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Adam Withrow
Adam Withrow (Unity Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Colorado's 3rd Congressional District. He lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Withrow completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Adam Withrow was born in Algona, Iowa. His career experience includes working as an educator.[1]
2024 battleground election
Ballotpedia identified the November 5, 2024, general election as a battleground race. The summary below is from our coverage of this election, found here.
Jeff Hurd (R) defeated Adam Frisch (D) and two others in the general election for Colorado's 3rd Congressional District on November 5, 2024.
Incumbent Lauren Boebert (R) ran for re-election in the 4th District, leaving the 3rd District open.
Based on fourth-quarter reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Frisch raised $17.2 million and spent $17.3 million, and Hurd raised $2.8 million and spent $2.8 million. To review all the campaign finance figures in full detail, click here.
Hurd won the Republican primary, running on a platform of growing Colorado's rural economies.[2] He defeated five other candidates with 42% of the vote. The next closest candidate, Ron Hanks (R), received 28% of the vote.
Frisch was uncontested in the Democratic primary. He was the Democratic nominee in 2022, losing the general election to Boebert 50.1% to 49.9%. In that election, Frisch described himself as "a pro-business, pro-energy, moderate, pragmatic Democrat."[3]
Leading up to the primary, Democratic group Rocky Mountain Values PAC spent around $500,000 on ads promoting Hanks and opposing Hurd. Frisch's campaign did the same with around $100,000. A Republican super PAC, The Congressional Leadership Fund, spent $436,000 in one week on ads against Hanks, which claimed he was too liberal on gun issues.[4] According to Axios Denver, a Hanks' victory could have made the district more vulnerable to a Democratic win in November, but the primary result gave "establishment Republicans [Hurd] a victory against pro-Trump forces [Hanks] and [made] it more likely Republicans will retain the seat in the November election."[5]
According to Colorado Politics, the district was "still considered in play" before the election.[6] Additionally, former President Donald Trump (R) carried the district by 15 percentage points in 2016. This advantage was nearly halved in 2020, when he carried the district by 8.3 percentage points.[6] Before the election, four major election forecasters differed in their ratings of the general election, with three rating it Likely Republican and one rating it Lean Republican.
The Journals' Sandra Fish and Jesse Paul said, "The district hasn’t sent a Democrat to Congress since 2008. And when redistricting happened in 2021, the 3rd District was made more favorable to Republicans. Excluding Boebert’s 546-vote win in 2022, the closest 3rd District race since Republicans took control of the district in 2010 happened that year, when Tipton beat incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. John Salazar by 4 percentage points."[4]
Colorado's 3rd Congressional District was one of 34 congressional districts with a Republican incumbent or an open seat that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) targeted in 2024. To read about DCCC targeting initiatives, click here. For a complete list of DCCC targeted districts, click here.
Frisch was, at the time of the election, a business owner and substitute teacher.[7][8] His priorities were inflation, women's rights, ranching, and farming. Frisch said he would work to secure the southern border and lower gas prices.[9]
Hurd was, at the time of the election, an attorney and manager of the Grand Junction office of Ireland Stapleton Pryor & Pascoe PC.[10] He said he would focus on legislation that would benefit water, energy, and natural resources if elected. [9] Like Frisch, Hurd also said he would work to secure the southern border and lower gas prices.[9]
James Wiley (L) and Adam Withrow (Unity Party of Colorado) also ran in the election.
