County primary election goes off without a hitch

Coram won primary in Gunnison County

[  By Mark Reaman  ]

It was a relatively slow primary election turnout for Gunnison County but the process was efficient and County Clerk Kathy Simmilion said, “everything went really well and ran very smoothly. All went well with the new election judges and the entire process. We had a few signature verification and I.D. issues but nothing that would change any of the results.”

Simillion said in the last primary election in 2020, 5,363 people turned out to vote. Unofficial results posted Tuesday evening show that just more than 39% of the eligible voters in the county cast a ballot in either the Republican or Democratic primary this year with 4,826 out of 12,284 potential ballots submitted. 

Unaffiliated voters were allowed to vote in either primary and it appears many chose to vote in the Republican primary as Republican Don Coram beat Lauren Boebert in the county for the Third Congressional District 1,511 votes to 1,296. But Boebert crushed Coram in the rest of the district winning the nomination by 31 points. She will run against Democrat Adam Frisch who won the Democratic nomination districtwide and carried Gunnison County with almost 50% of the vote in a three-way race.

County Republicans followed the state with most voting for Heidi Ganahl to take on Jared Polis for governor. Ganahl garnered 55% (1,240) of the county votes. Republicans voted for Joe O’Dea over Ron Hanks to take on Michael Bennet for U.S. senate. O’Dea tallied 56% (1,274) of the county votes cast in that race.

In the other interesting race, local Republicans like the rest of the state, selected Pam Anderson to be the nominee for secretary of state to run against incumbent Democrat Jena Griswold. Controversial 2020 election denier and Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters however tallied 578 local votes of the 2,265 cast in Gunnison County for the office.

In local uncontested races, Democratic candidate for county commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels received 1,782 votes while her Republican opponent Rich Evans tallied 1,537 votes.

The general election will be held Tuesday, November 8 and Simillion is prepared. “I’m thinking that the fall midterm election will be huge,” she said.