As well as further reducing US House speaker Mike Johnson’s already threadbare majority in his legislative chamber, last week’s abrupt departure of the Colorado congressman Ken Buck has the potential to significantly damage another prominent Republican figure: Lauren Boebert.
The far-right firebrand seized on Buck’s declaration last year that he would not seek re-election by opting to switch from a district the congresswoman barely won in 2022 to run in Buck’s soon to be vacant seat.
The calculation was that it would offer safe harbor and a near-certain return to Congress later this year, while allowing her to complete her term in office in her current seat.
Buck’s 15 March decision to bring forward his exit from November to this Friday, however, stripped the floor from beneath her. It triggered a special election in his district that will take place on 25 June and left Boebert with two equally unappealing choices. She could resign her post to run in the special election, giving Democrats the chance to flip her current seat. Or she could stay where she is and gamble on trying to unseat an incumbent in the 5 November general election.
She chose the latter. “I’m not leaving my constituents,” she said in a statement that failed to acknowledge she had already decided to walk away from them in November. “I will not imperil the already very slim House Republican majority by resigning my current seat.”
The statement also expressed anger at Buck, who outmaneuvered her and left her facing a seemingly narrow path to being a member of the next Congress. She accused Buck of “forcing an unnecessary special election on the same day” as Colorado’s presidential preference primary, predicting that it would “confuse voters, result in a lame duck congressman on day one, and leave the fourth district [being vacated by Buck] with no representation for more than three months”.
“The fourth district deserves better,” Boebert’s statement stated.
Unsaid was that neither the “lame duck” congressmember nor the primary choice of Republican voters in that district, most probably, would be her.
Buck, who said last year he was standing down in part because of his disappointment at his party’s backing of Donald Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 election, denied his decision to bring forward his exit was intended to harm Boebert.
“It’s ridiculous,” he told the Colorado Sun, stressing his decision to leave the House – where Republicans for the moment had a 219-213 edge over Democrats – was solely over his disillusionment at a lack of action in Congress.
Buck said: “I’m not giving anybody an advantage or disadvantage. I have done my very best to stay out of this primary election.”
But he did slam Boebert for attempting to fundraise from the situation, as she did in a tweet attacking the “uniparty”, a derogatory term used by conservative extremists to attack Republicans who work or vote with Democrats to pass bipartisan legislation.
Boebert’s next steps are unclear, although her pathway to the fourth district seat, if she still wants to pursue it, is now strewn with obstacles. She can run in the crowded fourth district primary also on 25 June without resigning her current seat – but to be successful she would have to persuade voters to elect one Republican as a “caretaker” in the special election before then rejecting that same candidate in the primary in her favor.
The likelihood is that the winner of the June special election, assuming it is a Republican, will also become the primary winner and run again in November with the advantage of being an incumbent.
A far less likely alternative is Boebert giving up on district four and attempting to defend Colorado’s third district seat, which she retained in 2022 by only about 500 votes from more than 327,000 cast. Many, however, believe she has burned bridges there.
The congresswoman’s second term has been mired in controversy, including an unsavory groping incident involving a male companion at a Denver theater in September, and the arrest of her 18-year-old son in February on felony charges over multiple instances of credit card and identity theft.
Either way, Boebert faces a monumental challenge to extend her political career in a House in which her behavior has been questionable, including unseemly heckling of Joe Biden during his 2022 State of the Union speech.
In December, the self-styled “no-nonsense conservative” Richard Holtorf, a candidate in the district four primary, said in a tweet that “seat shopping isn’t something that the voters look kindly on”. It is unlikely that Buck’s decision will have gained her any more supporters.
