Colorado United, our 2022 PAC, ran the largest independent rural-media campaign in Colorado's Congressional District 3 in support of Adam Frisch.
Colorado's 3rd Congressional District was rated R+7 — a district that, on paper, no Democrat should have been able to compete in. But the race had an unusual dynamic: an incumbent whose public behavior had generated backlash even among Republican voters, and a challenger running on pragmatic, local issues rather than partisan branding.
Colorado United deployed a rural-first paid media strategy across the district's vast rural geography. Radio spots aired on local stations in communities where national campaigns had never spent a dollar. Print ads ran in weekly newspapers that serve as the primary news source for ranchers, small business owners, and rural families.
The creative was built from the ground up for each market — not a Denver ad scaled down, but content written in the language and with the references that those communities recognize. The issues were local: public lands, water, agriculture, broadband, hospital access.
Adam Frisch came within 546 votes of unseating the incumbent — the closest House race in the country that cycle. Colorado United was the number one independent expenditure PAC supporting Frisch's campaign.
The result proved a thesis that Americans United is now scaling nationally: rural-first paid media, when it's authentic and locally grounded, can move even deep-red districts into competitive range.