Carpetboegger

Can Lauren Boebert's district-switching gamble pay off?

Rep. Lauren Boebert, struggling to secure both renomination by her party and reelection to the third congressional district in western Colorado, has announced that she is switching to run in Colorado’s fourth congressional district, on the state’s eastern edge, where incumbent Rep. Ken Buck is retiring and a group of semi-prominent local Republicans are vying for that very conservative seat. A few points on this:

1. There’s an important and relevant history to the fourth district. Back in 2014, Ken Buck, then the District Attorney for Weld County, was running for U.S. Senate. He’d already run for Senate once before in a very red year and lost to Michael Bennet, and the odds weren’t looking great for him to defeat Mark Udall, either. In a move brokered by some state party figures, Buck switched races with Rep. Cory Gardner in the fourth, with the view that Gardner seemed liked the sort of conservative Republican who could still win statewide in a state that was drifting blue. This was a smart call — Gardner won the Senate seat and Buck won the House seat. Arguably, Boebert’s move this week increases the chances for the Republicans to maintain control of both seats.

2. What would it mean for Boebert to replace Buck in the fourth district? Importantly, both have similarly conservative voting records in the House (according to Voteview, Buck’s ideal point is .657 and hers is .749, placing her somewhat to his right) and they are both vehemently against gun regulations, against abortion rights, etc. But there’s an important difference – Buck is an institutionalist, and Boebert is about as far from that as one can be. Buck voted to certify Biden’s election in 2020 (Boebert did not), Buck voted against the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden this year (unlike Boebert), Buck supported Kevin McCarthy for Speaker back in January while Boebert was very publicly withholding support, she was an enthusiastic booster of the lawlessness on January 6th, etc. That is, on basic social and economic policies, they are pretty similar, but on highly symbolic issues over a willingness to depart from the past and blow up traditions, they are miles apart. Buck also used to be the chair of the Colorado Republican Party, while, to my knowledge, Boebert has never done much of anything for the state party. It’s been pretty clear to observers that she has always had her eye on national politics. She endorses other Republican candidates and helps them out in fundraisers, but rarely if ever within her own state.

3. Charges of “carpetbagging” are pretty easy here (and I welcome any opportunity for Lauren Boebert to learn more about the Reconstruction Era), and while this is unusual, there’s nothing particularly odious about it. (I encourage you to check out Chris Galdieri’s work on carpetbagging, which suggests it can be pulled off by pretty high profile figures.) Chances are that her agenda — which again is largely fixated on national Republican priorities — will be a decent fit with the fourth district, which is about twenty points more Republican than the third is. And as a very high profile candidate with some important national allies (particularly former President Trump), she’ll have a pretty good shot of driving some of her opponents out of the nomination contest. The real question, though, is whether the things that got her into trouble in her own district will be more or less of a problem in the new one:

   1. One problem is that she’s generally a lightning rod, does not have a particularly serious record as a legislator, and says needlessly bombastic things all of the time. This is good for rallying a base but not good for winning over the median voter of a district, and she almost failed to do that in 2022, retaining her seat by just over 500 votes. That is less of a problem in the fourth district, which has far more Republican voters and fewer Democratic ones.

   2. The other big problem is Beetlejuiceghazi, or whatever we’re calling that scandal. Very public displays of something a bit more than affection – with a Democrat! at a lavish musical! in a city! – still do not play well among a churchgoing conservative base. This may actually be more of an issue in the agriculture-heavy fourth district than it was in the more libertarian mountain western third district.

4. Part of this is a party story. Some more conventional Republicans in her district tried but failed to challenge her nomination in 2022. They’ve been more successful in this cycle. Grand Junction lawyer Jeff Hurd has been running against her for the nomination, and he’s won the backing of former US Senator Hank Brown and former Governor Bill Owens. That’s, in some ways, a factional battle, with something akin to the earlier Reagan-Bush GOP organizing against Boebert and backing a strong challenger to her. We don’t know if it was enough to beat her, but it was enough to scare her out of the district.

5. It’s not clear to me if there was any sort of elite coordination around getting Boebert to make this switch. This is not a party that has specialized in secretive strategic work lately. It is, as I said, a smart move, as it increases the chance the party keeps both congressional seats. But I don’t think Boebert is particularly popular within the state GOP or is particularly loved by Buck. It’s possible the NRCC had a hand in this, but I tend to doubt it. It seems more plausible that this is Boebert jumping on an opportunity to save her neck, regardless of what it does to the candidates already running in the fourth. And it just might pay off for her.