Killin unseats Crank to become the first Democrat elected in Colorado’s 5th

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

A Denver judge was asked six days before the election to rule that Jessica Killin does not live in Colorado.

The judge never reached the question.

On Thursday afternoon, Killin became the first Democrat elected to represent Colorado’s 5th Congressional District. The Associated Press called the race at 12:38 p.m. with an estimated 94% of the vote counted, Colorado Newsline reported.

In the secretary of state’s unofficial returns, last updated at 1:18 p.m. Thursday, Killin had 140,713 votes to Republican Rep. Jeff Crank’s 127,946. That is 50.56% to 45.98%, a margin of 12,767. Libertarian Mark Elworth had 1.81% and the American Constitution Party’s Christopher Mitchell 1.65%, with 278,287 ballots counted in the race.

Every vote total and percentage in this piece comes from that posting.

El Paso County is the entire district and has not finished post-election reporting.

Crank won the seat in 2024 with about 54.7% of the vote. The 5th is the only Colorado district that has never sent a Democrat to Congress.

The petition

Wayne Laugesen, the former Colorado Springs Gazette editorial page editor, filed a verified petition in Denver District Court on Oct. 28 asking a judge to declare Killin unqualified. He posted the petition the next day.

The constitutional requirement is one sentence. A member of the House must, when elected, be an inhabitant of the state.

The petition’s central document was an Oct. 1 Montgomery County, Maryland property tax bill for a house in Chevy Chase that Killin owns with her husband, Rajeev Date. That bill designated the property their principal residence, according to the petition. An earlier bill for the same house, covering 2016 to 2017, said it was not one.

Neither bill was attached to the copy Laugesen posted. The petition’s exhibit list is headed “Exhibits Pending Fulfillment of Requests.”

Killin’s campaign said it filed paperwork to change the Maryland designation as of Oct. 29, the day after the petition was filed.

Her election lawyer, Mark Grueskin, called the complaint ridiculous and said her real property, driver’s license and tax records all establish her as a Colorado resident and voter. The campaign did not provide those records to RMV.

Campaign manager Emily Dalgleish called it “a baseless complaint filed by a right-wing activist.”

The ruling

A Denver District Court judge dismissed the petition on Oct. 30 at 11:10 a.m., three days before the election.

The court found the petition was filed outside the window state law allows. Under C.R.S. 1-4-501(3), an eligible elector who lives in the district may challenge a candidate’s qualification within five days after the election official’s statement certifying that candidate to the ballot.

Secretary of State Jena Griswold certified the general election ballot on Sept. 4, which put the deadline at Sept. 9. The tax bill is dated Oct. 1.

That deadline is absolute, and evidence surfacing later about a candidate’s eligibility does not reopen it, KRDO reported. The court rejected Laugesen’s alternative argument that the secretary of state had a duty to reconsider. It denied his request for an expedited hearing and dismissed the case with prejudice.

The ruling noted that ballots had already been mailed and that many voters in the district had likely already voted.

Nothing in it addressed where Killin actually lives.

What the record did not establish

Neither the petition nor the reporting behind it identified who changed the designation on the Chevy Chase house, or when. The petition pleaded that someone claimed it on information and belief, the standard for an allegation a party cannot yet prove.

Maryland sets that status in more than one way. The homestead credit runs on an owner’s one-time application. The state also mails an application to new purchasers once a deed is recorded.

Her statement of candidacy, signed and filed with the Federal Election Commission on July 15, 2025, carries a Colorado Springs address.

Her Colorado voter registration is not publicly available, the petition said. C.R.S. 1-4-501 also makes the information on a candidate’s voter registration record admissible as prima facie evidence of compliance with the eligibility section, so that record is the document that would most directly answer the question. It was among those Laugesen asked the court to order produced.

Laugesen says he expected to lose

He wrote on Nov. 2, the day before the election, that the outcome was the one he anticipated. The piece urged readers to vote for Crank.

“I knew I would lose,” Laugesen wrote. “I never expected a judge to bounce a congressional nominee off the ballot six days before an election, with ballots already sitting on kitchen tables. I expected the facts to get a public airing.”

His argument on the deadline was that a claim cannot expire before the facts creating it exist. “You can’t challenge a document until it exists,” he wrote.

He also set out what he thought remained. “In the unlikely case Republicans hold control of the House, the majority can refuse to seat her on this basis,” he wrote. “It’s not likely, but possible.”

That route is now closed. Democrats won the House on Tuesday.

Where the question stands

Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution makes each house of Congress the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members. The U.S. Supreme Court noted in its 2024 decision on Donald Trump’s ballot eligibility that the House and Senate have used that power to adjudicate challenges contending that prospective or sitting members could not take or retain their seats.

The same decision held that states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment with respect to federal offices, and its reasoning ran wider than that provision. Quoting an earlier case, the court said powers over the election and qualifications of federal officers must be delegated to the states rather than reserved by them.

Laugesen himself wrote on Oct. 26, two days before he filed, that carpetbagging is generally legal and that states cannot add their own qualifications for Congress.

Killin issued a statement Thursday. “This is just the start,” she said. “We will make an even greater impact by finally delivering the representation this district deserves.”