December 08, 2019 09:59 AM UTC

Scott Tipton Faces Primary Challenge From Gun-Right

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul reports:

Lauren Boebert, the owner and operator of a Western Slope restaurant where all staffers openly carry guns, announced on Sunday a conservative primary challenge to Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton.

“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Squad and the rest of these left-wing lunatics are taking a wrecking ball to our country while our current representative stays utterly silent,” Boebert said in a statement announcing her candidacy in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District…

“Hard-working, patriotic Americans like you and me don’t want the Green New Deal and socialized medicine,” Boebert said. “Every time AOC and the rest of the Squad pipes up with another crazy idea, I will remind them that our belief in God, country and family are what built the United States of America into the greatest nation the world has ever known.”

Lauren Boebert, the owner of the relatively famous Shooters Grill in Rifle which features wait staff openly carrying loaded handguns so you don’t have to worry about anything in the middle of lunch, gained additional notoriety last September when she vocally weighed in at a town hall in Aurora held by then-Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke. This was right after O’Rourke had called for an Australia-style mandatory buyback of assault weapons, which didn’t boost O’Rourke’s campaign but did make him an especially reviled figure among the gun rights crowd.

Will Boebert’s newfound fame as the “Hell No Beto Mom” give her a competitive advantage taking on the low-charisma but surprisingly durable Republican incumbent in Colorado’s Third District, Rep. Scott Tipton? There’s a lot that has to happen before we can say that with any certainty. But if we were Tipton, we’d be more worried about Boebert than many of his previous small-time primary opponents. If Boebert gains momentum with fiercely conservative Western Slope Republicans, and shovels the red meat the base wants to hear better than Tipton, an upset in the GOP CD-3 primary is not beyond possibility.