Adam Frisch ran for Congress in 2022 and 2024 for Colorado’s third congressional district, a red leaning district containing all of the Western Slope, Southwest, and most of Southern Colorado. It’s a mountainous and very rural district — and it happens to be the district that I call home. In 2022, Frisch lost by 546 votes to Lauren Boebert in the closest House race in the country during that election. Over the course of his two campaigns, Frisch, with his son, drove a total of 77,000 miles around the district, talking to constituents.
After losing a second election in 2024, this time to Jeff Hurd, Frisch has started working with The Welcome Party, a centrist Democratic group focused on a “Big Tent Democratic Party”. His priority is finding centrist Democratic candidates for the 2026 midterm election to win back some swing districts. I chatted with Frisch about his campaigns, his thoughts about how the Democratic Party could connect with more rural voters, and what he’s up to next.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ilana Newman, The Daily Yonder: Can you start by introducing yourself and tell me a little bit about what initially inspired you to run for Congress in 2022?
Adam Frisch: Father, husband, fellow. I was born in Northeastern Montana on Fort Peck Indian Reservation. My dad was in the public health service and so we lived kind of where the North Dakota, Montana, Canada border all comes together. And both my parents are from Northern Minnesota. I grew up in Minneapolis and ended up at the University of Colorado. Went out to New York City on a bit of a whim with a buddy who was chasing a girl and I waited tables for a year and then I fell into working in finance. I did that for about 12 years, left after too many 9-11 funerals, ended up meeting a gal on the Western Slope and we’ve been in Aspen, or I call it Upper Pitkin County, for the past 20-some years. I was on city council for a while. My wife was on the school board. That’s like elected community service. I was never planning on running for Congress or anything to do with a kind of a “real” political conversation. I’ve always been interested in policy more than politics.
But there were just some comments made in the summer and the fall of 2021 by Representative Boebert. I don’t know the specifics, but they were very on brand – divisive, derisive, homophobic, racist. Nothing to do about the district, all to do with what I call the “angertainment” industry of politics. And so my wife and my politically active son, who was 16 at the time, they’re like, listen, Adam, Dad, you should think about running. I came to the realization that [Boebert] was the only [contested seat] that was mathematically able to lose if there was someone that could pick up 10% of [Republicans’] prior voters. We looked around and figured out if anyone else could really do it. Maybe every knucklehead who runs for Congress says only I can do it, but I’m like, okay, maybe we should do this. And I’m pretty self-aware. I told the Democratic primary voters that they’re probably not looking for a fairly successful straight middle-aged white guy from the mountain towns, let alone Aspen, to run around Western and Southern Colorado carrying the Democratic flag. The district’s only 22% registered Democrat. The district’s bigger than Pennsylvania, it’s 50% of the state of Colorado. It’s one of the largest, thus one of the most rural districts in the entire country. And so the last three years I spent 20 to 25 days a month literally driving all over Western and Southern Colorado having this conversation. I just wanted to bring what I call a pro-normal party coalition to the conversation when Lauren Boebert was in office.
DY: So you talk about all of the campaigning you did, all the road trips that you did around this rural part of Colorado as part of both your campaigns. What did you learn about what rural Coloradans care the most about and how did you approach your campaigning on the Western Slope?
AF: Yeah, it was awesome driving around and having these conversations with people. It’s certainly frustrating when you hear other people say, well, we need to go out and talk to the voters. Of course, you need to talk to the voters! How else are you supposed to do this stuff? Look what happens when you hire political consultants and do focus groups and message testing versus just getting in the truck. One of the things I’ve learned is that 80% of us in the country believe about 80% of the same values and issues. People want stable economic opportunities for themselves and their children. They want good, safe neighborhoods and good, safe schools. After that, everything is minor. The problem is that the “angertainment” industry of cable news, they only make money when people are yelling and screaming. They don’t make money when people are agreeing. Most people are kind to each other. People are living 15 dimensional lives. They’re a farmer or a rancher or a small business owner. They might be white, they might be Latino, they might be old, they might be young, they might be male, they might be female, they might be a father, they might be a daughter, they might be an aunt or an uncle. So the problem is everyone’s living 15 dimensional lives and we’re being asked in our political system to pick ourselves in a one dimensional conversation. Are you really left or really right. My view is 80% of us are between the two 40 yard lines. I don’t care if you are a young white urbanite or a Latino rancher in Cortez.
