The party’s current chair, Kristi Burton Brown, announced in December that she wouldn’t seek reelection when her term ends in March. Peters, who is set to stand trial in the coming months for allegedly plotting to breach election equipment, . She’s joined by Erik Aadland, who in November lost his bid to represent CD-7 to Democrat Brittany Pettersen, and Casper Stockham, who unsuccessfully ran for the CD-7 seat in 2020 and the state party chair shortly after that.

Dave Williams, a former state representative who lost in a primary last year to fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn,is running, as is Kevin Lundberg, who spent 15 years as a state lawmaker. So, too, is Aaron Wood, a Highlands Ranch Republican who previously founded a conservative group that seeks to “to ensure Christian conservative values remain strongly rooted in our society.”

The election, run and decided by the state’s central committee, will be held March 11 in Loveland.

Whoever succeeds Burton Brown will take the reins of a state party in disarray after several election cycles of decisive defeats. Democrats have now won all four statewide contests — governor, secretary of state, treasurer and attorney general — for two successive cycles, and their control over the General Assembly has grown to a supermajority in the House and near-supermajority in the Senate. Colorado Republicans lost both competitive Congressional races in November in an election that was billed as a red wave. Even U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert nearly lost, despite her district becoming more conservative since her first election.

Those losses, coupled with demographic shifts, require a years-long rebuild of the Republican Party in Colorado, various officials previously told the Denver Post. It’s an unenviable task: The party has been plagued by infighting in recent years, and veteran party members warn that there’s little a state-level leader can do to dim the polarizing national aura of Donald Trump. One consultant quipped in December that only the “insane, incapacitated or incompetent” would want to replace Burton Brown.

Despite the stark situation the candidates appear set to inherit, Stockham told the Post that the party chair was the best political job in the state. He said the party needed to emphasize unity and outreach if it is to emerge from the electoral wilderness, and he downplayed suggestions that Trump will negatively overshadow any work local Republicans undertake to rehab the party’s image.

Some of the sources and subjects of internal disunity and external polarity are now running to guide Republicans here for the next two years. Williams, no stranger to infighting during his time in the House, has called party leadership “charlatans” (a charge thrown at him by a now-former state lawmaker). In an email announcing his candidacy for party chair, he took shots at “the corrupt insider consultant class” and “failed party officials.”

Peters, Stockham and Wood all spoke at an anti-establishment protest outside of the Republican Party’s Greenwood Village headquarters after the November losses. Peters has consistently sought to sow baseless distrust of Colorado’s elections, and that the 2020 election was “absolutely rigged.”

Peters’s candidacy comes less than a year after she lost a primary bid to challenge Secretary of State Jena Griswold. Her trial was initially set to begin in early March, shortly before the state party election on March 11. that the trial will likely be delayed until the early summer.

Peters, who did not return messages seeking comment Monday, is facing six charges after she was indicted for allegedly allowing an outside party access to election equipment. She has denied any wrongdoing. At a state House committee hearing in mid-February, she said she “commissioned” someone to look at a forensic copy of an election server.

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There are five candidates looking to replace the current party chairman, U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, who decided not to run again for the position. Ranging from a former secretary of state to a three-time congressional candidate, the contenders are known entities to party insiders — and to some voters — and range from hardline conservatives to a centrist Joe Biden endorser.

Their divisions and similarities were on display Thursday night at a pizza restaurant in the small Weld County town of Hudson. the minutiae of party politics, such as fundraising and candidate recruitment, as well as false claims about the election.

“If Republicans do not accept the fact that Joe Biden won this election and are willing to say it, we’re screwed,” said Jonathan Lockwood, a 32-year-old campaign consultant who is one of the candidates. “People are going to leave a party that refuses to accept election results.”

Lockwood was the only candidate to say unequivocally that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Two other candidates, and Casper Stockham, said it was stolen. Two others, Colorado GOP vice chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown and former secretary of state Scott Gessler, said or suggested it may have been. When pressed by the debate moderator to show evidence of a stolen election, none did.

“Our current chair is telling us that we have a ‘gold standard’ election system in our state,” Stockham said in reference to Buck, who has angered some conservatives for defending Colorado’s elections. “But that gold standard is blue and I’m not happy with a blue gold standard. I want a red gold standard and I’m not going to quit fighting until that happens.”

