Up and down the ballot, Colorado voters on Tuesday dealt decisive primary losses to the Republican and Democratic parties’ furthest-flung wings in nearly every major contest, nominating instead candidates viewed by many as less confrontational and abrasive. 

The election results marked a thumping defeat for the state’s Republican leaders, who broke with longstanding tradition this year to endorse candidates in primaries, including the party’s chairman, Dave Williams, who lost the heavily Republican 5th Congressional District nomination by a wide margin to former radio host Jeff Crank.

Underlining the Colorado Republican Party’s poor performance in primaries is that, at press time, 14 of the party’s 18 picks in contested races had gone down in flames, including congressional and legislative hopefuls statewide.

In a pair of closely watched legislative races across the aisle in solidly Democratic Denver, voters ousted two state lawmakers who routinely found themselves at odds with their own party’s House majority, sending state Reps. Elisabeth Epps and Tim Hernandez packing.

Perhaps providing the exception that proved the evening’s rule, however, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert — one of Washington’s most avowedly pugilistic Republican voices — an away with the nomination in her newly adopted district, leaving five primary rivals in the dust, with only a couple of them even cracking double digits. 

In only the second special congressional election in state history, Republican Greg Lopez, a former two-time gubernatorial candidate, easily won election to serve the six months remaining in former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck’s term in the reliably Republican 4th Congressional District, which roughly covers the state’s eastern half.

It’s the same district whose voters nominated Boebert to run for a full term in November after the firebrand ditched the Western Slope-based seat she’s represented for two terms, contending that Democrats might flip the seat this year following her narrow win in 2022.

Buck, a former chairman of the Colorado GOP, resigned from Congress in March, complaining that the national Republican Party was torn by divisions and too beholden to former President Donald Trump.

In Boebert’s old district, Democrats and progressive groups came up empty handed after pouring nearly $1 million into attacking former state Rep. Ron Hanks, one of six Republicans running in the 3rd Congressional District, as “too extreme” for Colorado.

National Republicans and Hanks’ rivals derided the message as “meddling,” maintaining that their opponents were transparently trying to boost a weaker candidate by appealing to the GOP’s more conservative base.

Voters didn’t take the bait, however, instead nominating first-time candidate Jeff Hurd, a centrist attorney, to face Democrat Adam Frisch in what could be one of the state’s most competitive races this fall.

Frisch, a wealthy business owner and former member of Aspen’s city council, came within 546 votes of unseating Boebert in 2022 and set fundraising records in his bid for a rematch before she pulled up stakes and moved across the state.

Likewise, in the northern Front Range 8th Congressional District, the state’s lone toss-up seat, where Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo is seeking a second term, voters in the GOP primary tapped state Rep. Gabe Evans, a former police officer who won an endorsement from Trump, while passing on state GOP-endorsed former state Rep. Janak Joshi, one of the legislature’s most vocally conservative members during his tenure there in the last decade.

Democratic primary voters, for their part, rejected Epps and Hernandez by double-digit margins, instead nominating attorney and military veteran Sean Camacho in House District 4 and retired immigration judge Cecelia Espenoza in House District 6, respectively.

While Epps and Hernandez staked out positions further to the left than their fellow Democratic lawmakers, their two successful challengers won near-solid support from legislative and party leaders for the heavily Democratic seats.