Colorado redistricting proposal could flip this Western Slope congressional seat from red to blue

Democrats would be the favorites to win three Republican-held congressional seats in Colorado in 2028 and 2030, under a redistricting proposal that was unveiled Wednesday by a Democratic-aligned group seeking to place the measure on the November ballot. 

The proposal could help flip the 3rd Congressional District, which is currently held by Jeff Hurd, a Grand Junction Republican who beat out Democratic challenger Adam Frisch, a former Aspen City Council member, in 2024. The district spans much of western and southern Colorado, including the cities of Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, Pueblo and Durango. 

The redistricting plan is being pushed by a newly formed group called Coloradans for a Level Playing Field, which said in a news release that it is responding to the gerrymander fight that kicked off last year after President Donald Trump urged several red states to redistrict their maps to secure more Republican seats in Congress. 

Coloradans for a Level Playing Field will have to clear several hurdles, including getting approval from the Colorado Title Board and gathering over 100,000 signatures, before it can place a measure on the ballot. Signature gathering alone can cost upwards of $2 million, according to the left-leaning think tank Bell Policy Center. 

The group registered earlier this month as a political issue committee with the Colorado Secretary of State. It has yet to report any financial contributions, the first round of which is due May 4. 

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Colorado could vote to join redistricting battle 

Coloradans for a Level Playing Field is seeking to place a measure on state ballots this fall that would replace Colorado’s current congressional map — drawn by the state’s independent redistricting commission in 2021 — with a gerrymandered map for the 2028 and 2030 elections.

After that, the map would go back to being drawn by the independent commission. 

Colorado’s eight congressional seats are currently split 4-4 between Democrats and Republicans, but under the redistricting proposal, Democrats could see a 7-1 advantage. 

Along with the 3rd Congressional District held by Hurd, Democrats would be favored to win the 5th Congressional District, which surrounds the Colorado Springs area and is currently represented by Jeff Crank, and the 8th Congressional District, which spans parts of Weld, Adams and Larimer counties and is represented by Gabe Evans. 

“No one wanted to have to take this action — independent redistricting is the ideal,” Coloradans for a Level Playing Field spokesperson Curtis Hubbard said in a statement. “But with Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans actively working to rig congressional elections, resulting in the potential gain of up to 27 seats in Congress, Colorado must join other states in countering this unprecedented power grab.”

Hubbard has worked on several state campaigns, including the 2018 initiative to create the independent redistricting commission. He added, “We can sit back and do nothing, or we can take action to approve temporary maps that will help keep our elections on a level playing field.”

In a statement, Colorado Republican Party Chair Brita Horn blasted the redistricting proposal, noting that over 70% of voters in 2018 supported the creation of an independent redistricting commission. 

“Coloradans wanted to get partisan politics out of the redistricting process then, and they have no interest in seeing it return to our state,” Horn said. “The effort to get rid of these commissions and to gerrymander Colorado explicitly in favor of the Democrats is nothing more than an effort by dark-money progressive-Democrat groups to regain control from the citizens of Colorado.”

As of the time of publication, the Colorado Democratic Party has not responded to a request for comment on the redistricting proposal.

The new 3rd District 

If the redistricting measure makes it to voters’ ballots and wins approval, it would dramatically alter the current boundaries of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. 

The map would cut off virtually all of the district’s northwestern part, including Moffat and Rio Blanco counties, and give that instead to the 2nd Congressional District, a Democratic-stronghold currently represented by Joe Neguse. 

The 3rd district would keep the southeastern-most corner of Garfield County, part of the Democratic-leaning Glenwood Springs area, but lose the rest of the county to the 2nd district. 

The 3rd district would also encompass larger portions of Eagle County, beyond the southwestern corner currently included, and take over the southern half of Summit County, including Breckenridge, which largely votes Democratic. The district would maintain other blue areas, like Aspen, and lose more conservative parts of Mesa County as well as conservative parts of southeast Colorado. 

The district’s current makeup gives Republicans an edge. Hurd won his seat in 2024 by 5 percentage points or 19,804 votes. President Donald Trump won the district that same year by nearly 10 points. 

Democrats came close to an upset victory in the district in 2022, when Lauren Boebert, who represented the district before Hurd, came within 546 votes of losing her seat to Frisch, the former Aspen City Council member. 

Boebert abandoned her bid for reelection in the 3rd district in 2024, choosing instead to run for Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, which she currently represents. The district, which encompasses much of the state’s Eastern Plains, is the only one not likely to move into Democrats’ hands under the redistricting proposal. 

Redistricting arms race heats up 

The nation’s redistricting war is continuing to unfold ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio all approved new maps last year that could net between eight and nine congressional seats for the GOP. 

Also last year, California countered Texas’ gerrymander with a voter-approved map that could wipe out as many as five Republican-held seats, while a state judge in Utah ordered the Republican-controlled legislature to redraw its map to add a new Democratic-leaning seat. 

Efforts to redistrict are also underway in Florida, Virginia, New York and Maryland. Altogether, the redistricting arms race between those states could lead to anywhere from a net gain of three Republican seats in Congress to two seats for Democrats, according to an analysis by the New York Times. 

Temporary redistricting in Colorado has been endorsed by both U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, Democratic candidates running this year to be the state’s next governor. 

Along with canceling out gerrymandering in other states, Coloradans for a Level Playing Field  says the need to temporarily redistrict the state’s map is driven by a looming U.S. Supreme Court decision that could curtail part of the Voting Rights Act, which voting rights advocates warn could wipe out several Democratic-controlled seats held by Black and Hispanic representatives. 

Coloradans for a Level Playing Field says it is pursuing several avenues for redistricting and has filed four potential ballot initiatives, one of which the group hopes will actually be placed before voters this year. That includes moving the independent redistricting commission, which is enshrined in the state constitution, to state statute and amending the constitution to temporarily suspend the commission until after 2030.

Removing something from the constitution requires just a simple majority of voters to pass, while amending the constitution needs support from 55% of voters.