Dec.28

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House News, Part II: Boebert Flees CO-03

Rep. Lauren Boebert's (R-CO) political future was in serious jeopardy. She won reelection in 2022 by less than 1,000 votes—the closest race in the nation. In 2024, her 2022 opponent (Democrat Adam Frisch) will take another shot at the seat, and this time he's got big-time name recognition and even bigger-time money. Boebert herself has struggled to raise funds, while also adding additional liabilities to her résumé, liabilities like the vaping and groping incident at the performance of Beetlejuice. Oh, and 2024 is also a presidential year, which tends to favor Democrats.

Luckily for the Representative, she was handed a potential lifeline by the unexpected retirement of Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO). Yesterday—and we thank reader P.R. in Arvada, CO, for first bringing the news to our attention—Boebert grabbed that lifeline, and announced that she will run for reelection in CO-04, the district that Buck is vacating.

This was probably Boebert's best, and only, hope to keep her job. That said, although CO-04 is far redder than CO-03 (R+13 for the former, R+7 for the latter), Boebert has two big problems to worry about. The first is that she's just traded a very competitive general election for... a very competitive primary. Given the redness of CO-04, and the fact that it's an open seat, Republicans are coming out of the woodwork to take their shot at it. Here's a rundown of the non-Boebert Republicans:

• Deborah Flora: She's a far-right radio host and staunch Trumper who has run for office before and come up short. She's not likely to be a serious contender, but you never know. See, for example, Kari Lake. Or, for that matter, Boebert, who was a gun-toting restaurant owner when she first threw her cowboy hat into the ring.
  
  
• Ted Harvey: He's a former state representative and outspoken Trumper who spends as much time railing against RINOs as he does Democrats.
  
  
• State Rep. Richard Holtorf: Yet another Trumper, he's an Army veteran who gets much mileage out of his public image as a salt-of-the-earth lifelong Colorado cowboy. He also has a bad (?) habit of getting caught on tape using racial slurs.
  
  
• Weld County Councilor Trent Leisy: A Navy veteran, he's a Trumper, too, and likes to wear a "MAGA King" trucker's hat. He was the first to jump in the race, back before Buck announced his retirement. Leisy's plan was to primary Buck from the right, so that tells you where Leisy is on the political spectrum (Hint: to the right of Jefferson Davis). It surely won't surprise you to learn that he's called for the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court to be arrested, tried for treason, and hanged.
  
  
• Justin Schreiber: An Army veteran, he's a real estate investor and software developer. His platform is: "I don't tolerate tyrants! I'm running to restore the constitution [sic] fully, dismantle the IRS, ATF, and FBI [sic] they are domestic terrorists." He's not likely a serious contender, either; he's raised no money and has no campaign website.
  
  
• Logan County Commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg: Sonnenberg has also served in the state legislature, rising so far as to become Senate President Pro Tem. Another Trumper (of course), he has also railed angrily against the Colorado Supreme Court for kicking the former president off the state's primary ballot. Like Holtorf, he's built his image around the fantasy that he's a cowboy.

Boebert has more name recognition than these folks, but less money than some of them. And she's clearly not going to be able to out-crazy them all, or even to stand out on that particular dimension.

And that brings us to Boebert's second problem, namely that she's got plenty of liabilities that could cost her votes in CO-04. A rundown of the most significant, in our view:

• Show Horse: At this point, Boebert has a near-unshakable reputation as someone who is more interested in getting headlines than she is in getting legislation passed. In her time in the House thus far, just one of her bills (the Pueblo Jobs Act) has become law, as an add-on to the National Defense Authorization Act. Meanwhile, the list of high-profile "look at me" incidents is long: the jeering of Joe Biden from the floor of the House, the nasty fight with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the circus surrounding the election of Kevin McCarthy as speaker, the embrace of QAnon, the efforts to find someone—anyone—to impeach, etc. Many voters don't appreciate a representative whose priority is performative nonsense.
  
