Republican Jeff Hurd took the lead over Democrat Adam Frisch in preliminary, unofficial returns in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, the GOP-leaning seat that U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert left after Frisch came close to defeating her two years ago.

Hurd had 49.7% to Frisch’s 47.5% in results posted Tuesday night after polls closed at 7 p.m., with about 50% of the statewide vote reported. Libertarian nominee James Wiley had 2.2%, and another third-party candidate trailed with about 0.5%.

The well-funded Frisch is making his second run in the sprawling, largely rural district, though this time he’s facing Hurd, a Grand Junction attorney and first-time candidate, after Boebert decided mid-campaign to move across the state to a safer seat.

On the heels of falling just 546 votes short of unseating Boebert — in what turned out to be the closest congressional race in the country last cycle — Frisch almost immediately declared he wanted a rematch against the incumbent, whose confrontational brand of politics he derided as “angertainment.”

Campaigning on a promise to “end the circus” and pitching himself as the Democrat who almost beat Boebert — the state’s highest-profile Republican and one of Donald Trump’s most prominent supporters — Frisch hauled in unprecedented fundraising totals all last year, outraising the GOP incumbent by millions of dollars while campaigning virtually nonstop across the vast district.

Rather than embark on what looked like an expensive run for a third term against Frisch, however, Boebert announced at the end of last year that she would instead move to the solidly Republican 4th Congressional District, which unexpectedly became an open seat when five-term U.S. Rep. Ken Buck announced a year ago that he wouldn’t seek reelection.

Covering most of the Western Slope and parts of Southern Colorado, including Pueblo County and the San Luis Valley, the district has leaned to the right and been represented by Republicans since 2011. National election forecasters called the district a tossup when Boebert was in the seat but moved it back into the Republican column after she departed.

Before she jumped districts, Boebert had been facing a primary challenge from Hurd, who described himself as a traditional Republican and steadily amassed endorsements from dozens of prominent Colorado Republicans, including a former governor, a former U.S. senator and the two GOP congressmen who represented the 3rd CD before Boebert.

Once Boebert left the 3rd CD, the GOP primary quickly swelled, with five Republicans eventually joining Hurd on the ballot, including 2022 U.S. Senate nominee Ron Hanks, a former state lawmaker. Hurd won the nomination with a plurality in June, but not until Frisch had spent heavily warning voters that Hanks was more closely aligned with Trump in what some observers believed was a bid to promote a weaker general election opponent.