Thursday’s forum came during a modern nadir for the Colorado GOP, which has about 1 million registered voters in the state and in the days after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol over election certification. Democrats control the statehouse and all statewide elected offices except for . Both U.S. senators are Democrats, along with four of seven U.S. House members. Colorado hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 2002 and only one since Watergate.

“The simple truth is, we have no numbers and we have no message,” Stockham said at the debate as Mancuso nodded along in agreement. “Most of the people who look at the Republican Party have no idea what we stand for. We’re not in the communities that we need to be in to make any changes, so we’re going to continue to lose.”

The 90-minute forum played out before a small, quiet crowd and was streamed . Three in-person attendees told The Post they appreciated the diversity that Lockwood, who is gay, and Stockham, who is Black, brought to the debate.

“I really loved seeing Jonathan and Casper saying, ‘I can tell people that no, (the GOP) is not what you think it is or what you might think it is, it is a much more inclusive party. It is a party that will work for people and you need to take a closer look,’” attendee Julianna Williams said.

But David Pourshoushtari, spokesman for the Colorado Democratic Party, said the GOP’s problems won’t be going away.

“Instead of focusing on sham recalls or legislation to make it harder for people to vote,” he said, “the Colorado GOP needs to look in the mirror and figure out why Colorado voters have rejected them so soundly over the past few cycles.”

Dick Wadhams was the only former Colorado GOP chair to attend the debate, and said Lockwood “starts out with about three strikes against him” due to his past and present criticisms of two Republican leaders — former President Donald Trump and former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner. Lockwood endorsed Biden for president last year and supported the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group of Republicans.

“It looks to me like there are two front-runners, they being Kristi Burton Brown and Scott Gessler,” Wadhams said of the race.

“Kristi Burton Brown has been the vice chair for the party the last few years. She has travelled the state. She’s a young woman, which I think makes her stand out, obviously. And I think she made a very compelling case for a new generation of Republican leadership,” Wadhams added.

Gessler is the best known of the candidates. He touted his time as an attorney for Trump’s 2020 campaign and his ability to win elections statewide.

“You could tell he has years of experience, fundraising experience, so he definitely brought a lot to the table as well,” said attendee Anne Evans, who was impressed with all five candidates.

“Kristi is a millennial woman, a mom,” Evans added. “I’ve known her for a bit, so I just loved seeing that represented in the party. You could tell she’s very passionate and had a lot to bring to the table.”

Gessler and Burton Brown verbally sparred on several occasions. Burton Brown criticized Gessler for installing Dominion Voting Systems — the Colorado election software and hardware company that was a frequent target of baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and has filed numerous defamation lawsuits — when he was secretary of state.

Gessler went after the current state of the Colorado GOP, of which Burton Brown is vice chair.

“If you want the same lack of creativity, if you want the same lack of initiative, if you want the same problems in the Republican Party, then keep the same people,” Gessler said.

Burton Brown also criticized Gessler for working as an attorney for a group that tried and failed to recall Gov. Jared Polis in 2019. But she faced questions from a moderator about organizing her own failed recall of Democratic state Rep. Tom Sullivan from Centennial that same year. Led by Burton Brown and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, conservatives wanted to remove Sullivan, whose son died in 2012’s Aurora theater shooting, for supporting gun control legislation.

She acknowledged “it was a bad strategic move” on Thursday night, adding that Sullivan “would have won the district anyway because of the demographic challenges there, where I live. But I learned from that.”

The day Buck and Burton Brown were chosen as chair and vice chair two years ago, Buck said in a speech that Republicans would teach Democrats “how to spell R-E-C-A-L-L.” But after a series of unsuccessful ones, Burton Brown said Thursday that a bigger emphasis should be placed on electing Republicans.

“I do think there has been discussion among Republican activists that we probably need to back away from those kinds of efforts,” Wadhams said of recall elections in an interview Friday.

The candidates only have a few more weeks to make their case before March 27, when the party’s central committee — a large group of party insiders and elected officials — to choose among them.

The result is an intraparty rift over a core tenet of American democracy — trust in elections — that is without precedent in modern history. “We think the election process is being abused and we are not happy with it,” said Holly Kasun, a member of the Colorado Election Integrity Project, which was created in late November to push for investigations into election integrity.

