AP calls 3rd District for Hurd, who carried Montezuma County
The Associated Press declared the Republican incumbent the winner Friday morning, three days after the election. Jeff Hurd leads Democrat Dwayne Romero by about 6,100 votes across the district and took 55 percent in Montezuma County.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd has won a second term representing Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes Montezuma County. The Associated Press called the race for the Republican at 9:24 a.m. Friday, three days after polls closed.
In the Secretary of State’s unofficial count posted at 4:28 p.m. Friday, Hurd had 163,655 votes across the district, or 49.3 percent, to 157,523, or 47.4 percent, for Democrat Dwayne L. Romero — a margin of 6,132. Libertarian Cory Robertson had 5,539 votes, or 1.7 percent, and unaffiliated candidate Clifton Brown had 5,327, or 1.6 percent. Counties in the district had counted 337,893 ballots of 525,359 registered voters.
Montezuma County was not close. In the county’s own count, posted at 3:47 p.m. Thursday, Hurd had 6,892 votes here, or 55.1 percent, to Romero’s 5,217, or 41.7 percent. Robertson had 213 and Brown 189. A total of 12,511 county ballots carried a vote in the race, out of 12,725 ballots counted countywide.
The 3rd District covers most of the Western Slope and southern Colorado, from Montezuma County and the Four Corners north to Grand Junction and east to Pueblo. Hurd, a Grand Junction lawyer, won the seat in 2024.
None of these numbers are final. Voters whose ballots have a signature problem have until Nov. 12 to fix it, so county counts can still move, and the results are unofficial until each county certifies them later this month. An AP race call is the news organization’s own judgment that the trailing candidate cannot catch up; it is not an official result.
The Cortez Current’s live results page carries every race and question on Montezuma County ballots and updates itself as counties report. It now shows the AP’s call on this race.
In the other district races on local ballots, the Secretary of State’s Friday count had Democrat Katie Stewart leading Republican Naomi Riess in state House District 59, 27,150 to 18,583, with Montezuma County’s share of that district split almost evenly, 4,548 to 4,459. Republican Larry Don Suckla was unopposed in House District 58 and had 26,842 votes, 2,345 of them in Montezuma County. The Associated Press had called neither of those races as of Friday evening.