Elections
2024
See also: Colorado's 3rd Congressional District election, 2024
Colorado's 3rd Congressional District election, 2024 (June 25 Republican primary)
Colorado's 3rd Congressional District election, 2024 (June 25 Democratic primary)
General election
General election for U.S. House Colorado District 3
Jeff Hurd defeated Adam Frisch, James Wiley, and Adam Withrow in the general election for U.S. House Colorado District 3 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Jeff Hurd (R) | 50.8 | 201,951 |
 | Adam Frisch (D) | 45.8 | 182,147 | |
 | James Wiley (L)  | 2.7 | 10,734 | |
 | Adam Withrow (Unity Party) | 0.7 | 2,721 | |
| Total votes: 397,553 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Frank Hernandez (Unaffiliated)
- Gary Swing (Unity Party)
- Mark Elworth Jr. (L)
- David Whitley (L)
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Colorado District 3
Adam Frisch advanced from the Democratic primary for U.S. House Colorado District 3 on June 25, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Adam Frisch | 100.0 | 51,719 |
| Total votes: 51,719 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Anna Stout (D)
- Debby Burnett (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Colorado District 3
The following candidates ran in the Republican primary for U.S. House Colorado District 3 on June 25, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Jeff Hurd | 41.2 | 36,505 |
 | Ron Hanks | 28.5 | 25,211 | |
 | Stephen Varela | 9.8 | 8,638 | |
 | Lew Webb | 8.0 | 7,094 | |
 | Curtis McCrackin | 6.5 | 5,772 | |
 | Russ Andrews | 6.0 | 5,304 | |
| Total votes: 88,524 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Austin O'Connell (R)
- Jason Bias (R)
- Joe Granado (R)
- Robin Heid (R)
- David Karpas (R)
- Kimberly Swearingen (R)
Polls
- See also: Ballotpedia's approach to covering polls
Polls are conducted with a variety of methodologies and have margins of error or credibility intervals.[11] The Pew Research Center wrote, "A margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level means that if we fielded the same survey 100 times, we would expect the result to be within 3 percentage points of the true population value 95 of those times."[12] For tips on reading polls from FiveThirtyEight, click here. For tips from Pew, click here.
The links below show polls for this race aggregated by FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics, where available. Click here to read about FiveThirtyEight's criteria for including polls in its aggregation.
Election campaign finance
| Name | Party | Receipts* | Disbursements** | Cash on hand | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Frisch | Democratic Party | $17,188,573 | $17,314,502 | $239,381 | As of December 31, 2024 |
| Russ Andrews | Republican Party | $471,361 | $471,361 | $0 | As of August 21, 2024 |
| Ron Hanks | Republican Party | $42,285 | $41,795 | $490 | As of December 31, 2024 |
| Jeff Hurd | Republican Party | $2,769,794 | $2,759,491 | $10,303 | As of December 31, 2024 |
| Curtis McCrackin | Republican Party | $73,365 | $71,303 | $9,716 | As of July 15, 2024 |
| Stephen Varela | Republican Party | $292,479 | $292,479 | $0 | As of October 14, 2024 |
| Lew Webb | Republican Party | $219,000 | $218,631 | $369 | As of December 31, 2024 |
| James Wiley | Libertarian Party | $282 | $0 | $282 | As of September 30, 2023 |
| Adam Withrow | Unity Party | $438 | $768 | $-280 | As of October 16, 2024 |
|
Source: Federal Elections Commission, "Campaign finance data," 2024. This product uses the openFEC API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
* According to the FEC, "Receipts are anything of value (money, goods, services or property) received by a political committee." |
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Satellite spending
- See also: Satellite spending
Satellite spending describes political spending not controlled by candidates or their campaigns; that is, any political expenditures made by groups or individuals that are not directly affiliated with a candidate. This includes spending by political party committees, super PACs, trade associations, and 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups.[13][14][15]
If available, this section includes links to online resources tracking satellite spending in this election. To notify us of a resource to add, email us.
| By candidate | By election |
|---|---|
Race ratings
- See also: Race rating definitions and methods
Ballotpedia provides race ratings from four outlets: The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, Sabato's Crystal Ball, and DDHQ/The Hill. Each race rating indicates if one party is perceived to have an advantage in the race and, if so, the degree of advantage:
- Safe and Solid ratings indicate that one party has a clear edge and the race is not competitive.
- Likely ratings indicate that one party has a clear edge, but an upset is possible.
- Lean ratings indicate that one party has a small edge, but the race is competitive.[16]
- Toss-up ratings indicate that neither party has an advantage.