This is not the first time that political parties have questioned election security or results, but it has reached a new level in this year’s presidential election. It����ap also the first time an incumbent president is making the claims, said Paul Teske, dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver. Donald Trump and his allies have filed , almost all of which have been denied.

“The president has whipped up this whole frenzy of things that have no basis in reality, and he’s good at that, and his supporters believe a lot of what he says, whether it has basis in reality or not,” Teske said.

The 2020 election is the first Ray Langston, chair of the Montrose County Republican Party, has not trusted. So, on Nov. 24, he voted against certifying the Western Slope county’s election results, despite having total faith in Tressa Guynes, Montrose County’s Republican clerk and recorder, and seeing no evidence of fraud there. The board of canvassers certified the results in a 2-1 vote.

“This is a protest on my part,” Langston told Guynes, a fellow member of the board.

His concerns, as spelled out in a one-page statement to the canvassing board, were fourfold: that Dominion voting software can be manipulated (the company and county clerks say this isn’t true); that Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, is too partisan; that president-elect Joe Biden is possibly guilty of treason because of his son’s overseas dealings; and that the media is biased.

The following week, Langston took issue with U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a Windsor Republican who chairs the Colorado GOP, hosting a call on election integrity that ended with Buck and several Republican clerks stating emphatically that Colorado’s elections are safe and secure. Guynes was one of the clerks.

“Colorado’s system is the gold standard. It is absolutely amazing,” she said then.

The Zoom video call was streamed live to conservative social media site CaucusRoom. During and after the call, Trump’s Colorado supporters fired back at Buck and the clerks, calling them phony conservatives and anti-Trump.

“Your orchestrated, coordinated, and manipulative narrative intended to gaslight and pacify the people of Colorado is wholly rejected,” the Colorado Election Integrity Project wrote to Buck, a steadfast supporter of the president.

“I’m praying that somebody primaries him next cycle,” said Casper Stockham, a former Republican congressional candidate, who doesn’t believe the Colorado GOP is doing enough to support Trump. “The majority of Republican voters do not trust the outcome of the election in Colorado,” he added, saying this is the first U.S. election he has doubted.

In an interview Thursday, Buck reiterated his support for county clerks and his belief that there is no significant election fraud in Colorado. He said Coloradans watching cable news shows and hearing stories of election fraud elsewhere in the country have applied that to Colorado.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all that people are frustrated. A lot of these people believe very strongly in President Trump and appreciate what he’s done and they don’t understand how others cannot see the accomplishments of the Trump administration,” the congressman said.

When asked if he trusts Dominion, Buck said, “I trust the clerks and recorders to implement the system in a way that guarantees a credible election outcome.” He will not join several other congressional conservatives in challenging certification of the presidential election Jan. 6. He also will not seek a second two-year term as Colorado GOP chairman next year.

The disconnect between Republicans who defend Colorado elections and those who attack their credibility can make for odd moments. George Brauchler, a Republican district attorney for the 18th Judicial District and unsuccessful candidate for attorney general in 2018, defended Colorado elections as “pretty darn safe” on his radio show Dec. 5. But his guest, conservative activist Joe Oltmann, insisted “ginormous” corruption .

The current dynamic in Colorado has played out across the country. In swing states, Republican secretaries of state, Republican clerks, and Republican-appointed judges have refused to nullify the presidential election or give credence to claims of widespread fraud, finding them to be baseless.

Kasun, with the Election Integrity Project, a loose group of several hundred Coloradans who met over social media, said she is just as doubtful of Republican-run elections as those monitored by Democrats and, for the first time in her life, doubts elections here in Colorado are secure. When asked who she trusts, she cited social media accounts, Wall Street analysts, and statisticians casting doubt on the election.

“I talked to plenty of county clerks and they keep saying, ‘Yeah, Dominion has worked great for us for many years. We’ve never had any problems.’ Well, they don’t know what they don’t know. That����ap Republican and Democrat county clerks. They just have no idea what����ap going on,” she said.

Kasun played a role in overseeing elections this year: She was an election judge in Boulder County. Kasun says she did not see any evidence of fraud, and was impressed by the adjudication process, in which ballots flagged during the scanning stage are reviewed by members of both political parties before being approved. But Kasun believes Dominion software could have switched votes, something the company and county clerks strongly deny.