  
• Morality: It's a free country, and Boebert is free to vape what she wants and to grope whomever she wants, as long as the gropee is happy with the groper's actions. However, culturally conservative voters in ruby-red CO-04 might not agree, particularly when they also take note of Boebert's divorce, and the fact that she's a grandmother at 37. Meanwhile, an even larger number of voters might be concerned about a Representative whose standards for public decorum are so low. Not only did she behave badly in public, to the point of being ejected from the Beetlejuice performance, but she also acted like a drunken Greek (fraternity/sorority member, not resident of Greece) while she was escorted out—stumbling around, threatening staffers, gesturing wildly, shouting at passersby.
  
  
• Carpetbagger: This is a pretty big one, we think. Here's a map of Colorado's house districts:
  
  
  
  The red star is where Boebert's residence is located, near the town of Silt. The blue star is the single-closest point to her residence in her would-be new district (the big ivory-colored district that covers the eastern third of the state). That's almost a 200-mile drive, and even then, we're not sure exactly how many constituents reside in Chatfield Dog Park. Probably just the most important ones.
  
  In other words, this isn't a situation where the member would be living just a hop, skip and a jump away from their district. Boebert would be living FAR from her constituents. Either she'd have to rent a hotel room on days where she's in her district office, or she'd have a 6-hour drive, round trip.
  
  And the problem is not just that voters tend to dislike carpetbaggers in an abstract sense. Western and Eastern Colorado are pretty different places, with different issues. We're hardly experts in the ins-and-outs of Colorado state politics, but even we know that the western portion has much less manufacturing than the eastern portion. The western portion has an abundance of water (80% of the state's total), while the eastern portion has to hustle to keep its citizens and animals and crops hydrated. The west has problems with forest fires, while the eastern portion has much more extreme weather. The eastern portion is farmland, basically a continuation of Nebraska and Kansas; the western portion is mountainous and nothing like Kansas. All of these differences imply different policy priorities, and thus demand different expertise from someone who would represent CO-03 vs. CO-04.

In short, we think Boebert's odds of staying in Washington got better yesterday. But we don't think they got THAT much better.

The Colorado Democratic Party, as you might imagine, is having a field day with this news. Colorado Democratic Party Chair Shad Murib promptly sent out this statement (which was brought to our attention by reader C.L. in Boulder, CO):

Lauren Boebert can run, but she can't hide. The good people of Western and Southern Colorado didn't wait for an election to beat Lauren Boebert—we scared her straight and chased her out of her own district. With this carpetbagging move, Lauren Boebert has shown herself to be everything she claims she isn't: a typical swampy politician looking for a reason to call Washington D.C. home. She's a loser in CD3, and she'll be a loser in CD4—Coloradans won't buy her bullsh** in 2024.

Colorado Democrats launched The 546 Project, our unprecedented year-round campaign in Western and Southern Colorado, to make sure that rural Colorado is represented by someone committed to protecting our outdoor spaces, expanding health care, and treating people right—not hurting our farmers and ranchers with bad policies and foolish trade wars, or selling our public lands off to the highest bidders. We look forward to this fight.

So, is this just puffery, or does Frisch still stand a chance in CO-03? Clearly, a lot of the Frisch votes in 2022 were Never Boebert votes. With someone else as the opponent, those could go away. And without those, it's not going to be easy for a Democrat to win an R+9 district.

That said, there is still hope for the would-be Representative. He's got big-time name recognition and piles of cash. Also, because Boebert was in the running until yesterday, there are only three declared Republicans in the race, and they are all unknowns. It's possible a more serious candidate could jump in, but they only have a few days to do so before Colorado's filing deadline hits (Jan. 2). Up against a much-less-well-funded, much-less-well-known, much-less-organized Republican, Frisch certainly stands a puncher's chance. And his odds go up if a bloody Republican primary results in the nomination of a looney tunes candidate in the mold of Boebert. (Z)