With the official nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, longtime Democrats and progressive political activists on Colorado’s Western Slope are grappling with the impacts on down-ballot races in a post-Bernie Sanders world.

Some candidates and party officials are predicting a Democratic exodus of disaffected Bernie backers to the Green Party, while other say millennial voters will come to their senses and pivot to Clinton once the prospect of GOP nominee Donald Trump becoming president settles in.

And in what could be a surprisingly competitive race for the first time in years, 3rd Congressional District Democratic candidate Gail Schwartz will need all the millennial voter support she can get – in addition to mainstream Dem loyalists – to upset incumbent Republican Scott Tipton.

The sprawling 3rd, which encompasses much of the Western Slope in addition to a wedge of the Front Range that includes Pueblo, is a rural and largely conservative district that previously elected Republican Scott McInnis to six terms and before that Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Democrat who later switched to the GOP as a U.S. senator.

Schwartz is a former ski-town resort planner and state senator from Crested Butte who is known for the progressive energy policies she helped shape during the birth of the “New Energy Economy” under former Gov. Bill Ritter.

Both Schwartz and Tipton, a three-term U.S. rep and former pottery manufacturer from Cortez, stayed away from their respective party’s political conventions the last two weeks, preferring to campaign across the district. Tipton has decisively turned back Democratic challengers Sal Pace and Abel Tapia from Pueblo the last two elections, but observers say 2016 could be different.

“I do think Gail can win,” said former Carbondale Board of Trustee Allyn Harvey, who considered his own run for the 3rd Congressional. “I think 2016 is an extraordinary year for the 3rd in that you have Donald Trump, who’s been bashing women, bashing Latinos and really kind of offending nearly every demographic possible as the lead Republican candidate.”

Harvey says Tipton, who knocked off Blue Dog Democrat John Salazar in the first anti-Barack Obama wave in 2010, is a firm supporter of Trump’s agenda and will suffer by association with the bombastic billionaire when voters head to the polls in November.

But Tipton campaign spokesman Michael Fortney declined to add to previous statements he’s made about the congressman’s support – or lack thereof – for Trump. “While Congressman Tipton has not supported everything Donald Trump has said or done, he believes that our country cannot afford a third Obama term,” Fortney told the Denver Post in May.

Instead of commenting on any potential anti-Trump backlash, Fortney focused on Schwartz’s record in the state senate, again blaming her legislative record for the decline in coal mining and natural-gas drilling jobs in the district.

“Gail can’t run away from her awful record,” Fortney told The Statesman. “She actually ruined the lives of her former constituents in favor of radical environmentalists in Denver and Aspen. Anything other than that is static.”

But Harvey says the growing number of millennial voters on the Western Slope, especially in outdoor recreation and ski towns from Steamboat Springs to Durango, won’t view Schwartz’s progressive energy agenda as a bad thing, and he disputes the liberal label.

“The idea that she’s some kind of elite liberal doesn’t make any sense to me,” Harvey said. “She worked with both sides of the aisle as a senator. She was in charge of the agriculture committee in the Senate … and did a good job representing the interests of ranchers and farmers in her district.”

Salazar, a rancher from the San Luis Valley, lost to Tipton in 2010 despite joining Republicans in voting against former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s cap and trade energy bill in 2009, citing agriculture industry concerns. In fact, some Western Slope observers say Schwartz may not be progressive enough on energy issues.

Michael Gibson, a Bernie 2016 field organizer who helped deliver the 22 western-most counties in Colorado to the Sanders camp on Super Tuesday in March, says climate change is happening so fast the human race is facing extinction. Gibson is highly critical of Clinton’s belief in natural gas as a bridge fuel to renewables – a belief he says Schwartz shares.

“I talked to [Schwartz] once about that, and she was still at that point along with the Hillary mindset that we had to get across the bridge, so she needs to get up to speed with the latest,” said Gibson, a resident of No Name who reps electrical power systems. “But she is a very progressive, forward thinker, and once she sees all the facts in front of her will see a lot of logic there.”

Gibson worked for former state Rep. Kathleen Curry after she left the Democratic Party and unsuccessfully ran as an independent, giving him a taste for how parties treat maverick candidates. Now he says there been a huge exodus of young Bernie backers to the Green Party in the wake of Sanders’ endorsement of Clinton.

“We’re seeing as of this week when Bernie endorsed Hillary a massive turning of peoples’ back on the Democratic Party,” Gibson said. “The Democrats unfortunately made a huge mistake in the way some of the states ran their elections.” Overall, Sanders won Colorado in the spring and claimed the majority of its delegates Tuesday at the Democratic National Convention.

Green Party U.S. Senate candidate Arn Menconi, a former Eagle County commissioner and founder of a nonprofit youth snowboarding organization, is counting on disenchanted “Bernie-crats” in his long-shot bid to unseat incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet. But he supports Schwartz in CD3 – a seat he also considering running for.

“The word on the street on why Gail jumped in … is the Trump effect is probably signaling to the Dems that they have a better chance of winning in Colorado than they had originally thought,” Menconi said. “I’m supporting her. She’s got a fantastic resume. She listens, and from what I’ve seen, if ever there was a time for people to do something historic, it’s this year. It’s this election season.”

Former Republican Alex Beinstein, a Carbondale law-school graduate who was drubbed by Tipton in last month’s GOP primary, says he’s pulling for Tipton in the general election even though Beinstein withdrew from the Republican Party in protest of what he deemed anti-Semitic tweets by Trump. Beinstein agrees there could be an anti-Trump backlash in down-ballot races.

“Anecdotally, there could be truth to the fact that people will link candidates to Trump, especially if they support Trump, which Scott Tipton has said before,” Beinstein said. “Now he’s not a strong Trump supporter; he’s nuancing it.”

But Beinstein also says there could be an anti-Clinton backlash that could hurt Schwartz.

“If a Democrat were to win this seat, it would be best for a Blue Dog Democrat, somebody who appeals more to Pueblo and the San Luis Valley,” Beinstein said. “But she’ll probably get the mountain vote pretty strongly because she’s very much into the environment. Will her message connect in Pueblo and the San Luis Valley? That I don’t know, but she definitely has a chance.”

Schwartz campaign spokesman Richard Valenty says her environmental message will resonate across the district, while any connection to Trump will hurt Tipton.

“There’s no doubt that if you’re voting on climate change, renewable energy, if those are your top issues, then Gail’s record is tremendous,” Valenty said, adding it’s fairly clear where Tipton stands on those issues and with regard to Trump.

“A Republican candidate sticking with the Republican nominee, even if it’s lukewarm or understated,” Valenty said. “If I was going to bet a million dollars on who [Tipton will] be voting for, I think I know the answer to that. And then there’s a libertarian candidate who might take some conservative votes.”

Valenty says Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson and CD3 Libertarian candidate Gaylon Kent could do better than expected because of the Trump effect. And conservative independent Tisha Casida also peels off a few percentage points every election cycle.

Carbondale’s Harvey says it’s all about Schwartz landing the Bernie-backers while also connecting with the diehard Democrats in Pueblo and the small but solid core of Dems in Grand Junction and surrounding Mesa County, where he feels Schwartz will need to get a little over 30 percent of the total vote.

“For Gail it’s important that Bernie’s backed Hillary now,” Harvey said. “At the top of the ticket Democrats are united, and it’s getting young voters to go down the ticket and vote for Gail and figuring out how to talk to them.

“Pointing out her support for resort economies and for protecting the environment which they rely on will be a big part of Gail’s messaging, or should be, and finding ways via social media to reach young voters.”