Dwayne Romero, Rep. Jeff Hurd in close race in Colorado’s 3rd District

Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd of Grand Junction and his Democratic challenger, Dwayne Romero, were in a close race Tuesday night, with Romero holding a narrow lead as county clerks across Colorado’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District continued to process ballot returns.

As of 9 p.m., Romero led by fewer than 6,000 votes, with 49.7% of the vote to Hurd’s 47.4%.

The 3rd District is Colorado’s largest congressional district by area, stretching from the greater Pueblo area across the San Luis Valley and much of the Western Slope.

Romero would be the first Democrat elected to represent the 3rd District since former Rep. John Salazar of the San Luis Valley, who served three terms before losing reelection in 2010.

In 2023, Hurd, an attorney, was recruited to run for Congress in a primary challenge against Rep. Lauren Boebert, a controversial far-right Republican who had come within 600 votes of losing the 3rd District to Democratic challenger Adam Frisch a year earlier. Months later, Boebert moved across the state to run in the more heavily Republican 4th District instead. Hurd went on to win the 3rd District GOP primary, and defeated Frisch in the 2024 general election by 5 percentage points.

Romero, an Army veteran and small business owner, launched his campaign relatively late in the 2026 election cycle, and won a head-to-head primary over financial executive Alex Kelloff.

As polls showed midterm voters turning against President Donald Trump and Republicans over the cost of living, the war in Iran and other issues, Hurd billed himself as a “voice of independence,” highlighting disagreements with Trump over his denial of disaster aid and a February vote against some of the president’s tariffs. That vote led Trump to briefly pull his endorsement from Hurd and back a primary challenger, before he reversed himself a month later and endorsed Hurd again.

To Democrats, Hurd’s occasional breaks with Trump meant little compared to his votes in favor of Republicans’ 2025 tax and spending law, which included steep cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and other social programs, along with the Iran war and most of the rest of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy agenda.

Until late October, Hurd and his supporters, including several deep-pocketed Republican super PACs, had massively outspent Romero and Democratic campaign groups in the 3rd District race. But Romero benefited from a late infusion of $2.5 million in outside spending on his behalf by the House Majority Project, the main Democratic House super PAC, beginning in the final week of October.