December 27, 2023 07:35 PM UTC

SURPRISE! Boebert Panics and Switches Districts to CO-04

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• by: Colorado Pols

Republican Congressperson Lauren Boebert has been on a downward trajectory ever since she barely won re-election in 2022 by a razor-thin 546 votes in CO-03. Her odds of winning a third term in 2024 began plummeting after her infamous Beetlebert scandal and the subsequent campaign of Republican Jeff Hurd, whom establishment Republicans have been rushing to support as they worried about Boebert’s ability to hold the seat against Democratic challenger Adam Frisch. Boebert’s embarrassing antics have hurt her with mainstream Republicans and led to a narrative that she was in serious trouble in 2024.

Instead of making the changes that she actually needed to make in order to remain in Congress — like NOT showing up in the tabloids every week — Boebert bailed out of the Hindenburg and parachuted onto the Titanic.

As The Colorado Sun reports:

Lauren Boebert announced Wednesday night that she is ditching her reelection bid next year in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District to run instead in the state’s 4th Congressional District, which is on the other side of the state and is far more favorable to Republicans. [Pols emphasis]

Boebert won by just 546 votes last year in the 3rd District, which spans Colorado’s Western Slope into Pueblo and southeastern Colorado. The 4th District is anchored in Douglas County and includes Loveland and the state’s rural Eastern Plains.

The 3rd District leans 9 percentage points in Republicans’ favor while the 4th District leans 27 points toward the GOP, according to a nonpartisan analysis of election results from 2016 to 2020 by staffers for the Colorado legislature. Boebert doesn’t have to live in the 4th District to represent it.

“I did not arrive at this decision easily,” Boebert said in a Facebook video announcing the move. “A lot of prayer, a lot of tough conversations and a lot of perspective convinced me that this is the best way I can continue to fight for Colorado, for the conservative movement and for my children’s future.”

Let’s call this what it is: A desperate move to keep a job — ANY JOB — in Congress in 2025. All of Boebert’s talk about how hard she was working for her constituents in the third congressional district was never believable, but there is absolutely no good faith discussion to be had anymore. Changing districts in the middle of her term — Boebert says she will literally move her home to CO-04, which is on the other side of the state — is just plain insulting to Republican voters. Does she think Republican voters in CO-04 will EVER believe anything she says after what she just did to her current constituents? Will she spend the next year in Congress working on legislation in order to gain the support of voters she doesn’t currently represent?

With this one decision, Boebert proved once and for all that she is interested in remaining in Congress for one reason, and one reason only: Just to remain in Congress. This has nothing to do with representing people from the district in which she has lived most of her life. This has ALWAYS been about Lauren Boebert — and only about Lauren Boebert.

Before posting her Facebook video announcement today, Boebert apparently spent some time calling the many current and soon-to-be Republicans in CO-04, including House Minority Leader Mike Lynch (who is still mulling a bid for Congress but hasn’t yet announced). From what we hear, Boebert was telling these folks that Donald Trump “told me to do it” (switch districts in 2024). Not all of the advice she received was in agreement, however; Republican State Party Chairman Dave Williams told Boebert NOT to make the switch.

This is a Terrible Idea for Boebert

Boebert was facing an increasingly-difficult Republican Primary Election in June against Jeff “Bread Sandwich” Hurd, who has been picking up endorsements from all across the state simply by virtue of NOT being Lauren Boebert. She would have been favored to beat Hurd in the GOP Primary, though doing so likely would have forced her to expend a significant amount of resources heading into a General Election battle with the well-funded Frisch.

But despite the many obstacles facing her re-election bid, Boebert still had the advantage of overwhelming name ID throughout her sprawling home district. If she could have beaten Hurd, she had a chance to gain Republican financial support in the General Election for the simple fact that the GOP needs to keep CO-03 in the red column to have any hope of maintaining its slim majority in the House of Representatives.

Boebert is now running in a district that is a virtual lock to remain in Republican hands in 2024. WHOEVER wins the June Primary to succeed retiring Rep. Ken Buck is all but guaranteed to win the General Election in November. In other words, Republicans don’t need Boebert in 2024. There’s no incentive for GOP voters to hold their nose and vote for Boebert in CO-04, where a ClusterBuck of Republican candidates already offers a little something for every right-wing voter.

And if Boebert thought other Republican candidates in CO-04 would just roll over for her…she thought wrong.

As we’ve discussed in this space, there will likely be so many candidates on the June Primary ballot that the eventual winner will gain a new office in Washington D.C. with only a fraction of the total Republican voting population in CO-04. The GOP Primary will be a knife fight in a phone booth, which negates Boebert’s two biggest advantages: Name ID and fundraising. When you get more than six candidates on the ballot, winning the Primary Election is about making sure that your supporters turn out to vote. And since Boebert has no natural connection to residents of CO-04, she doesn’t have the kind of built-in base of support that someone like former State Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg has cultivated for more than a decade.

Boebert didn’t fix her 2024 problems by moving to a new district. She’s still a pure political performance artist who is mainly interested in the F-level celebrity status that comes with being a MAGA Member of Congress, and Republican Primary voters aren’t likely to find this any more endearing on the Eastern Plains than they did along the Western Slope of Colorado. Boebert’s decision to switched districts is the equivalent of the Denver Broncos expecting to suddenly become a better team merely because they changed uniforms.

Everybody in the Pool in CO-03!

Boebert didn’t bail on CO-03 because she was terrified of the almost comically-boring Jeff Hurd. Boebert likely saw the difficult task of spending time and money beating Hurd only to run head-on into the fundraising behemoth that is Adam Frisch. It was that combination — along with bad polling numbers — that convinced Boebert that she couldn’t keep her job in Congress if she stayed where she was.

Now that Boebert is moving across the state, we’d expect a slew of better-known and more interesting Republicans to jump into the race in CO-03 in the coming weeks. Remember: The third congressional district is a Republican-leaning district that would not have been a concern for the GOP if not for Boebert’s embarrassing antics. A decent Republican candidate probably should be able to beat Frisch in November 2024. This could make Boebert’s decision a big win for Republicans counting seats for a House majority in 2025.

We’ll have plenty more to discuss regarding Boebert’s boneheaded decision to save her dying political career and the fallout in two separate Congressional districts. At the very least, the 2024 election cycle in Colorado got a lot more interesting.