The Republican state lawmaker who lost a primary challenge to U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert is backing the Democratic nominee for the seat.

Calling Boebert the “poster child” for the dangers of excessive partisanship, state Sen. Don Coram, R-Montrose, on Wednesday said that while he differs with Democrat Adam Frisch on plenty of issues, he believes the Aspen businessman can better represent the Western Slope-based 3rd Congressional District.

“I believe Adam Frisch is a good man,” Coram wrote in a guest column for the Montrose Press. “I have had the opportunity to visit with him and get to know him better over the last few months. I know him to be decent, honest, and persistent. He has demonstrated that he is more interested in representing the district than being a celebrity. That’s important.”

Added Coram: “Let’s elect someone who cares about representing the majority of people in the middle that are fed up with extreme partisanship and juvenile antics.”

Frisch welcomed the endorsement in a statement calling Coram “an upstanding leader and public servant who cares deeply about the people of Western Colorado.”

Said Frisch: “Coram recognizes that extremists like Boebert make it impossible to get things done for the people of CO-3. I am building a strong bipartisan coalition to ensure that the people of Southern and Western Colorado have an effective representative in Washington who will focus on the issues facing their families, their communities, and their businesses.”

A Frisch spokeswoman said Coram will co-chair the campaign’s Republicans for Frisch group.

Covering portions of the Western Slope and southern Colorado, including Pueblo County and the San Luis Valley, the sprawling 3rd CD leans Republican and hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. House since 2008. National election forecasters rank Boebert as heavily favored for reelection.

Boebert dismissed her former rival’s announcement.

“Don Coram voted like a liberal Democrat, so it’s no surprise that he would endorse the liberal Democrat in this race,” she said in an emailed statement.

The former owner of a gun-themed restaurant in Rifle, Boebert unseated five-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton in the 2020 Republican primary and has since become one of former President Donald Trump’s most prominent and vocal congressional supporters.

Coram lost a bid to oust Boebert by a nearly two-to-one margin in the June primary following a heated campaign in which he criticized the first-term incumbent as ineffectual and primarily concerned with stoking outrage, a line of attack revived by Coram in the endorsement op-ed.

“Bottom line, instead of working to represent the people in the 3rd CD, Lauren spends her time jet-setting around the country promoting herself and extreme rhetoric that only divides this country further,” Coram wrote. “It’s disgraceful and we should expect more from our United States representative.”

In the same op-ed, Coram threw his support behind Colorado’s Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is facing a challenge from Republican John Kellner, the district attorney in the 18th Judicial District.

Colorado GOP spokesman Joe Jackson suggested that Coram’s endorsements across party lines could backfire.

“If anything, this will just cost Phil Weiser and Adam Frisch more votes across the Western Slope,” Jackson said in a text message.

Colorado Democratic Party chair Morgan Carroll called Coram’s decision to back Weiser and Frisch “another example of Republicans who can no longer stay silent while the extremists take over the Colorado Republican Party.”

Said Carroll: “Coram, along with most Coloradans, are interested in moving the state forward – not having their rights stripped away.”

Another erstwhile Boebert primary challenger, Archuleta County industrial crane operator and first-time candidate Marina Zimmerman, ended her write-in campaign on Tuesday and is urging her supporters to vote for Frisch, the Colorado Times Recorder reported.

“The most important and urgent goal is to do all we can to make sure Lauren Boebert is not reelected,” Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman, who failed to qualify for the GOP primary ballot, is one of three official write-in candidates for the seat. She left the Republican Party and changed her registration to unaffiliated this summer, she said, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

The endorsements land on the heels of an internal poll released last week by the Frisch campaign showing the Democrat in a statistical dead heat with Boebert just over a week before mail ballots go out to most Colorado voters. Conducted by Colorado polling firm Keating Research, the survey found Frisch trailing Boebert among likely voters by 2 points, within the poll’s margin of error.

Frisch announced earlier this week that he raised nearly $1.7 million in the most recent fundraising quarter, outpacing the $900,000 Boebert’s campaign said she plans to report in the campaign finance report due on Saturday.