March 25, 2026 11:04 AM UTC

More Bad Election News for Gabe Evans and Jeff Crank

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• by: Colorado Pols

Since Donald Trump was re-elected as President in 2024, Democrats have flipped control of 29 seats in various special elections across the country. Number 29 came on Tuesday in Florida, where a Democrat flipped a state house seat that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home — a seat that a Republican carried in 2024 by 19 points.

As The Associated Press reports:

Democrat Emily Gregory won a Florida special election on Tuesday, flipping a state legislative district that is home to Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach estate that President Donald Trump counts as his residence.

The president had endorsed Gregory’s rival, Jon Maples. In a social media post Monday, he urged voters to turn out, saying Maples was backed “by so many of my Palm Beach County friends.”

Democrats celebrated the victory as the latest sign voters are turning against Trump and Republicans ahead of the midterm elections in November. Tuesday was the latest in a series of lopsided or improbable victories in special elections across the country since Trump returned to the White House more than a year ago.

This is the same election in which Trump cast a mail ballot despite his growing protestations about mail ballots being rife with fraud.

Democrats may also be on the verge of flipping seat #30, as The New York Times explains:

Across the state, another Democrat, Brian Nathan, a Navy veteran and electrical workers union leader, was leading a tight West Tampa race for a state senate seat vacated by Florida’s newly appointed lieutenant governor. [Pols emphasis]

Since the 2024 presidential election, Democrats have flipped more than two dozen seats in Republican or battleground states — including ones in Arkansas and New Hampshire earlier this month — while the Republicans have not captured any Democratic seats.

President Trump’s endorsement is turning into the equivalent of the Tom Tancredo kiss of death in Colorado. As The Associated Press reports from North Carolina:

North Carolina government’s most influential politician, Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger, conceded the primary race for his seat to Sam Page on Tuesday, shaking the power structure in the ninth-largest state and likely soon ending Berger’s preeminence as the state’s top conservative architect.

Berger trailed Page, the Rockingham County sheriff, in their March 3 primary by only 23 votes. He has been Senate leader since 2011 when Republicans took full control over the General Assembly for the first time in 140 years. President Donald Trump had endorsed Berger for reelection, praising him for his policy accomplishments…[Pols emphasis]

…Page’s campaign was outspent by Berger’s campaign by more than 40-to-1 through mid-February, finance reports show. That doesn’t include several million dollars that a pro-Berger independent expenditure group spent on mailers and advertising.

All of this news should make Republican incumbents in Colorado very, very nervous. Freshman Reps. Jeff “Bread Sandwich” Hurd (CO-03), Jeff Crank (CO-05), and Gabe Evans (CO-08) have all been endorsed by Trump (Rep. Lauren Boebert of CO-04 has consistently earned Trump’s endorsement over the years). While Hurd has kinda, sorta created a little daylight between himself and Trump, Crank and Evans have made their obsequiousness to the President the central tenet of their respective re-election campaigns.

Evans, in fact, has been promoting himself as one of THE most important political figures responsible for advancing Trump policies in the President’s second term. Speaking to Republicans at the Weld County GOP assembly last weekend, Evans made it abundantly clear that he is Trump and Trump is him:

Evans is even starting to take on Trump’s habit of rambling, often nonsensical speechifying.

EVANS: We have done the largest welfare reform in American History, doing things like getting DEI out of our government, our military, and among others in the system. Things like defunding transgender care for minors — I voted for that bill. That’s why Denver Health and Children’s Hospital Colorado are no longer doing transgender surgeries for minors because we defunded it. We have also helped, my office helped, get the ballot initiatives, um, the three petitions here in Colorado to prevent those surgeries on the ballot. We did social media, endorsed those…I signed those.

We are pushing back on DEI. We’re doing that in other places too. Like the Department of Veterans Affairs, where we’re getting rid of the lunatic [unintelligible] candidates and getting more doctors to take care of our veterans. And we’re getting rid all of the woke ideology. We’re doing it in oil and gas. I have the bill, commissioners and I have talked about it a lot. We have the bill to do an end-around on the insane restraints on the Colorado [oil and gas industry].

We’re standing up for African-Americans….we brought the WELD FSA office back to Weld County — it’s in the Greeley Tribune as of this morning. Endorsed by the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. We are fighting. We are delivering. And the Democrats hate my guts for it.

[SIDE NOTE: Evans might have stepped into a pile of trouble with his claim that his “office” helped to get several anti-transgender proposals on the ballot in Colorado. This would appear to be a clear violation of the Colorado Fair Campaign Practices Act.]

Perhaps Evans and his campaign strategists will be proven correct in tying their re-election hopes to the unpopularity of Donald Trump instead of acting more like Hurd (who is in a much more favorable district for Republicans). Perhaps Crank can win re-election in CO-05 by doing nothing more than parroting White House talking points.

But there are 29 Democrats — and counting — who have proven since November 2024 that voters don’t want what Evans and Crank are selling.