Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) won her crowded GOP primary in her new congressional district yesterday as the campaign office of someone running to replace her in her old district was shot up.
Earlier this year, Boebert, who currently represents Colorado’s Third Congressional District, announced that she would be running for reelection in Colorado’s more conservative Fourth Congressional District after she was almost defeated by her Democratic opponent in 2022. She was called a “carpetbagger” by her opponents but later endorsed by Donald Trump in March.
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“This victory belongs to the faithful voters of Colorado’s 4th district!” Boebert wrote on X last night. “Now let’s win this thing November 5th and also reelect (for a third time) President Donald J. Trump!”
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“We’ve got a country to save!”
Thank you all for your love and support.
This victory belongs to the faithful voters of Colorado’s 4th district!
Now let’s win this thing November 5th and also reelect (for a third time) President Donald J. Trump!
We’ve got a country to save!
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) June 26, 2024
Her victory wasn’t the only notable event in the GOP primary in Colorado last night. Stephen Varela, who ran in Colorado’s Third Congressional District to replace Boebert, released a statement saying that the Pueblo County Republican HQ office was shot up yesterday, which caused him to move his watch party to another location.
“Pueblo County’s Republican Headquarters has been hit by gunfire,” the release states. “While the motive of the perpetrators is unknown, acts of violence toward a political party or candidate must always be condemned. We will not be intimidated.”
Varela ultimately lost to Jeff Hurd, a most mainstream Republican who will face Adam Frisch, who lost to Boebert by a tiny margin of 546 votes in 2022.
But her win last night in the Fourth’s primary means there’s a strong chance that she will stay in Congress.
Colorado’s Fourth was represented by former Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), who announced in November he would not be seeking reelection. In March, he announced that he would resign before the end of his term and a special election took place yesterday in which former Parker Mayor and 2020 election denier Greg Lopez won.
Buck won reelection in 2022 in a landslide, getting 61% of the vote. Donald Trump got 57% of the vote in the district in 2020, higher than the 52% that Trump got in Boebert’s old district.
Boebert will face Trisha Calvarese, who just won the Democratic primary in the Fourth, in the general election in November.
“We started in January after Boebert announced, with no money and a cell phone,” she told reporters. “I personally made thousands of calls. And it’s my message that I am from here.”
“I’m a daughter of the district and I am running to serve the people of our district first. Not politics, it’s people.”
Boebert has made numerous anti-LGBTQ+ statements in her two terms in Congress, including using homophobic insults to attack Transporation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for taking care of his kids, telling drag performers to stay out of her district, and accusing transgender people of being terrorists.
She got a score of “0” on HRC’s Congressional Scorecard for her first term in Congress, showing her solid opposition to LGBTQ+ equality. She didn’t just vote against LGBTQ+ legislation; she led a press conference in front of Congress to stop the Equality Act – which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected classes in federal civil rights law – from passing in 2021 when Congress was voting on it. She claimed that the law would be used to take children away from their parents if the parents refused to give their kids access to gender-affirming care, something that wasn’t in the bill at all.
In 2022, a report from HRC noted that Boebert’s Twitter account was the third biggest source of anti-transgender misinformation on the social media platform, just after rightwing pundit James Lindsay and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
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