5 takeaways from Colorado's 2024 primary election: Big moves for Democrats and Republicans

Don't overlook Tuesday's low-interest , early-summer primary election: It delivered major verdicts about the future of Colorado's politics.

State of play: Defying recent trends, Democrats and Republicans reverted to the mean and mostly rejected progressive and MAGA-backed candidates in key races while picking their next generation of leaders.

The big picture: Here are five takeaways from the election results and what it means for Colorado.

1) Lauren Boebert rescues her political career. The mountains-to-plains shift in congressional districts paid off for Boebert, who easily won the Republican nomination in the 4th District after her five rivals split the opposition vote.

• The victory in the ruby-red district gives Boebert a clear advantage heading into November and the ability to continue her bomb-throwing political style that grabs headlines in Washington, D.C.

2) MAGA loses big. The most pro-Trump candidates in Colorado — other than Boebert — lost by wide margins in congressional races as establishment GOP organizations pushed their candidates to victory.

• Friction point: The proxy for the longstanding battle came in the Colorado 5th District where Jeff Crank, a former strategist for Americans for Prosperity, the anti-Trump Koch-backed political organization, defeated state GOP chairman Dave Williams .
• In the 8th District, Koch-backed Gabe Evans — who was later endorsed by the former president — also defeated a far-right candidate.

3) Denver rejects a tougher-on-crime approach. John Walsh waltzed to victory in the Denver district attorney's race, defeating Leora Joseph, who staked her claim as a tough-on-crime prosecutor who wanted to overhaul a broken system.

• The intrigue: Walsh supports a pilot program to legalize illicit drug use at supervised sites, even while pledging to crack down on auto thefts and better target violent crime.

4) Progressives lawmakers falter. The vast majority of the progressive candidates in Democratic primaries lost or trailed establishment-backed rivals in preliminary results.

• By the numbers: Only two of the nine progressives — state Rep. Mike Weissman running in an Aurora state Senate race and Yara Zokaie competing for a state House seat south of Fort Collins — were set to win their races.

5) Democratic meddling fails again. Democrats spent more than a half-million dollars trying to boost election denier and Trump acolyte Ron Hanks, their preferred GOP opponent in the 3rd District, but it proved ineffective. Jeff Hurd, a Grand Junction attorney and first-time candidate, took the Republican nomination to replace Boebert on the ballot.

• Flashback: This is the second time in as many elections that Democrats tried to meddle in a Colorado GOP primary — both times to support Hanks — only to lose.