March 04, 2026 12:14 PM UTC

New Candidate Enters Race in CO-03

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

There’s a new candidate for Congress in CO-03, where freshman Rep. Jeff “Bread Sandwich” Hurd (R-Grand Junction) is trying to keep his seat after recently losing the endorsement of President Trump.

Dwayne Romero, a Democrat from Aspen, announced on Tuesday that he is joining the race to unseat Hurd. Romero is starting his campaign later than any candidate we can remember in the last 20 years, and he doesn’t have a lot of time to get his name on the June Primary ballot. March 18th is the deadline for candidates to file petition signatures; March 27 is the CO-03 Democratic assembly.

As Nathan Deal reports for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Romero has a pretty good resume despite his odd timing:

Romero has political experience, serving in former Gov. John Hickenlooper’s cabinet during his first term as Colorado’s economic development director. He has also served as an Aspen City Councilman from 2007-2011 and as an Aspen School District Board of Education member from 2016-2021 (including serving as its president in 2020-2021).

He is currently the CEO of Basalt-based real estate company The Romero Group…

…Raised on food stamps by a single mom in a Cajun area of Texas, Romero would go on to be recruited out of high school to play baseball at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He graduated in 1987, followed by seven years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As combat engineer executive officer during the Persian Gulf War, Romero earned a Bronze Star for leadership valor. He met his wife-to-be, Margaret (of Colorado), in Germany while he was still in the Army and she was attending the University of Bordeaux.

After the Army, Romero went to Harvard Business School for a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree. He then moved to Aspen with Margaret to work for a national development company, and he’s been in the Roaring Fork Valley ever since.

Romero joins Democrat Alex Kelloff in the race for the Democratic nomination. Kelloff, a businessman from Snowmass, has had the Democratic field to himself for more than a year but has seen his fundraising numbers fall off in recent months.

We’d say there is an opening for someone like Romero — who has already been endorsed by 2022 and 2024 CO-03 Democratic nominee Adam Frisch — but Romero is trying to slide inside a door that is almost completely shut given the time constraints for ballot access. We’ll give Romero the benefit of the doubt for now, though we’d be surprised if he can get a campaign operation moving fast enough to be more than just a write-in candidate in June.