Three Democrats ran unopposed for Colorado House seats in the recent election.

[EvilRhino]

As noted, you fight where you can. In Douglas county, several slots had no D running. Either uncontested R or an R and an L choice.

I was in contact with the R running against Rapsheet Fields and he knew the skinny before the election. District is 70% African American and he ran as a White Male Conservative. As you can imagine, the vote results were about 70-30% for the criminal to keep stealing rights from us, but he ran. I asked if he was getting any funding or support from the state GOP and he flat out stated they spend where they can win.

Much like the NRA picking battles. They didn't go all out in Washington state against the UBGC law, but that was being bankrolled by Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and a few other billionaires. An article I saw today boasted at 91% win rate on the elections they backed.

[SenHolbert]

Justin,

"How does that compare to how the CO Dems pick candidates?"

It's the same process: Caucus, Assembly, Primary, General. I suppose the Dems have a reputation for having fewer Primary elections, but those do occur in their "safe" districts where the Primary winner will win in November. The county and state Parties (D or R) stay out of Primary elections. Their job is to facilitate caucus and assembly meetings and to allow delegates and alternates who are elected at caucus to decide by vote at their assembly which candidate(s) advance to the Primary. Once a D or R wins their respective Primary, their county and state Parties *can* get involved and support their candidate, but that doesn't mean that they will, must or need to.

"...if one runs, is it likely to motivate voters to the polls who otherwise wouldn't go"

Yes and no.

Here in Douglas County, Democrats hold zero partisan elected offices at the county or state legislative levels. Democrats have ~20% registration and they tend to account of ~21% of the total vote in even year elections. Any increase between their registration percentage and the percentage of actual votes cast is a factor of them turning out D voters and U's and Others voting below their 33% registration percentage. DougCo Dems have tried it both ways. They've tried to put a D in every race on the ballot so that Dem voters had candidates to vote for… and they came in at about 21% of the total vote. This year, very few DougCo Dems ran for county or state legislative seats and they came in at about… wait for it... 21% of the total vote.

The hotly contested races for state House and Senate occur in communities where voter registration is close to a 1/3 D, 1/3 R, 1/3 U/O and where performance (how people actually vote) is close. Adams County experienced a shift from D to R this election cycle. People in that community worked hard to shift single digits from the "D" column to the "R" column and they won. OK, I won my race this year with about a thirty point margin. That's not close. I won my two House races by 46 and 48 points. That's really not close. But, Rep. McCann won by a 70 point margin 85/15… that's stratospheric.

Pick your battles.