no.
When Trump is miffed, that means the tantrums follow, just as they did on Monday when three conservative Supreme Court justices joined the court’s three liberals in ruling that Trump’s tariffs were unconstitutional.
As you may recall, Trump then accused the conservatives — two of whom he appointed — as being disloyal to him and possibly under the influence of “foreign interests.”
Yeah, he basically accused them of treason for issuing a ruling he didn’t like.
He didn’t go quite that far with his Hurd tantrum, but did call him a “RINO” — Republican in Name Only — which he considers a major insult, along the lines of fascist and commie. And he wrote on social media that Hurd was “one of a small number of Legislators who have let me and our Country down.”
Yes, Trump did say Hurd was also disloyal, especially to him, but he didn’t accuse him of treason. So there’s that.
But what he did was endorse Hurd’s opponent, Hope Scheppelman, who is so far to the right, so embarrassing in her positions, particularly on LGBTQ issues, so ultra MAGA, that she was recently voted out of her position as state GOP vice chair.
It’s hard to be considered a real crazy in the state GOP, where one of its more prominent candidates for governor, state Rep. Scott Bottoms, just dropped a baseless charge that Democrats are running a pedophile ring at the state Capitol. But Sheppelman can almost hold her own.
Former state chair and GOP wiseman, Dick Wadhams, has said that if Scheppelman beats Hurd in the primary, Democrats would win the seat. Hurd, who is nearly a moderate in the state GOP, barely won the seat, by just five points, in 2024. You’ll remember that Rep. Lauren Boebert, the carpetbagging canoodler, left the district that year to run in the 4th because she feared losing the 3rd.
And the thing is, that’s not the only Republican seat in danger in Colorado. And it’s not just because demographics have helped turn Colorado into a bright blue state. But it’s also, in large part, because Trump has thrown a long-term tantrum against the state and people of Colorado. We know why. Because Gov. Jared Polis won’t — as of yet, anyway — free Tina Peters, the election denier, felonious grifter and only Colorado Republican Trump cares about, from prison.
That’s it.
It seems that Trump is willing to risk his good will with Supreme Court conservatives, who have mostly ruled his way during the Trump restoration, because he didn’t get his way.
And he’s willing to lose possibly as many as three seats in Colorado for the exact same reason — that he hasn’t gotten his way.
It’s fair to say that Trump — with his constant attacks on the state, with his attempts to withhold funding from those in need of clean water or maybe just food, with his assault on National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), since renamed the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) — has poisoned his relationship with Colorado, whose voters didn’t much like him before.
And it’s fair to say that Trump’s ICE thugs/agents — still holding Minneapolis under siege — don’t appeal to Colorado voters.
In his three races in Colorado thus far, Trump has never won as much as 45% of the vote. But now, while there hasn’t been much polling in the state, Trump is running at about 40% or lower nationally, so it’s probably even lower than that in Colorado. He doesn’t have coattails. He has jackboots.
Let’s take a brief look at the other districts. We can assume Boebert will retain her seat in the 4th CD, even though she did make Trump mad for demanding the Epstein files be opened. He has managed somehow to hold his temper, reserving his enmity for Boebert’s frenemy, Marjorie Taylor Greene. But if it seems to you that Boebert has been keeping her head down of late, it seems the same way to me.
Meanwhile, the 8th CD, in the Denver suburbs, was drawn by the Colorado districting commission to be a tossup district. And it is, in fact, a tossup again. Rep. Gabe Evans, who barely won in 2024, is in a race rated as among the closest in the country. No one expects anything different.
And then there’s the 5th CD, in El Paso County. This Republican stronghold has never — as in never — voted for a Democratic congressperson in the 50 years since it was drawn. It should come as a shock then that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has declared the district, represented by Jeff Crank, as one of its “districts in play.”
That means money and resources coming the way of Jessica Killin, who is heavily favored to win the Democratic primary in the 5th. It also means that Democrats think they seriously have a chance because, however much money they’ve raised for this cycle, there’s enough to spare, particularly when so many races will be contested this year.
Why the 5th CD?
Because if you look closely, as The Sun’s Jesse Paul did recently, the district is not what it used to be. It is becoming more Democratic. In 2018, Polis, then running for his first term as governor, lost El Paso County by 18 points. In 2022, he lost by four. Meanwhile, Colorado Springs elected an unaffiliated Nigerian immigrant, Yemi Mobolade, as mayor a year later.
So, if Election Day in November goes dramatically the Democrats’ way, they could potentially swing the state’s congressional delegation from a 4-4 split, as it is today, to a 7-1 Dem majority.
Which would be, well, funny in its way. Because when voters decide in November whether to allow for a temporary gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts, a 7-1 majority is exactly what they’re looking for. A proposed map would give Dems the edge in seven districts in 2028 and 2030, leaving Boebert as the lone Republican.
I know there are Democrats, even in this time of existential crisis, who are worried they’d be giving up their small-d democratic values to vote for the midcycle redistrict while making themselves as small-minded as Trump himself.
But here’s the news: Dems may not have to get their hands so dirty. Not if Trump — he of dirty and bloody hands — gets there first.
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.
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