Adam Frisch is in his second congressional campaign, crossing and re-crossing Colorado’s third US House district, a space bigger than Pennsylvania. Thirteen months out from election day, time is one thing he does not lack. But Frisch has a unique way of counting it anyway: before and after Beetlejuice.
“Before Beetlejuice,” the Democrat says, of polling in his Republican-leaning district, “we were up by two points, Trump was up five.”
After Beetlejuice, the thinking goes, Frisch’s position may well improve further.
Frisch, 56 and a former banker who now lives in Aspen, is the Democratic candidate to challenge Lauren Boebert next year. Boebert, a former restaurant owner and proud grandmother at 36, is the far-right Republican who won the seat in 2020 and has proven relentlessly controversial since – so much so that last year, even in a conservative district, she survived Frisch’s first challenge by the skin of her teeth.
Boebert won after a recount, by just 546 votes, then went back to Washington DC to stoke the usual fires.
But last month a bigger blaze flared up, when the congresswoman was shown to have behaved outrageously during a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in Denver.
On security footage, Boebert sang and danced, took selfies, vaped and even appeared to grope her date as he fondled her in return. Both were ejected. For once, Boebert voiced something close to contrition. But to Frisch, the episode was just further proof that Boebert is there to be beaten.
“We’re resonating with a lot of people,” he said, by phone, during another day of meeting and greeting.
“In February of 22, when I first launched, there were two themes I started to work on. The Republicans laughed at me, the Democrats laughed at me, the media and the donor class laughed. But the themes are the people want the circus to stop, and they want someone to focus on the district.
“And every day since then, [Boebert] has just been one of the national leaders of the circus. And obviously, it’s just gotten worse and worse … it’s just a mess and people are sick and tired.”
Boebert is not the only member of Congress Frisch identifies as a purveyor of what the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips – a high-school friend of Frisch – calls “angertainment”: lucrative playing of the partisan angles in Congress, on social media and on network TV.
“When I looked at the data a couple of years ago,” Frisch says, “I saw that Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs are all kind of a part of that Republican chaos crowd, and I would put [Ilhan] Omar and [Rashida] Tlaib [leftwing Democrats from Minnesota and Michigan] on the other side.
“They all have safe seats. A billion dollars against them is not going to change the outcome. But I noticed that in 2020, Boebert only won by five points … and so we realised that of all these ‘brand name’ representatives, Lauren Boebert is probably the only person that has any chance and a good chance now of losing.
“I thought, ‘This could turn into a big deal.’ And obviously, it’s turned into a big deal.”
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Frisch has attracted national attention. But the same pre-Beetlejuice poll that put him up 50-48 also said 40% of district voters felt they did not “know” him.
Therefore, while Boebert plays to the cameras in Washington – Frisch hits her for having a “mini television studio in her office, where there are supposed to be benches for constituents to sit before they actually have a chance to talk to the congresswoman” – her opponent continues to tour the battleground.
“The issues that we face here are a lot more in common with rural Florida, rural Pennsylvania, than with Denver and Boulder and Colorado Springs,” he says. “And I’m just very focused on how small-town America and rural America and working-class America, especially like in Pueblo, which is a very blue-collar working-class town in the district, how that whole group has kind of been left behind. And I know it’s pretty easy to call it a rural-urban divide, but it’s there. I feel it.
“I went in to this race eyes wide open. But the one true surprise was, regardless of political affiliation, regardless of political views, left, right or center, everyone in CD3 is frustrated with kind of the urban-centric conversation that is happening at the state level and a little bit at the national level … there is this resentment about how urban-centric the Democratic party has become.”
Colorado district three tilts conservative but Frisch sees a “very libertarian” conservatism which he, an aspirant “Blue Dog” or “Problem Solvers” moderate in Congress, can work with.
“It’s more of a ‘you be you’ party. They don’t want to really get involved with who you want to love, who you want to marry. They don’t want to get involved in who should be in a hospital room talking about reproductive rights, abortion. You know, ranchers and farmers are incredibly pragmatic. I’ve yet to meet a rancher or a farmer that’s un-pragmatic, because they won’t be in business for longer than eight days if they are.”
Boebert has been called many things but pragmatic is rarely one. Frisch attributes her previous wins to opportunism and a libertarianism increasingly not enough for voters turned off by her antics. He also hopes his second attempt to eject Boebert from Congress will capture national attention not just for the drama it might provide.
“I want to spend a lot more time trying to figure out how a lot more districts can have competitive races,” Frisch says, “because monopolies are bad in business and they’re bad in politics. I think 85% or 80% of the districts, they’re basically cooked in the primary. And to me, our primary system is ground zero for the dysfunctionality, the yelling and the screaming that’s going on around our country.”
