Downtown Delta, Colorado on May 29, 2021. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)
A mandatory recount of ballots in Colorado’s House District 58 confirmed that auctioneer Larry Don Suckla won the Republican primary for the seat, the secretary of state’s office announced Tuesday.
Suckla beat J. Mark Roeber by just three votes in the southwestern district that includes Dolores, Gunnison, Hinsdale, Montrose, Ouray, and San Miguel counties and parts of Delta and Montezuma counties.
That is what preliminary election results also showed. After the recount, both candidates gained a single vote.
“We won by a landslide three votes. There has not been a state Rep. from Montezuma county for 35 years. Now we have to beat the competitor for the general election,” Suckla posted on X after he learned the recount results.
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Suckla will face Democrat Kathleen Curry in the November general election. The winner will replace Republican Rep. Marc Catlin, who is running for the Senate District 5 seat.
Over 300 ballots were not delivered to voters in Dolores County for the race, according to Colorado Public Radio. It appears that they were lost while in United States Postal Service custody. The secretary of state’s office is considering increased supervision in Dolores County’s election offices for the general election, according to a letter from Elections Division Director Judd Choate to Clerk and Recorder Lana Hancock.
The race’s extremely narrow margin triggered a mandatory recount. Recounts occur if the apparent winner is ahead by a number of votes that is 0.5% or less of their vote total. In this case, the three votes were 0.05% of Suckla’s 6,488 votes as of Election Day.
The district favors Republicans by about 13 percentage points, according to a nonpartisan election result analysis from the state’s redistricting commission.
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