On a warm Saturday afternoon in August, families in cowboy hats and boots meandered between food trucks and livestock auctions at the Grand County Fairgrounds in Kremmling. The Middle Park Fair and Rodeo is like a lot of other county fairs across Colorado — a place for the community to gather and celebrate.
The fair also represents another side of the county for Janet Engel, the president of the fair’s organizing committee, and a lifelong local resident.
“This is the west end of the county, which is the farmers, the ranchers, the agricultural end of the county,” Engel explained as she ran the concession stand near the fairground bleachers. “There is a huge divide between east and west in this county.”
Engel is a Democrat from the eastern end of Grand County, which is known for upscale ski resorts like Winter Park and liberal political leanings. Engel said that makes her job on the fair board more difficult.
“Everybody else on the board is Republican, so I walk a really fine line there,” Engel said.
The partisan division that has defined national politics in recent years is also setting the tone for local politics in Colorado. Candidates from Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to those running in Congressional and state house races regularly tap into fears that their political opponents threaten the way people live their lives.
Communities have been split apart as a result.
Grand County has a population of less than 16,000, but the county’s top election official, Clerk and Recorder Joni Morse, said it’s a microcosm of the political rifts playing out across Colorado and the U.S. in an election year.
“You've got a growing population, on the one hand, who wants to see some modernization,” Morse told KUNC. “And you've got people who have lived here for generations who don't necessarily want to see all that change.”
The tension isn’t new, but it’s being exacerbated by changing demographics.
The number of registered voters in the county has increased steadily over the last decade, according to data from the Colorado Secretary of State. The increase is largely concentrated among unaffiliated voters, who now make up the majority of voters in Grand County. That's a reflection of Colorado as a whole.
Meanwhile, over the past ten years, registered Democrats in the county increased minimally, and Republican voter numbers decreased.
Local candidates on both sides of the aisle are trying to lower the political temperature and focus on issues that are having negative impacts on voters — like the cost of housing, healthcare, and childcare.
“I'm not going to do the negative campaign,” Republican Grand County Commissioner Merrit Linke said. “I just think that's so important on a local level. You're going to see these people at the grocery store. You're going to see them at the post office.”
Not everyone sees it that way, though. Another county fairgoer, Republican voter Chuck Alexander, has lived in the area for more than six decades and blames many of Grand County’s issues on newcomers.
“The crowd from the east has moved to Middle Park area, and basically, Granby is not what it ought to be,” he said.
For Alexander, these political divisions represent an existential fight over the direction of the country, all the way down to Grand County.
“If we put the Republican Party in there now, there would be a chance of saving this country,” Alexander said. “If we don't, we're done.”
Janet Engle, in another part of the fairgrounds, said that when she originally signed on to organize the fair, she hoped it could help bridge the local political divide. Instead, partisan politics has made it worse.
“I don't want to lose the Western heritage that we have here and the agriculture and this and that, but for me personally, it's a losing battle.” Engel said. “How can we come together as a nation when we have this division? I just worry about our future.”
If Republican and Democratic candidates at the state and national levels continue to paint the election in stark terms and cast their opponents as enemies, however, there’s little hope that the division will end anytime soon.
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