November 12, 2025 03:13 PM UTC

Danielle Jurinsky Looking for New Race to Lose in 2026

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

Republicans lost damn near every race they contested in the 2025 election. Some in the GOP aren’t wasting time looking for somewhere else to fail in 2026.

Aurora City Council member Danielle Jurinsky was one of the more notable losers from the 2025 election cycle. The nutball MAGA incumbent needed to be one of the top two vote-getters in order to keep her at-large council seat in Aurora, but instead she fell to a distant third place behind progressive candidates Rob Andrews and Alli Jackson. Rather than take time licking her wounds and pondering what went wrong, Jurinsky has set her sights on a different battle next November: Douglas County Commissioner.

Spurred on by Congressperson Lauren Boebert, whose district includes Douglas County, Jurinsky has apparently been calling around looking for support as she ponders a run for the District 1 seat being vacated by the term-limited Abe Laydon. Jurinsky would obviously have had to reside in Aurora ahead of last week’s election, but from what we hear she is telling folks that she has already purchased a home in the Douglas County district and changed her voter registration information to that new address.

Jurinsky would not have this race to herself — former State Sen. Jim Smallwood plans to run but has not yet filed — but but she could be a formidable candidate in a Republican Primary given her fundraising ability. Jurinsky raised $258,000 for her Aurora city council re-election campaign, compared to $50,000 for Andrews and $20,000 for Jackson. Even though Republicans were booted out of the Douglas County School Board last week, it’s unlikely that a Democrat could mount a serious challenge for Commissioner. Nevertheless, a Jurinsky circus would be a welcome sideshow for Democrats leading into the June Primary Election.

We can’t confirm that Jurinsky has indeed changed her voter registration to make her eligible to seek this new office in 2026, but we’re checking regularly (the Colorado Secretary of State’s office is understandably running a little behind on updating that information while it works on finalizing 2025 election results).

Even if Jurinsky has changed her voter registration, there is an open legal question about whether or not she would even be eligible to run for DougCo Commissioner in 2026. State statute seems to make it clear that candidates must reside in a given district for at least one year prior to Election Day, which would make Jurinsky not eligible (unless she changed her voter registration before Election Day, but that would mean she would have been ineligible to seek re-election in Aurora in 2025). Jurinsky is being advised by attorney and former State Senate candidate Suzanne Staiert Taheri, who may argue that potential candidates only need to live in the district for one year prior to the swearing-in date for a particular office; in Jurinsky’s case, that would give her until sometime in early January to be eligible to run in 2026.

We suppose it makes some sense for Boebert to advise Jurinsky to follow her 2024 lead, when she moved across the state to the fourth congressional district in order to avoid losing her seat in Congress in CO-03. The eligibility rules for Congress are different, however; candidates only need to live somewhere in Colorado in order to be eligible to run for Congress anywhere in the state.

We’ll be keeping an eye on voter registration information to see if Jurinsky is indeed checking the right boxes to run a countywide race in Douglas County in 2026. The Colorado Republican Party can always use another clown for its annual circus.