March 06, 2024 01:39 PM UTC

Only Jerry Sonnenberg Can Save Us From Lauren Boebert Now

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Jeff Rice reports for the Sterling Journal-Advocate, the endorsement dropped like a live grenade by ex-President Donald Trump for carpetbagging Rep. Lauren Boebert in the overcrowded CO-04 Republican primary could be having the effect that Boebert’s opponents ironically need: recognition that the field of candidates not named Boebert must winnow down to a single opponent capable of overcoming Boebert’s low-30s ceiling of support. The candidate in the best position to receive that consolidated support in opposition to Boebert appears to be former state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, who has racked up a significant roster of endorsements of his own including that of former Senator and CO-04 representative Cory Gardner.

Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who left the 3rd Congressional District in western Colorado, which she now represents, to seek election in the Republican stronghold of the 4th CD of eastern Colorado, has discovered that the former president’s support means little to the conservatives of the High Plains.

Boebert earned Trump’s endorsement on Saturday, March 2, only to come in third in a straw poll of Republicans in Holyoke, Colo., on Sunday, March 3.

During a debate in Holyoke, Republicans again were polled on the field of candidates. According to information from an independent source, Boebert earned 30 of the 184 votes cast while former state senator and current Logan County Commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg earned 55 votes. Ted Harvey, a longtime Colorado legislator, garnered 38 votes, State Rep. Richard Holtorf got 19 followed by Trent Leisy with 16, Deborah Flora with 14 and the rest in single digits…

“I voted for Donald Trump in 2016, 2020, and will vote for him again in 2024. I hope he wins,” Sonnenberg said. “But, respectfully, the only endorsement I care about in this race will come from the voters of this district, who I’ve served honorably for two decades. They’re going to make up their own minds and I am confident I’ll earn their endorsement over someone who just moved to our district so she could stay in Washington, D.C.”

Of course, just because this clown car of candidates needs to thin out in order for Boebert to be defeated doesn’t mean it will, and some of these candidates are either sufficiently conniving and egotistical (Ted Harvey) or detached from reality (Richard Holtorf, Trent “MAGA King” Leisy) that no strategic interest would convince them to get out of the race for Sonnenberg’s benefit. If at least two or three of these other candidates continue to attract support, it makes it all the more likely that the better-known and financed Boebert will brute force her way to victory in the primary. Boebert understands that her key to victory is a field of opponents unable to match her plurality.

If the goal is to eliminate one of the state’s foremost bipartisan political disgraces, and to not reward Boebert’s desperate district switch in the insulting hope that a more conservative district will forgive her misdeeds, some candidates in this race are going to have to, as the saying goes, take one for the team.

We await the first.