Dominion was selected for use in Colorado elections by a bipartisan committee under former Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams. Still, members of the Colorado Election Integrity Project have protested weekly outside the state Capitol, most recently on Tuesday during a meeting of the Legislative Audit Committee on election integrity.

Williams, now a Colorado Springs councilman, has repeatedly lauded Colorado’s election and mail ballot system. On Tuesday, he told committee members that in Colorado, the voting systems accurately record votes, and officials have proven it with Dominion 868 times.

“So, there is no one in Moscow, nobody in Beijing, nobody in Antifa, nobody in the Trump campaign that has changed a single ballot in the state of Colorado because you physically can’t do that unless you broke into the clerk’s office, you bypass the cyber locks, you somehow circumvented the 24-7 video surveillance and the security protocols that are in place,” Williams said.

The unsuccessful Republican-led effort to approve an audit of the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office turned into a more than eight-hour meeting that produced no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Republicans after the meeting said there may be no proof of rampant fraud, but it would be beneficial to do an extensive audit of the election systems. Democrats called the demands for a forensic audit trafficking in debunked conspiracy theories and harmful to all Coloradans.

Assurances that Colorado’s system is safe, the lack of evidence supporting allegations of theft of votes, the losing court battles won’t change the mind of voters like Jim Saunders, a member of the Election Integrity Project.

“This has gone way beyond whether or not the incumbent Donald J. Trump or Joe Biden win the election,” the Erie resident said. “It����ap whether or not the will of the American people is being heard.”

The state’s six incumbent U.S. House members on the ballot won reelection to Congress on Tuesday evening.

Rep. Jason Crow, an Aurora Democrat, was declared the winner by the Associated Press over Republican challenger Steve House for the 6th Congressional District in Denver’s eastern suburbs. Crow had 58% of the vote and House had 40% with 84% of the vote counted. Two other candidates split the remainder.

Rep. Ken Buck, a Windsor Republican, beat Democratic challenger Ike McCorkle in the 4th District, on the Eastern Plains. Buck had 60% of the vote and McCorkle had 37%, with two other candidates splitting the rest, with 87% of the vote counted.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter, an Arvada Democrat, was declared the winner over Republican challenger Casper Stockham and three other candidates for the 7th District, in Denver’s western suburbs. Perlmutter had 60% and Stockham had 37% with 90% of the vote in.

In Colorado Springs, Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn had 57% of the vote vs. Democratic candidate Jillian Freeland and three others with 79% of the vote in.

Rep. Joe Neguse, a Lafayette Democrat, was ahead of Republican challenger Charlie Winn and two other candidates in the 2nd District, which includes Boulder and parts of the northern mountains. Neguse had 62% with 83% of the vote counted.

In Denver, longtime Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette was the winner over Republican candidate Shane Bolling and three other challengers. DeGette had 75% of the vote and Bolling 22% with 71% of the vote in.

“I tell my (Democratic) colleagues, ‘Go ahead, vote to impeach President Trump tomorrow.’ But when you walk out of this hearing room, call your freshman colleagues and tell them they’re not coming back and you hope they’ve had their fun,” said Buck, a Windsor Republican. “Say goodbye to your majority status and please join us in January of 2021, when President Trump is inaugurated again.”

Those remarks by Buck, who chairs the Colorado Republican Party and is thereby tasked with electing Republicans here, were premised on the idea that impeachment will harm freshmen House Democrats from swing districts. But to date, there is no public evidence it will hurt a freshman Democrat from Colorado.

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Aurora, was elected by a margin of 11 percentage points to represent Denver’s eastern suburbs in 2018, defeating a moderate Republican incumbent. On Wednesday, he was appointed an impeachment manager, a high-profile position that will make him a face of the prosecution team during the Senate’s trial of Trump.

On Thursday, Crow’s re-election campaign, which raised $440,000 during the impeachment-focused months of October through December, sent an email to supporters explaining his appointment, along with Crow’s combat service and oaths he has taken to defend the Constitution.

“We have worked very hard in the last year to deliver for the community,” Crow said in an interview this week, when asked whether voters, come November, will support his efforts to remove the president from office. “From making sure we’re addressing climate change, to gun violence issues, to health care.”

