Attorney General Cynthia Coffman wasn’t only taking a gamble with her political future Wednesday when she jumped from a run for re-election to a slot in Colorado’s crowded Republican gubernatorial primary – she was creating an open seat a year before the election and throwing another curve into a cycle that’s been full of them.

Beyond its timing, Coffman’s announcement surprised no one – she’d been publicly considering a switch since early July – but it set Republicans scrambling to field a candidate for attorney general with just four months to go until precinct caucuses. What’s more, while plenty of it could be spent in their own primary, the five Democrats running for the seat have raised a collective $1.1 million so far, and have been crisscrossing the state for months.

While several Republicans are considering getting in the race – including one of the leading GOP candidates for governor – seasoned political consultants from both sides of the aisle tell Colorado Politics they’ll have an uphill battle for a seat that’s suddenly up for grabs. The Democrats already running, meanwhile, are licking their chops at the chance to run against a little-known Republican nominee instead of taking on a popular, albeit sometimes polarizing, incumbent.

Republican insiders say the GOP field should be set by the end of this week, as the onset of the holidays looms. And it’s increasingly looking like gubernatorial candidate George Brauchler, the district attorney who prosecuted the Aurora theater shooter, will wind up trading places with Coffman and get in the attorney general race – although he could have company in a primary.

Although Brauchler has been winning support among the GOP’s more conservative flank, a lackluster fundraising quarter and former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo’s entry into the governor’s race in late October appeared to have stalled his campaign’s momentum.

The same day Coffman declared her run for governor, a Brauchler campaign advisor floated the possibility the candidate could jump races. That same advisor said Friday to look for an announcement within days.

“As far as George is concerned, he’s fielding a ton of calls from folks concerned about the viability of this race at this late date if he doesn’t get in,” Sean Tonner told Colorado Politics. “Expect that by early next week, George will make his decision.”

Veteran GOP strategist Dick Wadhams scoffed at the notion Brauchler could still be undecided.

“His campaign would not have laid out that statement if he was planning to keep running for governor,” Wadhams told Colorado Politics. “Once you say something like that, it’s kind of hard to pull back from it. It just implies that the campaign did not think it was going well and was looking for another opportunity in another major race. I can’t see how George can now say, ‘I’ve thought about it, and I’m going to stay in the governor’s race.’ That doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence with your supporters, going through that kind of drama.”

But there’s still plenty of time to reorient to another statewide campaign, said Wadhams, a former chair of the state GOP and campaign manager for the last Republican to win the Colorado governor’s race.

“I think it’s kind of a wash,” he said. “I think Cynthia Coffman was a strong incumbent. But George could be very formidable as an attorney general candidate – he’s a successful district attorney, a popular district attorney, and he’s been running around the state making a lot of contacts.”

Likewise, Wadhams said, state Rep. Cole Wist, a Centennial Republican, and George Leing, Colorado’s Republican National Committeeman and a former congressional candidate, could also be strong candidates for Coffman’s seat.

Wist said before Coffman announced her plans that he was seriously considering a run for attorney general. He didn’t return a phone call from Colorado Politics on Friday.

Leing said Friday he was still weighing his options but wasn’t concerned whether other candidates – including Brauchler – might get in the race.

“I’m going to have to make a decision whether it’s right for me to jump in based on my review of it rather than speculate what other people might or might not do,” he told Colorado Politics.

While a Brauchler move could clear the field – he had nearly $175,000 in the bank at the end of last quarter and has had a head-start campaigning around the state – Wadhams said Republicans shouldn’t be afraid of a primary, suggesting it could help the GOP’s chances of keeping the office.

“Primaries make a candidate and their campaign better. It forces you to develop your agenda and your message, it forces you to build an organization, it creates excitement and attention,” he said. “The Dems are going to have this wild four- or five-way primary and get a lot of attention. I could build a case that a primary is good, now that we don’t have an incumbent in that seat.”

Regardless, said Democratic consultant Jim Carpenter, who’s also helmed winning statewide campaigns, Coffman’s departure makes the attorney general’s seat “way more attractive.”

“Anytime that you change from a race with an incumbent – a fairly popular incumbent who won pretty handily – to an open seat, it’s a big shift,” he told Colorado Politics. “Particularly in a year where the Republicans are likely to not do as well, and Democrats are likely to do better – in terms of historical patterns, and if this week’s results in Virginia and New Jersey are an indication.” (Democrats won governor’s races in those two states and won numerous legislative seats, including some that had been held by Republicans for decades.)

