Delta County Democrats hosted a number of candidates in Hotchkiss on Tuesday afternoon.
Among those “stumping” in the North Fork was Aspen businessman Adam Frisch who is looking to unseat incumbent Republican Lauren Boebert in the 3rd Congressional District.
LY: Your campaign's internal polling has you at a statistical tie with Republican incumbent Lauren Boebert in the race for the 3rd Congressional district.
How do you explain the recent polling numbers and do you believe that the tide is changing in your favor and why?
AF: We did a poll back in July and it had us down seven points.
We thought that if we could tell our story about ourselves and let people know more about Lauren Boebert, that she's not focused on this district, we could get within about four points.
And actually we're now within two, which is basically a statistical dead heat.
And let's remember, the district is about eight or nine points ahead for Republicans.
And if you throw in some extra incumbency, which happens, theoretically at the very start Lauren Boebert should have been up 12 or 13 points and she started off, so basically up seven, and now we're basically tied.
And we stand by Keating Research, he's one of the top pollsters in the state, nationally recognized as well with 538 etc.
And I do believe we saw a little bit of change in Lauren Boebert's travel schedule, she's starting to do fewer national tours as she was doing before, so I think before we did our poll, I think she did her own little poll and realized that the race was a lot closer than she was thinking and expecting.
And the reason is that, I believe from day one about a year ago, that I thought that there was about 40% of the Republican party and a bunch of Independents that want the circus to stop and they want people to actually do the job of representing us.
And I think that Lauren Boebert and her mentor Marjorie Taylor Greene are the leaders of what I call this 'angertainment' industry of yelling and screaming and not focusing on what's important, and we're just making it very clear, not about anything in her personal life, it's all about that she's not focused on this district, she has voted against this district's interest over and over, and over and over again.
She is ineffective as a legislator, she is zero for 39.
She has proposed 39 bills over the past year and a half or almost two years, and zero of them have actually got out of committee, let alone been signed into any type of legislation.
And there are a tremendous amount of Republicans that have actually had a lot of success working with Democrats, as they should in a bipartisan manner, and that's exactly what I'm trying to work on as well.
And so I think people are starting to realize, especially when it comes to water and veterans rights, rural healthcare and rural education and trying to tackle inflation, it's not this super left, super right, it is competency and focus, and rural versus urban.
LY: In the final run up to November 8, how important is the abortion issue in the district?
AF: So I think there's a couple things I want to get across.
It's just a pretty personal issue to me.
My father was an OB-GYN for 50 years, and he spent his last couple years of practice making sure that Planned Parenthood in Arizona had the correct amount of education training for the next generation of healthcare providers.
And my youngest sister in Minneapolis is an OB-GYN as well, and so, you know, to me, CD 3 is a lot like Kansas, and we all saw what happened in Kansas.
That was a big warning sign to those who are anti-choice and anti-healthcare freedom for women's healthcare reproductive rights.
A lot of us were cheering Kansas and hoping they could win by two or three points and then won by 19.
Soon after that, and soon after the Dobbs decision came out, overturning Roe v. Wade, after almost 50 years, you saw a bunch of Republicans start to scrub literally their websites, because they had these extremist views they did not think they had to own, and now they need to own them.
And let's be very clear, Lauren Boebert remains very proud that she is with this 8 to 10% of the country that does not believe in the exceptions, even in the face of rape, incest, the life and health of the mother.
And so where we're not shy about letting people know that it's important that the men and women and the families deserve medical freedom when it comes, especially when it comes to the healthcare, and especially when it comes to reproductive rights.
LY: What would an upset win over Congresswoman Boebert mean for the 3rd Congressional District, Colorado and the nation?
AF: It'd be huge.
I wrote a two-page paper kind of to myself back in October about how to win and what this would mean, and I've made it very, very clear, this is going to be the emotional win for the country.
I looked back at these races a year ago, and I looked at 2020 and I saw that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar, Mo Brooks all had 65 to 75% wins.
And you've seen some extremes on the left as well, they all had very high wins.
Lauren Boebert only won 51% of the district.
She did not win her home county, Those that know her the best, do not care for her, and a lot more people know her now than before.
And I've been telling everyone whether they're moderate Republicans, Independents, even conservative Republicans that want to follow the rule of law and get back to the normal conversations, this is going to be the emotional win for the country, an emotional win for the Democratic Party, but more importantly for the country.
And I'm building this bipartisan coalition.
I'm super excited to focus on that, and I just want to do my little part to start chipping away at the extremism on both sides, but especially the Republican side, and make sure that the families and businesses and the communities of CD 3 are finally represented.
This story from KVNF was shared with Aspen Public Radio via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico including Aspen Public Radio.