“Coloradans have also, very firmly and repeatedly, rejected some of the most egregious abuses of this administration, and they have very clearly said that they don’t want rubber stamps for the (Trump) administration,” Crow added. “They want people who will uphold their oaths and serve as a check on President Trump. So, we will continue to do both.”

The 6th congressional district is listed as D+2 by , a popular election metric. But Crow’s 11-point victory in 2018 was far more decisive. The district preferred President Barack Obama by 5 points in 2012 and voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump by 9 points in 2016.

In the district����ap 37-year history, Crow is the first Democrat to represent it, so Republicans in both Colorado and Washington, D.C., have called it a swing district. They’ve picketed outside Crow’s office and criticized his every move on impeachment. After Wednesday’s announcement, they claimed he’s a Nancy Pelosi confidante, the consummate Washington insider.

“Congressman Crow will forever be the Colorado face of this very one-sided partisan impeachment process,” said Casper Stockham, a Republican challenger to Crow, in an email to supporters Wednesday.

What Republicans haven’t done, to date, is put forth evidence that impeachment will harm Crow’s chances in November. Kyle Kohli, a spokesman for the Colorado Republican Party, says the evidence is out there in polls that will not be made public.

“According to our internal polling, we know that support for impeachment is upside down within Jason Crow’s district,” Kohli said, meaning more people there oppose impeachment than support it. “If Jason Crow thinks this is a winning issue, we look forward to him advertising his support for impeachment when he runs for re-election this fall.”

The public evidence is less convincing. Last month, Trump’s re-election campaign released polling showing some Democrat-held districts opposed impeachment by 10 percentage points, 53-43, and opposed the incumbent Democrats there by a similar margin.

The Colorado Republican Party shared the poll with reporters and claimed Crow was following Speaker Nancy Pelosi off an electoral cliff by supporting impeachment. But the pollsters didn’t talk to Crow’s constituents, or anyone else in Colorado.

When it criticized Crow’s appointment to impeachment manager Wednesday, the National Republican Congressional Committee pointed to of battleground districts that found most voters in those districts opposed impeachment. That poll of 800 people spanned 95 congressional districts across the country. It����ap unclear how many of those polled are in Colorado or what Coloradans told the pollsters.

The other side hasn’t been interested in sharing internal polling on impeachment, either. In November, Crow’s congressional office on that topic in the 6th District, but a Crow spokesperson declined this week to release the results of that poll or comment on its findings.

Steve House, a leading Republican challenger to Crow, said he was surprised the congressman was chosen Wednesday. He sees an ulterior motive in Pelosi’s decision.

“I would not be surprised if it����ap part of a broader strategy to use this ridiculous, expensive impeachment process to try to put special focus on Colorado, so that while daily impeachment proceedings happen, Colorado media will be asking what Cory Gardner will do as a juror,” said House, referring to Colorado’s Republican senator, who had been asked often about the Senate trial, even before Crow’s appointment.

“Instead of leveraging an unfair, unnecessary impeachment to potentially hurt Senator Gardner’s re-election, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Jason Crow should be working on solutions to reduce the overwhelming increase in health care costs since Obamacare went into effect, now bankrupting 44,000 Americans a month,” House added.

Because there have been only two impeachment trials in American history, the electoral ramifications for impeachment managers can be difficult to discern.

During the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton, were chosen to be impeachment managers. Only one lost his next election: Rep. James Rogan, who represented a swing district in California and was defeated by Democrat Adam Schiff, now the lead Trump impeachment manager. Another 1998 manager lost a Senate race in 2000 and two others lost their seats to redistricting in 2002. But several others went on to win election after election, such as Lindsay Graham, Steve Chabot and Jim Sensenbrenner.

Two U.S. House races in Colorado have been targeted by the parties as potentially competitive next year and there’s no evidence, to date, that either will be drastically affected by impeachment. National Democrats have their eyes on the 3rd District, the massive swath of western and southern Colorado represented by Republican Rep. Scott Tipton of Cortez.

Democrats have largely focused their criticism on his policy positions, especially on health care, rather than Tipton’s opposition to impeachment. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee paid for one ad in December, the month of impeachment, against Tipton. It was about prescription drug costs.