“You always want an open seat,” he said. “Leaving aside personalities, with an open seat, your chances are always better. Attorney General Coffman ended up being a very strong campaigner, and there’s no reason to think that would be any different this election. Also, there are some powers of incumbency. It does matter.”

Colorado voters have only elected two Democrats as attorney general in the last 50 years – J.D. MacFarlane in 1974 and Ken Salazar in 1998 – while five Republicans have won the office, although one, Duane Woodard, switched parties after winning a second term in the late 1980s.

Still, Carpenter said he’d rather be one of the Democrats running for attorney general this year, even though Republicans have traditionally done better in down-ballot statewide races, also including secretary of state and state treasurer.

“We’ve had ‘change’ elections since 2006 – every time, back and forth, and there’s no sign that trend is going to change next year,” Carpenter said. “You have an open seat in a swing state, you have a cast of thousands running for governor. This is the next-highest profile kind of race. Increasingly, attorneys general are major policy players, in terms of relations between the state and federal government and all those lawsuits.”

While Democrats could have run hard against Coffman’s record, Carpenter acknowledged, it’ll be a bit trickier landing some attacks against a non-incumbent Republican nominee.

“There are very clear policy positions Cynthia Coffman took that were against the governor and part of a national agenda – against the Clean Power Plan, for instance – so there would be lots of ways to draw distinctions about how a Democrat might operate on those policy issues. That’s kind of taken away. When you have an open seat, you’re talking more theoretical than specific stuff,” he said.

“But George Brauchler has a record as a district attorney, and the same issues are still part of the campaign,” Carpenter continued. “Particularly because the attorneys general are now engaged in health care, environmental policy, consumer protection, immigration – there’s all kinds of things people in those offices are active in. The range of issues seems to have gotten a lot broader.”

Whoever decides to run for the Republican nomination, Carpenter said it’s a good idea if they get going quickly, and not only because they’ll have some catching-up to do.

“It might sound like there’s a lot of time, with the election a year away, but Thanksgiving is next week, and you’re into the holidays now. You come out of that and you’re into caucus season.”

Democrats running for Coffman’s seat say they’ll be happy to litigate those issues in front of Colorado voters but also sounded like they were looking forward to running against Brauchler.

The five candidates are state Rep. Joe Salazar, a Thornton Democrat; Phil Weiser, a past dean of the University of Colorado School of Law and a former Obama administration official; Michael Dougherty, the assistant district attorney for Jefferson and Gilpin counties and the former head of the criminal division in the attorney general’s office under Coffman’s Republican predecessor; former state and federal prosecutor Amy Padden; and Denver attorney Brad Levin. It’s the most crowded an attorney general primary field has ever been in Colorado, according to longtime political observers and state records

“George ‘Musical Chairs’ Brauchler apparently couldn’t handle his Republican competition in the gubernatorial race and now wants to run for attorney general,” Salazar told Colorado Politics in a text message Friday. “His decision-making always has been questionable. Having debated with him on a number of occasions at the state Capitol, I am looking forward to discussing his disdain for the constitutional rights of Coloradans.”

Weiser said the case against Brauchler would be an easy one to make.

“Colorado deserves an attorney general committed to defending our values and our way of life – not a politician looking for whatever office can advance his political career,” Weiser wrote in an email to Colorado Politics. “At this time in our history, we need an attorney general committed to protecting our freedoms, fighting for opportunity for all Coloradans, and protecting our land, air, and water.  There is nothing in George Brauchler’s history that suggests he will fight for these priorities.”

As examples, Weiser pointed to Brauchler’s defense of the Trump administration’s decision to end a program that shields immigrants brought to the country illegally as children from deportation, as well as his criticism of Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper’s decision to join a lawsuit challenging the administration’s DACA policy.

Although he says he believes Coffman’s record rendered her vulnerable, Dougherty told Colorado Politics it’s clear she would have been a strong candidate as an incumbent.

“If it’s George Brauchler, then I think the Democrats will have to put up the person with the best qualifications. We can’t have someone who’s never been in court going up against George Brauchler, when it comes time making a case to voters,” Dougherty said.

“George Brauchler and I would disagree on most issues, but he has some strengths and is going to be a formidable opponent,” he added.

Dougherty also got in some jabs at Brauchler’s potential switch from one race to another.

“I think the position of attorney general is too important to serve as a consolation prize for someone who wanted to run for governor. If he truly wanted to be attorney general, he would’ve run for attorney general instead of governor. Instead, the Republicans seem set on using the attorney general seat as a political pawn.”