County’s primary election was smooth

County Republicans supported Tipton. Dems line up behind Hickenlooper

by Mark Reaman

Even with 5,323 ballots cast in Gunnison County, Tuesday’s primary election came off smoothly according to Gunnison County elections director Diane Folowell. Having ballot drop boxes in both Crested Butte and Gunnison allowed voters to cast their ballots for several weeks and she said that made counting the votes easy on Tuesday. “It was a good dry run for the upcoming November election which we expect will be very busy,” she said.

County Democrats followed the state trend and chose former governor John Hickenlooper to run for U.S. Senate against incumbent Cory Gardner. Statewide, Hickenlooper received about 60 percent of the vote while in Gunnison County he tallied 57 percent to 43 percent for Andrew Romanoff.

In one of Colorado’s biggest upsets, incumbent Republican congressman Scott Tipton who represents Gunnison County was defeated by more conservative challenger Lauren Boebert. Gunnison County Republicans however favored Tipton 980 votes to 778. Boebert will run against Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush this fall.

Locally, Dave Taylor received enough write-in votes to make the November ballot as a Republican candidate for District 1 county commissioner. He’ll run against a candidate selected by the Democratic Party to replace John Messner who resigned. And Jonathan Houck will run as a Democrat in District 2. His potential challenger is Trudy Vader who is collecting signatures to make the ballot.

Results are unofficial but Folowell emphasized she was pleased at how the election came off with new voting protocols and a newly purchased ballot sorting machine.