In updated results, DeGette was polling at 68 percent to Rao’s 32 percent as of 7:36 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Colorado secretary of state’s office. The margin has narrowed slightly as more votes are counted, but the large difference resulted in the Associated Press calling the race early Tuesday evening, about a half-hour after polls closed.

Rao embraced the outsider role in her progressive challenge of the establishment incumbent, who is the House Democrats’ chief deputy whip. Rao pressed the case that it was time for a fresh voice — and she said Democrats such as DeGette were not doing enough to oppose President Donald Trump.

Rao’s well-funded challenge fired up liberal activists. But ultimately it posed little threat to DeGette.

“It really didn’t turn out to be a very strong challenge, did it?” DeGette said in an interview Tuesday night.

“I will say this,” she added. “I’m so gratified by the vote of resounding approval that the constituents of the 1st Congressional District have given me. This opponent is, in fact, the most well-funded opponent that I’ve had. … The voters of the 1st Congressional District understand what I’m doing and that I’m fighting for them in Washington. I owe a never-ending amount of gratitude to them for sending me back to Congress.”

BREAKING: Diana DeGette wins Democratic nomination for U.S. House in Colorado's 1st congressional district. at 7:36 p.m. MDT.

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics)

Rao, a first-time candidate, did not express disappointment at the end result of a campaign that began in January.

“I feel like we have won. Getting (nearly) a third of the votes in five months, with zero name recognition, against a 22-year incumbent is startlingly successful,” Rao said in an interview. “If you looked at the crowd tonight, it was emblematic of our movement: It was black, brown, white, gay, straight. We have built a movement. … Tonight marks the beginning, and not the end.”

She said she and others would continue to push the Democratic Party to back more progressive stances that put “people over profits.”

Beside Denver, the congressional district also includes all or part of Englewood, Littleton, Columbine, Ken Caryl, Glendale, Cherry Hills Village and Sheridan.

Two years ago, DeGette handily headed off a primary challenge, drawing 86 percent of the vote against a candidate who drew inspiration from Bernie Sanders’ insurgent presidential campaign but raised little money.

Against the better-funded Rao, DeGette looked to be headed for a robust primary victory, if by a narrower margin this time.

Before 2016, DeGette last had faced a contested primary in 2002.

This year, DeGette argued that her party leadership post and her 20-plus years of experience would position her well to accomplish her policy goals if Democrats retook control of the House in the November election.

She expressed optimism that would happen Tuesday and said she looked forward to “fighting for my constituents for issues like a woman’s right to choose, reversing global warming and holding the Trump administration accountable.”

Still, the primary fight included subtle digs by Rao that tapped into a perception among some that DeGette, 60, has been absent from the district too often. Rao, 44, also criticized DeGette for accepting corporate political action committee donations.

Rao, a first-generation Indian-American, is a former Wall Street lawyer who now runs a business publishing children’s books written by authors from underrepresented backgrounds.

She slightly outraised DeGette in first-quarter fundraising earlier this year, and she reported spending more than $415,000 on her bid to oust DeGette in her most recent campaign finance report. But the incumbent raised more overall and has spent more than $720,000.

Looking ahead to the general election

BREAKING: In an uncontested race, Casper Stockham wins Republican nomination for U.S. House in Colorado's 1st congressional district. at 7:01 p.m. MDT.

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics)

DeGette will proceed to the Nov. 6 election against Republican Charles “Casper” Stockham, in a rematch.

In the reliably blue district, DeGette again will be heavily favored. Two years ago, she won re-election by a 40-percentage-point margin over Stockham.

All of Colorado’s U.S. representatives kept their seats after votes were tallied.

In Denver, Democrat U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette won about 68 percent of the vote, and will enter her 11th term as the 1st Congressional District representative. DeGette beat Republican Casper Stockham, . He ran on a socially conservative platform and won 28 percent as of 3:10 a.m. Wednesday.

Jared Polis won the 2nd Congressional District seat with 57 percent of the vote. He will serve his fifth term. Polis, a Democrat in a liberal-leaning district and has worked to promote startup culture. His opponent, Republican and Colorado native Nicholas Morse, who got about 38 percent of the vote, ran on a platform promoting limited government, Second Amendment rights and protecting oil and gas jobs.