Race ratings are informed by a number of factors, including polling, candidate quality, and election result history in the race's district or state.[17][18][19]
| Race ratings: Colorado's 3rd Congressional District election, 2024 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Race tracker | Race ratings | ||||||||
| November 5, 2024 | October 29, 2024 | October 22, 2024 | October 15, 2024 | ||||||
| The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter | Lean Republican | Likely Republican | Likely Republican | Likely Republican | |||||
| Decision Desk HQ and The Hill | Likely Republican | Likely Republican | Likely Republican | Likely Republican | |||||
| Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales | Lean Republican | Lean Republican | Lean Republican | Lean Republican | |||||
| Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball | Likely Republican | Likely Republican | Likely Republican | Likely Republican | |||||
| Note: Ballotpedia reviews external race ratings every week throughout the election season and posts weekly updates even if the media outlets have not revised their ratings during that week. | |||||||||
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Withrow in this election.
Pledges
Withrow signed the following pledges.
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Adam Withrow completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Withrow's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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Since my mid twenties, people have been asking me to run for this House seat, some of whom were highly influential business owners, and others were regular working people like myself. This cycle, I have caved in to the pressure. Instead of coming across as though I have the answers to all of our problems or presenting myself as a full-blown partisan zealot, I'd like to practice a little true Democracy as our representative. When major issues come up, I want to contact local experts and stakeholders, and I'd also like to survey the citizens of the district at large for their direct input.
I believe that by keeping the residents of the District closely involved in the legislative process, I can better live up the the office of Representative.- I don't think a person should have to choose between responsible gun ownership and other forms of freedom. I unconditionally respect the entire bill of rights, and that includes the Second Amendment. At the same time, I respect the right of people to make their own medical decisions without the interventions of politicians. People should not have to choose between self defense and self medication. I support the Second Amendment, and I also oppose federal laws restricting state freedoms regarding abortion, marijuana and other natural medicine, and LGBTQ rights. Politicians have stuck their noses too far into too many things. Aren't we supposed to be the land of the free?
- I'd like to bring about a balanced budget through series of steps that will allow us to keep our safety net for the most vulnerable. I believe that cutting back on corporate welfare, limiting military adventurism, legalizing marijuana and other natural medicines, and dramatically increasing the Federal Minimum Wage are important steps. We need to close loopholes and increase enforcement on tax cheats, and we need to redirect drains into revenue streams, as in the case of marijuana. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and SNAP are too important to lose if our businesses refuse to pay workers enough to actually live on. Prescription drug costs can be dramatically reduced by allowing the FDA to research and approve natural medicines.
- We're a working class district, and I'm a working class person. I understand the struggles that the average person here go through because I'm going through them, too. I'd like to rein in the influence of the most powerful people and businesses by taking direct input from ALL of the people in the district, not just the ones with big money. I want to practice direct democracy on as many issues as possible.
We're seeing an increase in the classic form of poverty that we all know, where people can't afford to survive in our society even while working honest jobs. More and more people are becoming homeless, but beyond that, more and more people are also being shunted into housing projects and other forms of slums. We had the Hoovervilles in the Depression, now we've got the GOPvilles, which are made of more modern materials but represent the same squalor.
We also have the rise of the New Poverty. This involves an "upper" class of people who are absolutely insatiable. When I say this, I'm not talking about people who have landed a high paying job or started a successful business. I'm talking about what is trying to crystalize into a permanent aristocracy. There are people who have so much that they don't know what to do with it, and they are still trying to leverage every situation and crisis to get more.
As we work backwards, we're watching Ukraine become the global arms expo, where competing industrial giants get to show off their new hardware to warlords the world over. We're tempting fate messing with a bear and a dragon who happen to be friends.
If I am confronted with the choice between doing the right thing that will make things hard for me or doing the wrong thing that will make things easy, I will do the right thing. Needless to say, I've seen some hard times.
I would like my impact on the world to be one that is felt, not noticed. Instead of getting "credit" for what goes well, I only wish to be a conduit through which right can flow.
It is a semi-historical account of the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history. It tells the story of what happens when different factions all think they are right, all share the same goals, and all refuse to work together. In the end, none of them win. Someone else arises from among one of the factions and destroys them all.
My sense of right and wrong is the absolute guard rail of my actions, and I relentlessly study and examine ethics to be right by my own conscience. While my specific definitions of what is right and wrong have changed throughout my life, the overall impact on my actions and words is the same.