DY: Yeah, so how did that kind of dictate your campaign strategy? How did you try to bridge that gap between the commonalities instead of the differences?
AF: We have 27 counties in our district. We have counties that are 85% Democrat, and we have counties that are 85% Republican. We have some of the wealthiest counties in the entire country and we have some of the least well-off in the entire country. Our district is, I think, 22% Democrat, 32% Republican, and about 45% Independent. I was called both brave and dumb all the time, because I kept on talking about the issues in the exact same way, whether I was in Telluride or whether I was in Rangely, Colorado. Those two municipalities and communities are very, very different. Everyone loves a small town. Everyone loves natural beauty. But they’re really different communities. I made it very clear – and it didn’t make everybody happy – but I’m like, “listen, I am on team Colorado’s Third District. I’m not so focused on team Republican or team Democrat. I’m on team Colorado.” I’m on team CD3 and every issue I saw through the lens, not as a Democrat but as a leader of Southern, Western Slope, Southwest Colorado. When you look at that lens, the extremes will think you’re brave or dumb, but a lot of people understand, “hey, that’s the type of person that I want possibly representing me, regardless of where the national political conversation is.” There’s a lot of hard things about running for Congress, especially in a district that’s so big. The easy thing for me is when I wake up in the morning, I just told people what I believed and it didn’t matter if I was standing in front of a lot of highly formally educated liberals or I was talking to people in the coal communities or Latino potato farmers down in the San Luis Valley. I believe, especially in our smaller, more rural areas, authenticity and sincerity are the two biggest assets that anybody running for office needs to show up with. It was never “I am here to run as a checklist of votes I’m going to do.” It was, “I’m here to learn more about what you and your family and your small business and your small community are going through.”
DY: What do you think that Democrats could do to better appeal to the rural voters that they’re trying to attract?
AF: Okay, this is a 4,000 page answer. Let me raise some facts that I think are important: out of about 3,100 counties in the country, about 2,000 of these counties are categorized as rural by the Department of Agriculture based on density. Almost every single county in our district [is rural]. So in 1996, rural America was 50-50. Bill Clinton won a slight majority of the rural counties. And you saw the urban areas had a more balanced breakout of Republican and Democratic mayors. So rural America goes from 50% Democratic to 25% Democrat with Barack Obama, 10% with Biden, and about 8% of the rural counties ended up voting for Vice President Harris.
Rural is a lot more diverse than a lot of people realize. We have 574 Indian tribes. You have a lot of Latinos, especially in southern Colorado. So our economic message, when it’s purely about economics, does resonate with a lot of rural areas. To me, this rural-urban divide is more of a producer-consumer conversation. And if you look at the 64 counties of Colorado, a dozen of them are more on the consumer side of things, not just the metro area of Denver and Boulder and Telluride and Aspen. And then you have 50 counties that are more on the producer side of things. So you have these 12 consuming counties and then you have 50 counties that are really producing things – producing steel down in Pueblo, producing food in the southwest and other places in Colorado, producing domestic energy, not just solar and wind, but also natural gas. And the consumer class has become a lot more Democratic over the past 30 years, and they have culturally looked down on those that have been producing things. You see people in Aspen and Denver and D.C. and New York giving grief to people that are producing domestic energy, natural gas producers in Western Colorado. The cultural disconnection between the loudest voices of the Democratic Party and the voters that live in small towns has turned into a huge canyon.
DY: Yeah, so would you say that you see that disconnect happening on a messaging level? Like Democratic policy would better serve rural communities, but the messaging isn’t getting there? Or do you think that the policy itself needs to shift to better serve those rural communities?
AF: So I think it’s a combination. The Democratic Party keeps on showing up with complicated cookbooks. And the Republicans are showing up with brownies. And so my pitch is to find some sincere brownies, spend more time talking about the results than the factors that go into it. Talk about results and outputs as opposed to complicated inputs. That’s just a general message that I can offer to my fellow Democrats, which is, it’s not being superficial, but it’s focusing on how most voters look at politics, which is “how is my family or community going to be better off?” And the Democrats just spend way too much time talking about this legislation that they’re hoping to pass and this type of bill and this regulation they want to do.
