When the going got tough, Rep. Lauren Boebert fled east—a gambit that paid off handsomely on Tuesday night, when she was projected to trump a crowded field and win the Republican primary in her shiny new congressional district.
The Associated Press called the race just before 7:30 p.m. Colorado time, announcing Boebert had collected slightly more than 43 percent of the vote. The wire noted that the far-right firebrand’s infamy and combative style had been key to her success, which had been far from certain.
Marred by a series of cringe-inducing scandals, Boebert leapfrogged six months ago from the 3rd District to the 4th, a more reliably red swath of the state left open by the departing Rep. Ken Buck, the 65-year-old Republican who cut his term short in March.
Boebert is not running in the special election, also held on Tuesday, to finish out the remainder of Buck’s term. That race had not yet been called Tuesday evening, though Greg Lopez, the former Republican mayor of Parker, Colorado, was the favorite to earn a short-lived trip to Washington. Lopez did not run in the district’s primary election.
Facing aspersions of carpetbagging, Boebert nonetheless out-raised and out-spent a half-dozen primary opponents, including two current state congressmen, a former state senator, and a former radio host-turned-“parental rights” advocate named Deborah Flora.
A MAGA A-lister, she also coasted on name-brand recognition, with polling analysis done in February by the research firm Kaplan Strategies showing that 40 percent of likely Republican voters backed Boebert. In contrast, none of her rivals scooped up more than 5 percent.
On Tuesday night, none of Boebert’s opponents collected more than 17 percent of the vote.
Still, some voters recoiled from an embarrassing incident last September where Boebert was forcibly removed from a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in a Denver theater for vaping, singing along, and groping her date.
The gaffe has haunted her ever since, with debate moderators and student protesters alike raising its specter to needle her.
Boebert narrowly won re-election in the 4th District in 2022, eking out a victory by a margin of just over 500 votes. Had she remained there, she would have again faced a stiff challenge from Adam Frisch, a Democrat whose rising popularity in recent months has seen him repeatedly shatter fundraising records.
Having clinched the nomination in the 3rd District, Boebert is expected to sweep to a second term in the district’s general election come November.
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