I have left jobs because of what I have viewed to be dishonorable conduct on more than one occasion, and that has caused me to have to restart my life just as many times.
Working back from there, we have to find a balance between our technological civilizations and the planet that hosts us. We are poisoning the soil, the water, and the air with the tools that make our lives so comfortable. Every day that goes by, the rate at which we do so increases just a little. It's getting undeniably hotter, and the storms are getting stronger. I'm a bigger fan of incentives than I am of penalties, but we're going to have to strike a balance between the two in order to maintain and improve the American standard of living that we've come to enjoy. If we cross certain thresholds, there is no turning back, and no amount of money can protect anyone. We need more innovation, and we need penalties for irreversible damage.
When it comes to term limits for other offices, though, I have mixed feelings about them. In a certain way, I think there are people who need to step aside and let a new person step in and do the job. On the other hand, when the residents of a district keep sending the same person back, if it's a fair competition but their voters feel they're the best person for the job, the constituents have spoken.
We have a revolutionary government, and our revolution is regularly scheduled to repeat itself for as long as the nation lasts. Ballots are the bullets, and the conflict is non-violent. When one person is constantly reelected, their voters are saying that that is the person for the job.
I personally do not want to be a career politician. I'd like to step in to the office and see if I can truly make an impact. If I can't, I won't even run for a second term. If it feels worthwhile, and the people of the district support me, I'd be willing to come back a little longer, but I'm only willing to give so much of my life to a project like the government of the United States. That's my personal opinion, though.
Likewise, those rights that are enumerated by the Constitution are inviolable by the federal government. While guns, for another example, may be potentially dangerous, they are explicitly protected. "Arms" means those that are specifically designed to be weapons, not only those that are tools for hunting and the like.
The only sensible compromises that are available in both of those cases are those that leave the issues to the states.
In general, though, no one SHOULD be able to get everything they want. That in itself would be completely wrong. The partisan divide that is plaguing our society today is foolish and dangerous. All parties need to step to the table with a wish list, and all of them need to understand that those wishes are going to have to be prioritized. We must distinguish between the truly necessary and the comfortably desirable if we are to function as a nation.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on July 20, 2023
- ↑ Jeff Hurd 2024 campaign website, "Issues," accessed July 8, 2024
- ↑ CPR News, "Democrat Adam Frisch on how he plans to unseat Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District," September 9, 2022
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 The Journal, "Jeff Hurd wins Republican primary in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District," June 29, 2024
- ↑ Axios Denver, "Jeff Hurd wins GOP nod in Colorado's 3rd Congressional District," June 25, 2024
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Colorado Politics, "Colorado Democrat Adam Frisch calls on Biden to withdraw as party's presidential nominee," July 2, 2024
- ↑ Adam Frisch 2024 campaign website, "Meet Adam," accessed July 9, 2024
- ↑ LinkedIn, "Adam Frisch," accessed July 15, 2024
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 KOAA News 5, "Meet the candidates on November’s ballot for Colorado's Congressional District Three," June 26, 2024
- ↑ Jeff Hurd 2024 campaign website, "Meet Jeff," accessed April 19, 2024
- ↑ For more information on the difference between margins of error and credibility intervals, see explanations from the American Association for Public Opinion Research and Ipsos.
- ↑ Pew Research Center, "5 key things to know about the margin of error in election polls," September 8, 2016
- ↑ OpenSecrets.org, "Outside Spending," accessed December 12, 2021
- ↑ OpenSecrets.org, "Total Outside Spending by Election Cycle, All Groups," accessed December 12, 2021
- ↑ National Review.com, "Why the Media Hate Super PACs," December 12, 2021
- ↑ Inside Elections also uses Tilt ratings to indicate an even smaller advantage and greater competitiveness.
- ↑ Amee LaTour, "Email correspondence with Nathan Gonzalez," April 19, 2018
- ↑ Amee LaTour, "Email correspondence with Kyle Kondik," April 19, 2018
- ↑ Amee LaTour, "Email correspondence with Charlie Cook," April 22, 2018