“I am overwhelmed by the resounding support of the people of Colorado Congressional District 2 for another term. My message of ‘taking on the special interests today so we can tackle the challenges of tomorrow’ resonated with the voters of my district,” Polis said in a statement.

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis speaking now. "I hope at the end of the evening we have a lot of celebrate," he says.

— Jesse Aaron Paul (@JesseAPaul)

Former Weld County DA and Republican incumbent for the Republican-leaning 4th Congressional District, Ken Buck won the majority of the vote at about 64 percent and is headed to his second term. Buck has made appearances for Donald Trump’s campaign at rallies across Colorado. Buck’s rival, Bob Seay got about 31 percent of the vote.

Republican Doug Lamborn beat out newcomer Misty Plowright, a 33-year-old IT consultant, inspired to run for office by Bernie Sanders’ campaign and Colorado’s first transgender candidate running for office. Lamborn, a U.S. representative since 2007, won about 63 percent of the vote while Plowright got 31 percent. Lamborn’s district encompasses Colorado Springs and Fort Carson.

Ed Perlmutter will likely keep his seat in the 7th Congressional District with about 56 percent of the vote, against Republican George Athanasopoulos as of 3:10 a.m. Wednesday. Favored to win, Perlmutter was elected to the House of Representatives in 2006 and has worked to promote the aerospace industry and renewable energy in his district. Athanasopoulos is a veteran and Colorado native who served four tours in Iraq.

in a suburban Denver district and won his bid for a fifth term serving the 6th Congressional District, defeating Morgan Carroll.

reclaimed his seat in Colorado’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District by defeating challenger Gail Schwartz.

Updated Nov. 9, 2016 at 7:15 a.m:. The following corrected information has been added to this article: Lamborn’s district encompasses Colorado Springs and Fort Carson. An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the district.

Charles “Casper” Stockham knows he can’t contend with Diana DeGette’s $1 million in fundraising. He knows he’s only the latest to try to thwart her now-20 years of incumbency as heavily Democratic Denver’s congresswoman.

So instead, the Republican challenger spends his days talking to voters. A lot of them, one by one — on the street, in restaurants, at events and, more unusually, from the driver’s seat of his Hyundai Sonata.

Stockham drives for ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft five nights a week. For a guy with years of experience in direct sales and multilevel marketing — he hawked food, home products and personal-care products for the likes of Amway, Herbalife and Nu Skin — he’s a natural at promotion.

This time, he’s selling as a black conservative, an Air Force veteran and a Donald Trump supporter to left-leaning Denver, plus a few small suburban areas that also make up the 1st Congressional District.

If that sounds like a tough sell, Stockham says it’s not, at least in his interactions. He focuses on how he’d use the seat as a platform to tackle tough community issues, including homelessness, and on trying to find common ground on divisive issues such as abortion. In that case, he calls his position “pro-voice” — what that means, he says, is keeping abortion legal while urging that an expectant mother view a sonogram and consider the baby’s interests (or voice).

He’s also trying to connect with the African-American and Latino communities that he says have been taken for granted by Democrats.

“I’ve spoken to gay people, straight people — I made a trans friend the other day,” Stockham said at a table outside Coffee at the Point, a newer Five Points cafe. “I’m not some kind of closed-minded individual who won’t listen to what people are saying. And it’s resonating. …

“Most of the people I talk to are white millennials, and they’re mostly registered as Democrats. By the time I’m done sharing with them what I’d like to do, they like what I’m saying. And you know what? Ninety percent of them say they’re going to vote for me.”

Colorado Republican Party officials, including Chairman Steve House, express enthusiasm about Stockham’s candidacy and the potential to build bridges between the GOP and minority voters.

They also readily acknowledge that the deck is stacked against him. House figures Stockham has “a 25 percent chance, realistically, for where the district is.”

The last time a Republican broke 30 percent against DeGette was in 1998. Since DeGette first won office two years earlier, succeeding 12-term icon Pat Schroeder, she has never received less than 65 percent support on Election Day. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 5-to-2 among active voters.

Through June 30, Stockham raised $24,091 for his campaign, compared with nearly $1 million for DeGette, who had $194,790 in the bank at that point. Third-quarter finance reports are due by Oct. 15. 

DeGette is  to represent a district that also includes all or part of Englewood, Littleton, Columbine, Ken Caryl, Cherry Hills Village and Sheridan. Libertarian Darrell Dinges also is on the ballot.

