With all 64 Colorado counties reporting, the right-wing Republican streak that appears to have run through parts of Chaffee County unofficial results may not necessarily continue at the state level. At the state-level Republican primary, the more moderate candidates for U.S. Senator, Secretary of State and governor prevailed.
Chaffee had 26 individual primary races, with 21 primary races where the candidates were running unopposed; the Democrats have maintained (unusual for Democrats) a relatively united front with few contested positions, so the interest lay with the Republican primary races.
Photo courtesy of almanac.com
With 64 of the 64 Colorado counties reporting, as of 7:09 a.m. Wednesday morning, it appears that the moderate Republican candidate for U.S. Senator Joe O’Dea had taken a solid lead over right-wing state Senator Ron Hanks; taking 55 percent of the unofficial vote, and he has been projected the winner.
O’Dea will square off against U.S. Senator Michael Bennet (Democrat) in November. Locally, Hanks had a nearly three percentage point lead over O’Dea.
In the state-wide race for the Republican candidate for District 7, Erik Aadland took nearly 48 percent of the vote, besting Laurel Imer and Tim Reichert. In Chaffee County, Aadland’s lead was even greater at nearly 53 percent of all ballots cast.
On the local side, the relatively unknown Republican candidate Brandon Becker appears to have won over Alison Brown to become the Republican candidate set to run against former Salida Mayor P.T. Wood, who is running as the Democratic party candidate, for District 3 County Commissioner.
Becker has issued no written policy positions, and only recently set up a website. Like Hanks, he has perpetrated the big lie that he believes the 2020 election needs to be investigated due to voter fraud. (for the record, there was no voter fraud and President Biden was elected in a free and fair election). He also does not appear to have much in the way of experience or credentials (or spellcheck. His new website includes this observation; “Chaffey needs someone to stand up for the rights of landowners, business owners, and the people of this community.”) Which it should be pointed out is exactly what his opponent Brown said in a Republican town hall back in May, when Becker began to echo her positions on local issues, but without any solutions.
The right-wing streak ran through the Chaffee votes for Republican governor: Greg Lopez appears to have picked up 55 percent of the county’s Republican voters, to Heidi Ganahl’s 44.65 percent. But at the state level, Ganahl was leading at the latest state-level election update throughout the night. By this morning with all counties reporting, Ganahl bested Greg Lopez 53.5 percent to just under 47.5 percent, to face off against Governor Jared Polis in November.
Locally, some common sense seemed to prevail in the Secretary of State Republican Primary. Perhaps sensing that indicted Tina Peters (Mesa county Clerk and Recorder who has been charged with tampering with voting machines and releasing confidential voter information to a third party) might not survive to serve, local Republicans favored Pam Anderson.
Colorado Voter Turnout
Chaffee County turnout 38.95 percent
State turnout 28.24 percent
Ballots Cast 1,071,388
To view election results for Chaffee County, follow this link: https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CO/Chaffee/113974/web.285569/#/summary?v=299114%2F
To view State of Colorado election results follow this link: https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CO/113964/web.285569/#/summary
With the last counties reporting in, the numbers might change a bit, but not significantly. It should be noted that in Colorado, all election results are considered “unofficial results” until the election results are put through risk-limiting audits.
Alan, you really need to get a grasp on reality. You have never offered any shred of evidence to support any of your outrageous claims. The fact is you are rather boring so please just go away and bore your fellow right wing nutcases with your myths.
It is too bad about Brandon. He proved before the ballot he lacks integrity as he tried to use a cryptic F U to our president within the ballot, mocking our system of government and our democracy. That alone should be disqualifying as should his spreading of lies and support of a criminal who is unfit for office and residency as a traitor to this country. The GOP is no longer for democracy but for power, control, domination, fascism and the violation of rights and lives of women and non-white, non-male threats to their manhood by honest humans doing the right thing. They are simply going to eliminate the poor. It is a shame that ‘Christian’ Colorado votes for boobs instead of brains and fascism over democracy and violence over fair elections and lack the intelligence to care. The GOP candidates need to pay the consequences for their traitorous, OTH actions against our country and their voters are just not patriotic enough to care about anything but their guns and their elimination of their declared enemies – anyone unwilling to yield to the imposition of their bogus morality on those they have no right to control.
Regarding Becker and his typo, rightwing morons love rightwing morons, so the fact that he can’t even correctly spell “Chaffee County” is probably only going to endear him to a certain group of people.
I cannot believe you folks write as though you are providing news (data) and then use pejorative terms when presenting the info. You need to send your “journalists” back to school. Oh yeah, I forgot, that’s where they learned the proper adjectives and adverbs when writing about persons they disagree with. The editor should be ashamed
You reveal where your sentiments and support lay in this primary race Alan. The role of the county commissioner includes vast amounts of data and attention to detail and a candidate who does not pay attention to the small things would not seem to encourage confidence in their ability to absorb and handle the big things.