Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert has emerged victorious in the primary election in her new Colorado district, according to the Associated Press. The controversial Congresswoman defeated five GOP opponents in a competitive primary in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District and will be favored win the seat in November’s general election.
CBS
Boebert won with slightly more than 43% of the vote. That was at 7:45 p.m. when 70% of the votes were counted.
“Your rights that you have been endowed with are not the government’s to legislate away, to reason away, to purchase away, and that is what I will always continue to fight for,” Boebert told supporters in Northern Colorado after the polls closed.
Boebert currently represents the 3rd Congressional District in Colorado but made the decision to run in the heavily conservative District 4 after Rep. Ken Buck stepped down earlier this year. CD4 includes much of the eastern part of the state as well as Loveland and Windsor (both in Northern Colorado) and Douglas County (in the southern part of the Denver metro area). Nearly half of voters in the district are in Douglas County, where CBS Colorado Political Specialist Shaun Boyd says Republicans are “less MAGA and more mainstream.” While there are nearly twice as many Republicans as Democrats in the county, former President Donald Trump only won Douglas County by 7 points in 2020. Overall, Trump lost Colorado by 13 points in 2020.
Boebert abandoned her seat in CD3 after nearly losing to Democrat Adam Frisch in 2022. When she announced that she would run for a different district in January, said the move was being done after “a pretty difficult year for me and my family.” That included going through a divorce.
During her campaign Boebert touted her endorsement from Trump and spoken at length about immigration issues. During a CBS Colorado debate last month she claimed that undocumented immigrants are overwhelming systems and services in this country and called for mass deportations.
“Build the wall, deport them all,” she said, in a line she has repeated throughout her campaign.
Boebert reminded her supporters on Tuesday night that “it’s not over” and everyone should be getting involved in the presidential race.
“President Trump needs us now more than ever to get him in the race, in the fight, in the White House Nov. 5,” she said. “We have a lot of work to do, don’t slow down. Don’t relent.”
CBS
During CBS Colorado’s debate several of Boebert’s opponents spoke of their farming and ranching backgrounds and in doing so indirectly highlighted Boebert’s newcomer status to the district. Only candidate Deborah Flora, a conservative radio talk show host, attacked Boebert for her move, criticizing her for “abandoning her neighbors in CD3.”
Flora described the controversial congresswoman as someone who is more concerned with being in the national spotlight than representing Coloradans.
“We’ve seen how Lauren Boebert would represent us … missing key votes while chasing cameras and being in the center of D.C. drama instead of delivering real solutions for the people,” she said.
Republican Greg Lopez won Tuesday night’s special election in CD4 and will serve out the remainder of Buck’s term.
