After failing to unseat U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado, in the 2022 election, Democrat Adam Frisch is piling up campaign donations for a rematch in 2024, but if Republican Russ Andrews has his way, that won’t happen.

Andrews announced his candidacy for the 3^rd Congressional District seat on Thursday, April 13, as he now aims to challenge Boebert for the GOP nomination in next year’s primary.

“I’m tired of Lauren Boebert,” Andrews said of the 36-year-old congresswoman. “I didn’t realize how young she is, but she’s immature, she’s brash, she’s loud, she’s emotional, she’s divisive and everybody I talk to over here in the Roaring Fork Valley, they’re fed up with her in a Donald Trump kind of way.”

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Saying that he’s been a conservative since before Boebert was born, Andrews is a 65-year-old radio personality from Carbondale who’s never held public office before. Still, he’s branding himself as “the gluten-free, Diet Coke version” of Boebert, and he thinks he has a chance.

According to Andrews, the biggest difference between him and Boebert likely comes on the topic of abortion, a debate that Andrews contends “is killing the Republican party.”

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“I do believe that as a single issue, abortion is making our country drift pretty far to the left, and it seems irreconcilable, so you have to use some logic,” Andrews said of his position.

He explained that a baby’s heart starts beating inside the womb about six to 12 weeks after conception, and a fetus isn’t viable until somewhere around 22-24 weeks. With that, Andrews said 12 weeks would be a good time frame to allow a woman’s right to choose.

“As a congressman — this would be my biggest thing that I would want to do — I would introduce legislation and try to get co-sponsors on both sides of the isle that we fall somewhere between 12 and 22 weeks in what I call, ‘a woman’s right to choose,'” he said. “I just want to codify a woman’s right to choose, and get this issue behind us on the national stage.”

He also claims that Boebert represents herself much more than she does her district, and he said Boebert has failed to secure critical federal dollars for important pieces of local infrastructure.

“That’s born out when you look at the disparity between the amount of money other Colorado districts bring in in federal remittances versus what she brought in last year,” Andrews said. “I don’t know what the roads are like in Craig, but I can tell you around here they are lousy. If we can get federal funding to fix and maintain our roads, that would be another thing I think would be great.”

Beyond that, Andrews is also pitching a “predation act” that would reimburse ranches at five times the market value of their lost livestock or property damage suffered as a result of predators. Andrews said his plan would certainly cover wolves, but it would also extend to other predators like mountain lions and coyotes.

“If a rancher loses a $2,000 cow, he should be remunerated to the tune of $10,000,” Andrews said. “If he loses a $1,000 calf — you know, $5,000. If he loses a fence and the fence costs $1,000 to fix, he should be paid $5,000. The state owns the predators and the animals that are destroying ranch property, and the state should have to buck up. By state, I mean federal government.”

Andrews also said he wants to increase legal immigration threefold, but do so focusing on merit and allowing people in who can help the economy right away. He also wants to install steep tariffs on Mexico and China until there’s a reduction in the amount of fentanyl coming into the U.S., and Andrews wants the government to stop charging people who remove beetle-kill trees from national forests and instead pay them to take the wood out while allowing them to sell the products tax exempt.

“In other words, the person who produces the product wouldn’t have to pay any federal income taxes on it,” Andrews said.

Andrews admitted he has never held public office outside of being the treasurer of his class his junior year in high school, but he believes he has some name recognition serving as a radio show personality for 14 years while focusing on conservative politics and finance.

Andrews acknowledged that defeating an incumbent member of Congress in a primary doesn’t often happen, but he said he wants to keep the district red and believes he has a better chance of winning the general election than Boebert does.

“What makes me think I can do it?” Andrews asked before answering the question. “Everybody that I’ve talked to about it — not everybody, but I’d say over 95% of people — are just fed up. They are done with Lauren Boebert like they’re done with winter. I just think there might be some possibility there.”

In addition to appearing weekly on the KNFO David Bach radio show, Andrews is a 29-year resident of Colorado and works as a financial adviser. For anyone who wants to know more about his campaign, he’s created the website Russ4cd3.com.