I’m pretty sure the economic policies for farmers and ranchers can be viewed as better coming from the Democratic Party. Having said that, at some point the overregulation of farming and ranching has gotten in the way of common sense regulation. The Democrats want to support domestic farming, but they put in regulations that tell people that you should not really be in business and we’re better off exporting or importing our fruits and vegetables. Because of the inputs of the regulatory environment, you add them all up, it turns into an over-regulated, over-burdensome conversation. There’s ways to protect the environment and protect workforce standards at the same time as making sure that a domestic producer can still operate. Again, I go back to that cultural thing. We’re showing up with a farm bill and the cultural stuff of you really shouldn’t be eating that type of food or you shouldn’t be working that type of domestic energy and this job is okay for you and your family, but this [other] job is not okay for you and your family, right? There are some policies I just think are wrong.
I think the student loan forgiveness is an example. Without a doubt, the cost of college has skyrocketed out of control. Without a doubt, it’s gotten way too expensive to try to figure out how to pursue a four-year or even a two-year college degree. But the economics major in me says, if you don’t change the demand of something and you put in a half a trillion dollars, it’s not going to reduce the cost of anything. And I don’t think any president should have a half a trillion dollar signing ability, whether it was President Trump or former President Biden. Even President Biden himself said it was illegal and he still went through and did it for political purposes. And then sure enough, the courts kept on pushing back against him and telling him it was illegal. There are people, know, the farmers and ranchers were wondering, hey, I didn’t pursue a four-year college degree path. I’m not getting the $20,000 break on a pickup truck that I might need, but you’re giving a $20,000 break for someone who wants to pursue a four-year college degree, which they should certainly go pursue that. But why should that group of people be bailed out if we want to get into a conversation about debt forgiveness. Maybe we should have a conversation about medical debt, or maybe we should have a conversation where for every $1 that goes into a college forgiveness program for a family making less than $80,000, $3 goes into a family making more than $200,000.
DY: Your campaigns, and now with your work with the Welcome Party, it really emphasizes finding that center, making sure that everyone feels included and kind of appealing to some of those further center-right voters. How do you find yourself bridging that gap between the very progressive Democrats on the far left and then those voters on the center-right who might be convinced to vote for certain Democrats, especially locally.
AF: Well, the easy thing for me is I just stand up and say what I believe. And so when I told people I was going to end up being probably one of the most conservative Democrats in the House, that was not a pitch because of the demographics of the district. It was a pitch because that’s what I’ve believed for a very long time. You know, I have a belief and the data shows it. About 80% of us are between the two 40-yard lines. You can imagine a bell curve if you will. And as you get, if you want to be binary or linear, as you get to the more progressive, the more or to the very progressive, you lose people. The problem is the loudest voices and the insiders are on the 20-yard line and I’m not asking people to change their views. They should believe what they want to believe, but they do need to understand that they are not where a majority of the people are, nor a majority of where the party is.
I personally think, and those of us at the Welcome Party believe, that there’s a way to protect and honor core Democratic values and still build a coalition that can win. Because if you don’t win, you don’t govern. Those of us at the Welcome Party were trying to bring as many people in as possible. We’re of the belief that the vast majority of people in the country have pretty centrist views about things. And that’s just not where the loudest voices of the Democratic activists are. I’m a big believer that “if we all don’t hang together, we’re all gonna hang, together.”
DY: So what is next for you? Are you going to be running for office again or what are you doing next?
AF: I’m not saying over my dead body that I am never running again. I have many, many months to figure that out for different reasons. My goal for the remainder of ‘25 remains to be focused on working with the Welcome Party and building a coalition of centrist Democrats in areas across the country where if it wasn’t for the centrist Democratic model there would not be any Democrat there at all. I call it “Project 225,” which is that I want 225 to be the floor in the House for [Democratic] members. And the way we do that mathematically and data-driven is by getting more centrist Democrats elected to the House.
DY: Anything else that you’d want to add? Any key takeaways from your learnings in Colorado that you’d want to share?
AF: I argue that Colorado’s third district is the prettiest district in the entire country. I’ll go to the mat to challenge anyone from Wyoming or Hawaii in that conversation. And it was an honor to [run for Congress]. But I just cannot say how important it is for people that want to run and be successful to get out there and spend time with the people, just not on the phone calling people for money in these really big cities. We lost, right? But it shocked a lot of people. So my message to the people that are in the institutional aspects of the Democratic Party is please reach out to the people that have done very well. There’s lessons to be learned and not just from me, but from a lot of other people that have done even better.
Copyright 2025 Daily Yonder.
This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer.
This story was produced through the Daily Yonder Rural Reporting Fellowship, with support from the LOR Foundation. LOR works with people in rural places to improve quality of life. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico including Aspen Public Radio.