“The congresswoman certainly takes every race seriously and never takes anything for granted,” said Lisa B. Cohen, who has served as DeGette’s chief of staff in Washington, D.C., since she took office and volunteers for her campaign. “She always campaigns hard and works hard to get rehired, as she likes to say.”

But political analyst and pollster Floyd Ciruli confirms that some community leaders, including DeGette supporters, have the perception that she has grown more disconnected from the communities she represents.

Cohen disputes that, noting that DeGette in June by winning 86 percent of Democrats’ support.

But Stockham sees that as an opportunity. He’s upbeat, if mindful that time is running short.

He hasn’t hesitated to take DeGette to task — sometimes in head-scratching ways, such as when he suggested her campaign’s inability to pin down debate dates during the time frame he wanted was because of DeGette’s “white privilege.” Both are set to appear at a taped candidate forum for Denver’s Channel 8 late this week.

Stockham, 56, graduated from high school in Stratford, Conn., at 17 and joined the Air Force. He served 14 years, loading bombs onto planes and then running and maintaining communication equipment.

In 1989, he moved to Colorado Springs to finish his service at Peterson Air Force Base. He soon found his way to Denver.

Now married to his wife, Cheryl, for 14 years, he has sold ads for minority publications, worked with several direct marketing organizations and started an online company that trains people to market their businesses. Only in the last few years did he get involved in politics, serving as president of the now-defunct American Conservatives of Color.

“My (campaign) message is planting seeds of dignity,” Stockham said. “I think our community has lost something,” particularly in lower-income and high-minority areas. “Even though we live in a first-world country, the mind-set of the people here is third world. They just want to survive.”

The solution? He says it lies in entrepreneurialism and in people taking personal responsibility instead of relying on the government. He passes out pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution. A campaign leaflet’s back page is titled “How to Win the American Game!” — and it includes tips for succeeding in life, from dressing better to finding spiritual connection.

He by locating his congressional office there. He says he then would move the office to other old buildings and fix them up for use by community and jobs programs.

He has reached out to community leaders but has met some skepticism.

“I thought: decent fellow, churchgoing man, has been in the black community earlier on,” said Tracy Winchester, who leads the Five Points Business District. A DeGette supporter, she accepted Stockham’s lunch invitation recently and then later saw his “white privilege” slam of DeGette.

“I’m not in favor of anyone who comes out with a negative slant,” Winchester said.

In Republican circles, Stockham has enthusiastic backers.

“Casper’s race is David vs. Goliath — everybody knows that,” said Derrick Wilburn of Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives, now vice chairman of the Colorado Republican Party. “But remember: David won that fight.”

Joe Webb, the Colorado GOP’s 1st Congressional District chair, recruited Stockham to run after meeting him at Tea Party events.

“I figured if I’m going to go down, I might as well go down aggressively,” Webb said. “I wanted somebody who would at least build a path — in other words, plow the seeds for someone else in the future. … And that’s what I believe Casper has done. He’s gone out and reached out to communities that are not traditionally Republican communities.”

Stockham said Wednesday he will be joined by other local politicians and community leaders outside the store, 2747 Welton St., as part of his Planting Seeds of Dignity initiative.

“Five Points, in Denver, has been going through a gentrification process for many years now since the addition of light rail,” Stockham said in a statement. “One of the last remaining symbols in this black community is the location known as Selman’s Records, so I am calling on all politicians and community leaders to help save and restore this iconic location in the Five points community.”

His initiative, he said, calls for bringing attention to the location to promote preservation and improvements, including a historic designation. He also plans to “lay out business recovery ideas that will bring prosperity back to the Five Points area for black-owned businesses.”

“My goal is to lease the Selman’s Records location for my congressional office, restore the location and set it up to be used for business development,” Stockham said. “I will then relocate to another location in the community and repeat the process.”

Once referred to as “The Harlem of the West,” Five Points was home to thriviing African-American businesses along Welton Street, as well as more than 50 nightclubs that attracted such greats as Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and Count Basie, .

The news conference, scheduled for 10 a.m., will be followed by a “VIP lunch” for up to 20 people, Stockham said. Those who would like to attend the lunch need to RSVP by Friday.