April 13, 2022 09:10 AM UTC

Don Coram's On The Ballot--And Taking The Fight To Boebert

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Colorado Newsline’s Sara Wilson reports, yesterday afternoon the Secretary of State’s office announced that state Sen. Don Coram’s petitions were approved and he will appear on the June 28th Republican primary ballot in a two-way showdown against freshman GOP trainwreck that keeps on wrecking Rep. Lauren Boebert:

State Sen. Don Coram will face incumbent Rep. Lauren Boebert on the June primary ballot in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, election officials confirmed Tuesday.

The Montrose Republican had 1,563 valid signatures accepted on his petition, surpassing the 1,500 signature threshold. He will be Boebert’s only opponent in June after Marina Zimmerman failed to qualify via party assembly and decided not to pursue a write-in campaign.

Coram thanked people who signed his petition for what he called a “grassroots campaign.”

And via the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby, after some initial lip service to ignoring Boebert’s vitriol even as Boebert fearfully launched full-blast pre-emptive (not to mention factually deficient) attacks back in January, Coram is promising to take on Boebert’s “lies” directly–meaning he’s going to run against Boebert, not passively alongside:

Coram announced back in January during a Grand Junction press conference that he would seek the GOP nomination against Boebert, who was first elected to Congress in 2020.

The Montrose resident said he did that because he disliked how Boebert has conducted herself since getting into office.

“I look forward to setting the record straight on the lies Lauren Boebert and her supporters have peddled,” Coram said in a statement. “I will make the case to primary voters as to why I am the most qualified candidate to represent them and their families. Enough is enough. Let’s make Lauren’s first term in Congress her last.” [Pols emphasis]

That’s the fighting spirit anybody who wants Boebert ousted in 2022 needs to see–but can it be done? The answer lies in two further questions: whether Republicans in CD-3 are growing fatigued with Boebert’s high visibility, low productivity representation, and whether the district’s plurality of unaffiliated voters who will receive Republican primary ballots will turn out in enough numbers for Coram to overcome Boebert’s base strength.

To be clear, this is not a call for Democrats to re-register as independents in order to participate in the Republican primary, the so-called “Operation Chaos” gambit popularized by the late Rush Limbaugh which history shows is an empty threat. But there’s an argument that Boebert’s extremism is exactly what Proposition 108 was passed by Colorado voters in 2016 to address, by allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in either party’s primary.

And yes, this is why John Eastman and a hard-right faction of the Colorado GOP sued unsuccessfully to keep unaffiliated voters out of the 2022 primary after failing to get the party to take that step on its own. Their failure could be most consequential in the CD-3 Republican primary, while in the CD-5 primary between incumbent Rep. Doug Lamborn and far-right challenger Rep. Dave Williams unaffiliated voters are more likely to protect the incumbent. In both cases, unaffiliated voters would be acting as checks against extremism.

And that’s exactly what Don Coram wants to be. In this R+9 Republican leaning district, Coram represents the best mathematical shot at undoing Colorado’s foremost bipartisan embarrassment, and he’ll have his before Democrats get their own.