March 02, 2024 01:49 PM UTC

Trump Throws Boebert The Mother of All Lifelines

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• by: Colorado Pols

Facing likely defeat in her home district as Rep. Lauren Boebert’s unique combination of headline-snatching personal scandal and professional indifference (at best) to the needs of her constituents, Boebert made the desperate decision in late December to switch from the Western Slope’s CO-03 to the substantially more conservative CO-04 seat being vacated by Rep. Ken Buck. Boebert’s district switch has been by most accounts poorly received by the voters of Boebert’s would-be new district, and the only polling so far suggests that while Boebert currently enjoys a plurality of support, she also faces a hard ceiling in the lower 30s with 67% of voters surveying saying they will never vote for Boebert. This week, yet another scandal featuring criminal charges had the Boebert family in the headlines once again, and Boebert’s new neighbors justifiably wondering if they were in for the same wild ride as the Rifle/Silt micropolitan area.

Even at this career low point, however, Boebert wasn’t totally abandoned, picking up an endorsement from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson owing mostly to Boebert’s incumbent status soon after making the switch. Boebert also brings more financial reserves over from the CO-03 race than her competitors have raised. And this Saturday morning, just in time for the dinner table this evening, Boebert picked up the endorsement that some would argue counts for more than anything else:

As one of Donald Trump’s most loyal members of Congress, it’s no surprise whatsoever to see this endorsement. The biggest question is the timing, and the best answer we have is that Boebert’s endless and continuing train of embarrassments made it necessary to keep Boebert’s carpetbagging campaign competitive. There’s no denying the significance of this endorsement–a 2023 analysis of Trump’s endorsements in the 2022 GOP primaries in the Washington Post shows that Trump added ten points or more to the total of endorsed candidates. If Boebert is to be stopped from winning the primary with a low-30s plurality, the large and in many cases unqualified field of candidates will have to thin. Former state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg is trying to position himself as the beneficiary of such consolidation, and as of today that task is more urgent than ever.

If Boebert is able to pull off this improbable district switch and win the June 25th GOP primary, it is one of the few scenarios that could actually put the heavily GOP CO-04 seat in general election play–much like former Rep. Marilyn Musgrave’s vulnerability allowed Democrats to “rent” this same seat for two years back in 2008. Democrats spent a great deal of 2023 plotting to pick off Boebert by capitalizing on her self-inflicted vulnerabilities, and her switch to the crowded CO-04 primary left a great deal of pent-up resources (and emotion) unreleased. It would be prudent for Democrats to develop contingency plans for this now less-remote possibility.

And there you have it, folks–the CO-04 primary is now in addition to a referendum on Boebert by a new set of conservative voters, a referendum on Donald Trump.

We’ll see if Trump’s endorsement is a lifeline, a nonfactor…or just maybe, in either June or November, a boat anchor.