(Colorado Newsline) Preliminary primary election results on Tuesday showed first-time candidate Trisha Calvarese leading a three-way race to become the Democratic Party’s 2024 nominee in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District.

With over 44,000 ballots counted of 9:30 p.m., Calvarese led with 45.5 percent of the primary vote, ahead of Marine veteran Ike McCorkle with 41 percent and John Padora with 13 percent.

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The winner of the Democratic primary will face U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert, who won the 4th District Republican primary Tuesday, in the November general election. Boebert announced in December that she would move across the state to seek the 4th District seat after two terms representing the 3rd District on the Western Slope, where she nearly lost reelection in 2022.

Republicans are heavily favored in the 4th District, which includes Douglas County and much of Colorado’s Eastern Plains. Nearly three times as many Republican ballots were returned in the 4th District’s closely-watched GOP primary on Tuesday as Boebert easily prevailed over her five opponents.

The 4th District seat was previously held by former U.S. Representative Ken Buck, who resigned in March after serving in Congress for nine years. Buck’s resignation triggered a special election to fill out the remaining six months of his term, which was also held Tuesday.

McCorkle unsuccessfully challenged Buck in both 2020 and 2022. He reported by far the highest fundraising totals in the Democratic primary race, with nearly $1.5 million in contributions received as of June 5. He qualified for the primary ballot through petition signatures.

Calvarese, a former communications staffer for the AFL-CIO and the National Science Foundation, was a candidate in both the primary and Tuesday’s special election — which she lost to Republican Greg Lopez — after being selected in April by a committee of about 120 Democrats in the 4th District. Separately, she qualified later that month for the primary ballot after receiving 57.8 percent of delegate support at the district’s Democratic assembly.

Padora, an engineer and addiction recovery advocate, also qualified for the primary ballot through the assembly process, receiving 33.9 percent of delegate support. He moved to Colorado in 2021, after unsuccessfully seeking a state House seat in his home state of Pennsylvania.

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