Colorado Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert announced Wednesday that she was switching districts in next year’s 2024 House race, in a bid to salvage her scandal-plagued political career.
In a video announcing the move, Boebert said she’d be running in Colorado’s 4th district—the state’s most conservative—which represents the eastern part of the state, instead of the 3rd, which covers a huge swatch of the state’s south and west. Boebert said that, if elected, she’d move to her new district, though House members only need to reside in the state where they’re elected.
Boebert said her decision was partly motivated by “not allowing Hollywood elites and progressive money groups to buy” her current seat. “The Aspen donors, George Soros, and the Hollywood actors that are trying to buy this seat, well, they can go pound sand,” she added. “We aren’t going to give them the opportunity to steal the third.”
The move makes it more likely that Boebert, a major supporter of former President Donald Trump, will be able to remain in Congress next year. In her 2022 re-election bid in the 3rd district, Boebert barely eked out a 546-vote victory against Democrat Adam Frisch, an outcome that shocked political observers and triggered a recount. The 4th district is significantly more conservative: Trump carried it by 20 points in 2020, compared to just 8 in the 3rd.
Boebert was facing a rematch with Frisch next year, and so far in the campaign, had been significantly outraised. As of the last campaign finance deadline in late September, the congresswoman’s campaign had over $1.4 million on hand, while the Frisch campaign reported over $4.3 million, according to Open Secrets, a group tracking money in politics.
It wasn’t even clear that Boebert would make it out of the Republican primary, with her opponent, the more moderate Jeff Hurd, garnering significant financial support from some of the state’s top Republicans.
Boebert acknowledged that the move was also a “fresh start” after “a pretty difficult year for me and my family.” Boebert filed for divorce from her husband in May, and the divorce was finalized in October. (The Boeberts’s gun-themed restaurant, Shooters Grill, closed in 2022.) And in September, Boebert was kicked out of a showing of Beetlejuice in Denver. Video footage of the crowd captured her repeatedly vaping and groping her date. The congresswoman, who initially lied about what happened at the event, later apologized.
In her new district, Boebert has the advantage of running for a seat that Republican Ken Buck is currently vacating. Buck announced in November that he would not seek re-election, citing the many Republican leaders who he said were “lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen, describing Jan. 6 as an unguided tour of the Capitol and asserting that the ensuing prosecutions are a weaponization of our justice system.” Buck has represented the district since 2015.
Frisch, whose campaign against Boebert recycled the slogan “stop the circus” from his 2022 bid, said that Boebert’s departure would not change his approach to the race.
“I have been squarely focused on defending rural Colorado’s way of life, and offering common sense solutions to the problems facing the families of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District,” he said in a statement.
One of Boebert’s new primary opponents in the 4th District, Republican state representative Richard Holtorf, mocked her for “carpetbagging” after the announcement. “Seat shopping isn’t something the voters look kindly upon,” he said Wednesday. “If you can’t win in your home, you can’t win here.”
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