May 06, 2025 02:21 PM UTC

Jerry Sonnenberg Gets Consolation Prize After Boebert Bigfooting

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Marianne Goodland reports for the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog formerly known as the Colorado Statesman, former state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg has been appointed by President Donald Trump to be the next executive director of the state’s Farm Service Agency–a cornerstone of administering agricultural policy responsible for relief, insurance conservation, and crop subsidy programs farmers depend on:

Sonnenberg, in an exclusive interview with Colorado Politics, said “it will be nice to have a farmer that understands the FSA office” — and the Natural Resources Conservation Service and how it works. “I look forward to using the expertise and the leadership skills I’ve developed.”

[Sonnenberg] owns a cattle transport company and a farm in Logan County, where his family has farmed for six generations. He was inducted into the Colorado Agriculture Hall of Fame in February 2023 and the Sonnenberg farm was added to the state’s Centennial Farms in 2022. The program recognizes farms that have belonged to the same family for at least 100 years and is currently a working farm or ranch.

While maxing out his allotted House and Senate terms in what seemed like an interminable sixteen years in office, Jerry Sonnenberg was best known for colorful aphorisms on good days and head-shaking gaffes on bad days, like when he referred to a fellow female Senator as the “eye candy” for a bill under debate. Sonnenberg was also the only no vote from either party in the Colorado Senate on 2020’s landmark police accountability bill. Back in 2016, Sonnenberg was criticized for Tweeting a picture of an assault rifle being oiled with “Obama tears” after the former President shed a few over contemporaneous mass shootings.

But if there’s one thing that Jerry Sonnenberg does know about, it’s crop subsidies, having received hundreds of thousands of dollars in such welfare payments over the years–and without ever once submitting to the pee tests he wanted other kinds of welfare recipients to take to receive their public benefits. And yes we know that’s completely different, except it doesn’t really seem that different once you think about it.

After serving his sixteen years in the General Assembly and then winning a seat on the Logan County board of commissioners, the announcement last year that Rep. Ken Buck would retire from Congress was supposed to be Sonnenberg’s moment to make the jump befitting his long political career. Sonnenberg originally ran for Buck’s CO-04 seat with the support of Republican insiders and what was shaping up to be a prohibitive list of high-profile endorsements.

And then, in a carpetbagging switcheroo that will live on in infamy, Jerry Sonnenberg was pushed aside by Rep. Lauren Boebert, fleeing her CO-03 seat following the “Beetlebert” debacle to run in the substantially safer Republican confines of CO-04. When Boebert was at her weakest in late 2023, winning that already-crowded primary for Buck’s seat was not assured. While not taking a public position on the primary, Buck did everything he could to stymie Boebert, including resigning the seat early to allow a potential successor to get into office ahead of her.

But in the end, Sonnenberg failed to emerge from the pack of Boebert’s many minor opponents as a singular threat, and Boebert won the primary with a plurality just short of a majority. At the same time, CO-04 voters elected unserious perennial loser Greg Lopez to hold the seat for Boebert until January, which had the side effect of giving Lopez a new political lease on life that smart Republicans are now dreading as Lopez runs for governor for a third time. Sonnenberg’s ineffectual resistance to Boebert as she swooped in and robbed him of his career in Congress may well have played a role in her willingness to be magnanimous in victory:

Sonnenberg said Boebert was key to making the appointment happen.

“She pushed hard for me and I’m honored she would do that,” Sonnenberg said.

In every respect, it was the least Boebert could do.