June 26, 2025 01:33 PM UTC

New Democrats Look to Challenge in Historically-Republican District

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• by: Colorado Pols

In the 2024 election, former radio host Jeff Crank became just the fifth different person to represent the Colorado Springs-centered fifth congressional district. Just like the other four people who preceded him, Crank is a Republican.

As Colorado has become a solidly-blue state over the last 10+ years, CO-05 is the one congressional district has eluded Democratic challenges. It looks like several Democrats are going to give it a shot in 2026. Someone named Jamey Smith is officially in the race and sending out fundraising messages, but the more interesting potential candidate is a person who would be moving here in order to run. As The Downballot and a few others reported earlier this month:

Democrat Jessica Killin, a one-time chief of staff to former second gentleman Doug Emhoff, plans to challenge freshman Republican Rep. Jeff Crank in Colorado’s 5th District, reports Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin and Punchbowl. Killin previously served the same role for several different House Democrats, including most recently Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.

On paper, Killin is certainly an interesting candidate aside from her deep connections with well-known Democratic officials. Killin’s Linkedin profile notes that she is a veteran of the U.S. Army (Military Police), an attorney, and an Ironman Triathlete. Killin will no doubt play up her career in the Army as a bonus in a district with a heavy military presence (Ft. Carson, the Air Force Academy, NORAD, etc), but as we’ve learned over the years from other Democratic challengers with similar backgrounds, it is more important in CO-05 to be a Republican than it is to be anything else. Jeff Crank is not a military veteran, nor were previous office-holders Doug Lamborn and Joel Hefley.

Nevertheless, The Downballot notes that there is some reason to believe that CO-05 could be winnable for a Democrat:

…In 2024, as the vast majority of the country moved to the right on the presidential level, the 5th District was one of just 19 in the nation that moved leftward compared to four years earlier. [Pols emphasis] And two years before that, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis lost the district by just a 50-47 margin, according to Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux, en route to winning a second term in a 59-39 blowout.

That leftward shift has been especially notable in Colorado Springs itself, which now makes up about two-thirds of the district and has long been known as the headquarters of the evangelical group Focus on the Family.

In 2023, for the first time since the city began directly electing its mayors more than four decades earlier, a non-Republican won the office when independent Yemi Mobolade, a Nigerian immigrant, cruised to a 58-42 victory.

Yemi Mobolade was a surprise non-Republican winner in the 2023 Colorado Springs mayoral race; of course, Mobolade is also not a Democrat. There are rumors of a potential high-profile candidate in CO-05 running as an Independent, but that would likely only prove successful if there were no Democrat on the General Election ballot to split the non-Republican vote.

While there is reason for Democrats to be optimistic about their chances in CO-05, there is also plenty of data to make this look like a fool’s errand. Since the district was first created following the Census of 1970, only Bill Armstrong, Ken Kramer, Hefley, and Lamborn have been elected or re-elected. In the previous 40 years, most voters in El Paso County have only known of two Members of Congress from the area: Hefley (1987-2007) and Lamborn (2007-2025).

[Fun Fact: Colorado has eight congressional districts, and CO-05 is one of three that has only ever elected a representative from the same political party. The fifth congressional district has never elected a Democrat, while voters in CO-01 (Denver) and CO-02 (Boulder area) have never elected a Republican.]

Crank is in his first term in Congress and already has a terrible vote on his record — blindly backing the House Republican version of President Trump’s “big, beautiful, bullshit bill” that would decimate Medicaid and SNAP funding and is widely despised by Americans across the political spectrum.

If there were ever a time for a Democrat to win in CO-05, the 2026 midterm election might be the best opportunity given the unpopularity of Trump and Republican policies in general and the overall weakness of the Republican brand in Colorado during a cycle in which five statewide seats will be on the ballot. But there are also two other freshman Republicans in Colorado who are far more likely to be in danger: blathering Rep. Jeff “Bread Sandwich” Hurd in CO-03 and Rep. Gabe Evans in CO-08, the latter of whom is among the most endangered Republican incumbents in the entire country.

Is it possible that Democrats could break a 50-year Republican streak in CO-05? Sure.

Is it likely? Probably not.