National Democrats are setting their sights this year on Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, a remarkable development given that the Colorado Springs-based district has been a Republican stronghold for roughly five decades.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the primary campaign arm for Democrats in the U.S. House, announced Tuesday that it has placed the district on its list of “districts in play.”
Districts on the list — there are only a few dozen of them — are held by Republicans. But they are ones the DCCC thinks could flip in this year’s election as Democrats seek to retake control of the House.
The designation may eventually deliver money. At first, it will be accompanied by nonfinancial support, like candidate and staff training, as well as party guidance.
The 5th District is represented by U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, a Colorado Springs Republican who is finishing up his first term in Washington. The only other Colorado district on the list is the 8th Congressional District north of Denver. It was drawn as a perennial toss-up and it’s currently represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans of Fort Lupton, who beat out the Democratic incumbent in 2024 by a slim margin.
“The DCCC will make sure that come November, Colorado’s 5th Congressional District elects a representative that finally puts them first,” DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene, a Democratic U.S. representative from Washington, said in a written statement.
The 5th District’s voters have never elected a Democrat in the 50-odd years since it was created. And it has never been a DCCC target. But the DCCC thinks they have a path to victory this year — an even better one than they might have in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, which spans the Western Slope into Pueblo and southeastern Colorado.
The 3rd District is not on the DCCC’s “districts in play” list even though Democrats lost it by just a few percentage points in 2024 and by just a few hundred votes in 2022.
There are a number of factors working in Democrats’ favor in the 5th District.
First, they have a stronger 5th District candidate this year than they’ve likely ever had in Jessica Killin, an Army veteran who was raised in Colorado Springs and is the former chief of staff to second gentleman Doug Emhoff. While Killin still must first win the district’s Democratic primary to face Crank in November, she has used her national political network to amass a large amount of campaign cash that will help her compete if she makes it to the general election — as expected.
Killin’s campaign reported raising $610,000 last quarter, including a $257,000 donation the candidate made to her own cause. The campaign opened the new year with more than $1.1 million in cash on hand after spending about $270,000 in the final three months of 2025.
Crank raised about $300,000 in the final quarter of last year and spent about $115,000. His campaign reported starting 2026 with about $1 million in the bank.
Secondly, the district — which is entirely contained within El Paso County — has been trending toward Democrats over the past decade.
In 2016, then-U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, won the district by 31 percentage points. By 2022, his margin of victory had shrunk to 16 percentage points. In 2024, Crank, running to succeed Lamborn after his retirement, won by 14 percentage points over Democrat River Gassen, a first-time candidate who raised little money and effectively had no party assistance.
Trump won El Paso County in 2024 by 10 points, down from 11 points in 2020. In 2016, however, he won the county by a whopping 22 points.
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet lost El Paso County by 20 points in 2016. But he lost by 9 points in 2022.
The best sign for Democrats in the district is how Gov. Jared Polis has fared in recent election cycles. He lost his first gubernatorial campaign in El Paso County by 17 percentage points. In 2022, he lost it by just 4 points.
In 2023, Colorado Springs voters elected Yemi Mobolade, who is unaffiliated, mayor. He beat out Republican Wayne Williams, a city councilman and Colorado’s former secretary of state.
Unaffiliated voters made up 52% of the active, registered voters in the district as of Feb. 2, followed by Republicans at 28% and Democrats at 16.5%.
The DCCC will decide how much to engage in the 5th District this year depending on how their national map develops. Democrats are hoping to flip enough seats to win a majority in the U.S. House.
The deep-pocketed committee spends in the districts where it thinks it has the best chance of flipping seats and where it thinks it most needs to play defense.