U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, one of a handful of Democrats who were tasked with finding party members to win back a House majority in November, doesn’t like the word “opportunity.”
The four-term congressman from Aurora was tabbed to serve as co-chair of the national party’s recruitment effort, and then for its battleground program, with the goal of winning at least one more seat than Republicans in the midterm elections. President Donald Trump , and most prognosticators predict this election. So the opportunity seems as strong as it could be for the party.
For Democrats, winning the majority when voting ends Nov. 3 would mark a return from the political wilderness in Washington, D.C. And for Crow, 47, it’d be a major feather in his cap as a power player in party politics.
But “opportunity” carries a positive connotation that Crow just doesn’t see one month from the election, he said in an interview. That voters are seemingly so eager for change means the country is doing poorly, he said.
In other words, Crow said, Democratic victory is “less an opportunity than a necessity” for the well-being of the country, its democracy and its people.
“Frankly, the fact that we’re in this position is not a good thing,” Crow said. “Because the environment we’re in — the position we’re in — is a reflection of the terrible situation this nation is in, and (of) what this president has wrought upon Americans and Coloradans, which is death and destruction and more war — and lawlessness and corruption the likes of which we have never seen in our lifetime.”
Shortly after the 2024 election that saw voters push out Democrats and return Trump to power for a second term, Crow diagnosed his party’s problem as one of elitism. Swaths of voters are “not listening to us because they don’t believe that we respect them and see them,” he told in March 2025.
In his recruitment and support, Crow leans on his own history as one of the Democrats who won a red district during the last big blue wave in 2018, during Trump’s first term, when he defeated then-Rep. Mike Coffman.
His district had been represented only by Republicans since it was created following the 1980 census — until Crow flipped it. Crow, a first-time candidate then, didn’t enter the 6th Congressional District race with a political pedigree but had military experience and a legal background. Millions of dollars flooded the airwaves to rip and support both sides.
Crow, a former U.S. Army Ranger, was launched into the national conversation when he was trapped in the House and helped colleagues during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters. He’d also served as an impeachment manager for Trump’s first impeachment trial a year earlier.
He is now running for his fifth term, against Republican Jason Clark and a few other candidates, in whatap widely now seen as a safe Democratic seat.
Recruitment role
Crow was given a chance to put his elitism theory to the test when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee named him co-chair of its recruitment efforts, along with U.S. Reps. Lauren Underwood of Illinois and Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky. He was tasked with finding, encouraging, mentoring and supporting candidates who would be vital to the party’s effort to flip the chamber — which now has a slim GOP majority — back into its control.
The result was highlighted in Democrats’ “red-to-blue” program and more than two dozen endorsed by Crow’s , with considerable overlap between the two.
The candidates are running in places from Alaska and Arizona to New York and Florida, and states in between. A unifying theme: None of the contests are lock-in Democratic races, and Crow expects many to go to the wire.
Crow said he looked for a handful of traits from the candidates: authenticity, independence, discipline and toughness. Where they landed on the Democratic political spectrum was secondary.
He said he singled out people who didn’t look ready-made from a “politician factory,” and who had led full lives before politics.
On the sidelines of “CrowFest,” a Crow-hosted event that drew hundreds of people last weekend in Littleton to support Democratic candidates, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed Crow’s desire for the party to field a variety of contenders.
Pelosi said in an interview with The Denver Post that while geographic or generational differences may at times put Democrats at odds with one another, a diversity of candidates ultimately brings more people into the party.
“We never want to hurt you, because you can always be a source of strength to us,” Pelosi said of candidates running this cycle. “That’s what we try to say to people. We’ve got to take it back to a place where (Democrats are) unified.”
When it comes to individual candidates, Crow said, voters can forgive a lack of polish, or the occasional misstep that every real person makes; but they can’t forgive people who seem like they’re putting on a show for votes.
He also recalled his own 2018 campaign to flip what was then a Republican-held seat — the amount of work it takes behind the scenes and the thick skin needed to weather personal attacks.
“Some of (the candidates) were on the fence, and really struggling with, ‘Do I put my family through this? Do I close my business? Do I deal with the death threats and being ostracized from my community and my family?’ And (then) all the things that can go with a race in a tough area,” Crow said.
“I said to many of them: I understand. You didn’t ask for this. You didn’t seek this out. But our nation is up against the ropes right now, and you just happen to live in a place, at a time, where there’s a few dozen of you, in America, who can jump in and do something big and help save our democracy.”
‘They want a fight’
The campaign season has since taken Crow to 11 states to stump for candidates, provide background support and help with organizing. While the candidates are seeking to represent different parts of the country, with different interests and needs, Crow said he sees a throughline where voters have “a real desire for systematic change, to unrig the system.”
“And they want a fight,” he added.
The dozens of candidates he’s recruited and supported fit that bill, he said, while bringing genuine connection to their districts.
The national Republican Party, of course, has a different take on the quality of Democrats’ candidates.
In a statement, National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella highlighted a number of races in which party-backed candidates lost their primaries to more progressive ones earlier this year. Those candidates, nonetheless, are still listed as part of the party’s red-to-blue program.
“National Democrats spent the entire cycle dumpster diving for scraps, and they came up with a band of far-left, unelectable socialists in key battleground districts across the country,” Marinella said in the statement about those who did advance to the general election. “After spending millions in messy primaries desperately trying to stop these lunatics, they’re now stuck with them as nominees in must-win races. Jason Crow would be better suited recruiting for an amateur dodgeball league than candidates for U.S. Congress.”
, a senior fellow in governance studies at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, said the prospect of a blue wave started to appear soon after Trump returned to office, much like it did following his 2016 election. That long lead time was likely a benefit to Democratic recruiting this cycle.
Good odds make it easier to recruit good candidates, and they give parties more time to vet candidates. And good candidates win races.
“There is clearly something happening because of Trump’s unpopularity and the things that he’s done,” Kamarck said. “The only thing that disrupts a wave is poor candidates.”
She cited, when Republicans were poised to wrestle back legislative power following President Barack Obama’s 2008 election — only to miss control of the U.S. Senate because voters rejected candidates who had bizarre backgrounds or were nonetheless out of step with an otherwise GOP-friendly electorate.
Alternatively, strong conditions for a wave election create their own expectations — and their own challenges for people like Crow to maximize results. If Democrats flip only five seats, for example, they’d still gain control of the House, but it would result in some griping that the party didn’t do as well as it should have, she said.
A party needs to win 218 of 435 House seats, all of which are up for election this year, for a majority. According to , only 22 of those are seen as true toss-ups. Another 21 are seen as leaning toward Democrats or Republicans, meaning they’re still competitive. The GOP currently has 219 seats, including an independent who caucuses with the party.
Crow said a bare majority would be a success, though he added that he’d obviously take as many seats as the Democrats can win.
But after that success would come the true opportunity: for Democrats to regain voters’ trust and break a cycle of “existential” elections that risk American democracy.
“We don’t want to rent districts temporarily or for one cycle,” Crow said. “We want to build a coalition that will endure for years to come. We want to reintroduce ourselves to rural America and working-class America and earn their support for the next generation. That’s the project as I see it.”
Staff writer Robert Tann contributed to this story.
