Although Colorado is far from a red state at this point, it has its Republican-leaning districts — and one of Colorado's most infamous GOP politicians is Rep. Lauren Boebert. Colorado has a Democratic governor (Jared Polis) and two Democratic U.S. senators (John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet), and Democrats have majorities in both the Colorado State Senate and the Colorado House of Representatives.
But Boebert, a far-right MAGA extremist, conspiracy theorist and QAnon supporter along the lines of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, has been a consistent source of embarrassment to Colorado — and journalist Nick Bowlin, in an article published by "The Guardian" on June 27, describes efforts by both Democrats and non-MAGA Republicans to get her voted out of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms.
Bowlin explains, "Boebert's extreme right-wing stances range from absolute opposition to gun control to questioning the effectiveness of vaccines and the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections. All are conveyed by a social media persona fine-tuned to inflame the culture wars…. Along with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance and others, she is among a vanguard of younger, stridently conservative politicians following former President Donald Trump's path to prominence."
Boebert is running for a second term in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms.
But her critics, Bowlin explains, are hoping to prevent her from being reelected. And they have two opportunities to defeat her: a GOP primary this Tuesday, June 28, and the general election — both of which are longshots.
"Colorado holds what are known as open primaries," Bowlin notes. "This means independent voters automatically receive election ballots for both Republican and Democratic Party elections. These unaffiliated voters outnumber both Republicans and Democrats in Colorado's third district, making up about 44% of active voters. With the Democratic Party's failure to come up with a high-profile candidate, there has been a concerted anti-Boebert push among quietly dissenting Republicans, angry unaffiliated voters and even Democrats who renounce their party registration to vote in the GOP primary against Boebert."
One of the residents of Boebert's district who would like to see her voted out of office is Susan Reed, a retired cultural archeologist who changed her registration from Democrat to unaffiliated.
Reed told the Guardian, "Boebert is an embarrassment to our district. We need a legislator and not a 'Fox News' personality."
A variety of Boebert opponents, according to Bowlin, are rallying around Colorado State Sen. Don Coram — a Republican and moderate conservative who is challenging Boebert in the primary. In the Colorado State Senate, Coram has a reputation for making deals with Democrats.
"At times, Coram's politics veer beyond the normal GOP boundaries," Bowlin observes. "In 2015, he helped write a bill to provide millions in state funding to provide free contraceptives to teenagers. Coram opposes abortions. Preventing them, in his view, requires easily available contraception."
Not surprisingly, Boebert has been slamming Coram as a RINO: Republican In Name Only.
Coram told The Guardian, "We're concentrating on what we refer to as kitchen-table Republicans, the more moderate Republicans that aren't all driven by theories and agendas. We're concentrated on them and the unaffiliated vote."
Coram is facing an uphill climb, as Boebert is popular with the MAGA crowd and is running in Colorado's conservative 3rd Congressional District. Nonetheless, J. Miles Coleman, an election analyst for the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, believes that the June 28 primary is the best chance to get Boebert out of Congress.
Coleman predicts that if Boebert wins the primary, she will also win the general election. And Coleman doesn't think that any of the Democratic primary candidates — who include Alex Walker, Sol Sandoval and Adam Frisch — would be able to defeat her.
Coleman told The Guardian, "It's a conservative seat with a libertarian streak, especially on guns, taxes and government regulation. Boebert checks a lot of those boxes."
