The Republican attorney trying to beat a trigger-happy election denier for Lauren Boebert’s old seat

The open-faced and earnest attorney wearing a tie in the strip mall headquarters of his congressional campaign office could nearly be a direct foil to the Colorado incumbent he’s hoping to replace.

Jeff Hurd, 44, seems unruffled just hours before voters will decide whether he gets the Republican nomination in the state’s 3rd congressional district, which has been launched to national prominence thanks to its sitting representative, Lauren Boebert.

“I think there was maybe a sense among the voters here that they were getting worn down by a kind of politics that’s really loud and in your face and aggressive,” Hurd, 44, tells The Independent. “Some like it; some will continue to like it. But I think, by and large, most rural Coloradans were ready to move on.”

While Hurd’s campaign has avoided mudslinging, his site slyly opines that “western and southern Colorado” deserve a representative focused more on “doing something than being someone.”

Voters, he tells The Independent, “are mostly focused on issues … like the cost of housing, the cost of food, the cost of gas, the cost of electricity.”

Hurd’s been getting a crash course on many of those issues since he announced his congressional bid in August 2023. The following month, Boebert’s long list of controversies broadened to include her ejection from a Denver theater after misbehaving on a date, and she dropped out of the race in December. The endorsements behind Hurd began to read like a who’s-who of state Republican old guard, and his campaign has leaned heavily on Hurd’s professional credentials.

“Democrats are really good at using lawfare to tie up our resources,” he says. “ Yes, I’m a lawyer – that’s not the most popular profession – but I’m also a fighter … let’s have