Lauren Boebert wins primary in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District
WINDSOR — U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert decisively won the six-way Republican primary Tuesday night in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, making her reelection to Congress highly likely despite nearly two years of embarrassing personal and political turmoil.
The race was called by The Associated Press at 7:21 p.m., shortly after polls closed at 7 p.m., when Boebert had 43% of the vote. She kept that share through the night.
None of Boebert’s five Republican primary opponents were coming close to beating her. At 11:15 p.m., former state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg was in a distant second with 15% of the vote. He called Boebert to concede.
Supporters at Boebert’s watch party at a Windsor restaurant cheered loudly when Fox News, being broadcast on large TVs at the venue, announced Boebert’s victory. The congresswoman, wearing a MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hat signed by Donald Trump and a pair of the former president’s gold, branded sneakers, gave her mother a big hug.
Relief washed across her face.
“We know we are going to have a landslide victory on Nov. 5 in CD4,” she said as she declared victory in the primary.
Boebert vowed to unite Republicans, including her primary opponents, around her general election campaign.
Because of how favorable the 4th District is to Republicans, Boebert is the overwhelming favorite to win in November. Former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican, won his last two elections in the GOP stronghold, which includes Douglas County and Loveland and sweeps across the Eastern Plains, by a whopping 23 percentage points each.
Another sign the district is unlikely to back a Democrat over Boebert: Republican Greg Lopez on Tuesday easily won the special election in the district to serve out the remainder of Buck’s term. (The congressman resigned on March 22.) Lopez’s lead was 23 percentage points as of 11:45 p.m.
The large primary field split the anti-Boebert vote, and none among the group could match Boebert’s fundraising ability and name recognition among voters. As a result, Boebert dominated the airwaves while her opponents fumbled to find a breakthrough message. The five seemed to struggle to decide if they should attack Boebert or each other or rise above the drama.
“We can do better than Lauren Boebert,” Sonnenberg, who is now a Logan County commissioner, said in the lone TV ad he could afford to air. “I will not embarrass you with scandals.”
Sonnenberg had initially promised not to attack his opponents during his campaign, but ditched that plan in the home stretch as Boebert appeared to be running away with the race.
“Boebert won because there was such a crowded primary and she has universal name ID,” said former state Sen. Greg Brophy, a Republican who was supporting Sonnenberg. “Had Boebert had a head to head with almost any of the other five, she would have lost.”
Lori Weigel, a Republican pollster in Colorado, agreed that the large primary field and Boebert’s name ID played to her advantage. But Weigel said Boebert’s opponents also struggled against her star power.
“I think we are in a topsy-turvy world where it’s an attention economy,” she said. “As we’ve seen at the presidential level, it’s hard to stop an attention-demanding candidate. You can have great policy ideas, but we live in a world where drama demands attention.”
In the end, the 4th District proved a soft landing spot for what seemed like Boebert’s freefall after her 546-vote win in 2022 over Democrat Adam Frisch in the 3rd Congressional District, which is mostly on the other side of the state.
After narrowly winning reelection two years ago, Boebert divorced her husband, Jayson, and tried to moderate her pistol-packing, burn-it-down image. That fell apart after she was ejected in September from a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” in Denver after vaping and groping with a male companion. Her behavior, which she initially lied about, was captured by surveillance cameras and rebroadcast across the country. She became a national punchline.
In December, with her reelection campaign in the 3rd District still limping from the Beetlejuice drama and her political prospects shaky, Buck’s decision to leave Congress offered an off-ramp. She switched her reelection campaign to run in the more Republican 4th District instead, shocking the political world with her unorthodox decision.
Boebert moved with her youngest children to Windsor from Rifle at the beginning of the year and told voters that while the crops were different where she came from, the values were the same. She was endorsed by Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson.
While Boebert’s carpetbagging was met with condemnation and skepticism from power players in the 4th District, voters — based on Tuesday’s results — clearly felt differently.
Dan Stephen, who lives in Elbert County and is the manager at Franktown Firearms Shooting Center, told The Colorado Sun after the congresswoman visited the store in late February that he didn’t mind that she had recently moved into the district.
“Everything I’ve seen with her and read about her — I just think she’s a strong force,” he said. “It’s something that we need. She seems like just a very real person. It’s not really even a competition in my mind.”
He added: “It’s time for change across the board. I think that she’s going to be a very welcome change to the district.”
As of 11:15 p.m., heres how Boebert’s other Republican opponents in the 4th District primary were faring:
- Conservative commentator Deborah Flora — 14%
- State Rep. Richard Holtorf — 11%
- State Rep. Mike Lynch — 11%
- Mortgage broker Peter Yu — 7%
Boebert told reporters that she was nervous heading into the weekend before Election Day.
“I had those thoughts of ‘Did I miss something? Is there something that I’m not seeing. Is there someone I didn’t reach, didn’t talk to, didn’t spend enough time with?’” Boebert said Tuesday night.
Ultimately, Boebert said, she felt she and her team put in the work to win.
“I came into this knowing that I was going to have to work,” she said of her district switch.
The AP called the three-way Democratic primary in the 4th District for Trisha Calvarese, a former speechwriter and congressional staffer, at 11:33 p.m.
Calvarese said she was “incredibly proud to be a daughter of the district.”
“I know personally the economic challenges that we face. Everyone wants to know what are you going to do for my family — this is my family now,” she said.
At the time the race was called, Calvarese was leading with 45% of the vote. In second was Marine veteran Ike McCorkle, who lost to Buck in 2020 and 2022, with 41% of the vote. In a distant third and with no chance of catching up was John Padora, a manufacturing engineer, with 13% of the vote.
Calvarese lost by a wide margin to Lopez in the 4th District special election Tuesday to serve out Buck’s term in Congress.
