In a typical election year, Colorado’s 4th Congressional District would be all but written off. The Eastern Plains district, on paper, is the most Republican-leaning in the state. In 2022, U.S. Rep. Ken Buck won reelection by nearly 24 percentage points, about in line with the advantage Republicans should expect given the 4th’s partisan makeup. But like all things concerning U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s political career, this is not a typical election year — especially as she looks to represent the sprawling district that’s geographically opposite from the one that put her in federal office. Her switch has drawn money and attention to the 4th well beyond its usual level.
Boebert headed to Congress to represent the Western Slope after taking out a Republican incumbent in an upset primary win in 2020. Two years later, after a controversy–laden first term, she pulled off a razor-close win in her reelection bid that left her looking vulnerable. When she announced in late December that she would move to the eastern Colorado district — which includes great expanses of farmland from Wyoming to Oklahoma as well as suburban Denver’s Douglas County — she upended the race to replace Buck, who’d announced he wouldn’t seek reelection.
Sensing, or perhaps hoping, that Boebert’s general election weakness from 2022 could linger, those looking to unseat Boebert in the Nov. 5 election have given millions of dollars in recent months to her main opponent, Democrat Trisha Calvarese. Calvarese is on pace to raise 10 times what the last Democratic nominee there did, analysts predict, and she hopes to prove conventional wisdom wrong about how deep the 4th District’s partisan divide is. It all leads to a make-or-break election for Boebert — and for those looking to oust her from Congress.
A convincing victory would cement her place in Colorado politics and affirm her ascendancy among Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. But a lack of incumbency in her new district, along with Boebert’s recent scandals, give Calvarese hope that she can find a path, slight as it might be, to stop that from happening. Boebert, 37, has fended off other competitors this year. She won three times as many votes as her next-closest rival in the crowded Republican primary this summer, showing that her reputation as a conservative fighter carried just as much weight there as in her previous home. On the same day as the June primary, Calvarese lost a separate special election — by a margin of 24 percentage points — to Republican Greg Lopez to fill out the rest of Buck’s current term after he stepped down early. For the next term, the November ballot also includes Frank Atwood, of the Approval Voting Party; Hannah Goodman, of the Libertarian Party; and Paul Noel Fiorino, of the Unity Party.
Sparring over Boebert’s past
Despite the 4th District’s clear Republican advantage, Calvarese, 38, calls the race against Boebert “absolutely winnable,” and she points to a poll conducted in April finding Boebert underwater in favorability with her new district’s voters. Calvarese has so far turned the influx of cash she’s received — she’s touted more than $2.3 million in donations since the June primary — into TV ads seeking to further define Boebert for voters who may have only watched her from afar, while also introducing herself to the district.
At a recent meet-and-greet with Democrats in Loveland, Calvarese mostly focused on her own biography: Working with the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, she helped push key parts of President Joe Biden’s agenda. Through work with the U.S. National Science Foundation, she focused on boosting manufacturing in the country. Her parents’ cancer diagnoses brought her home from Virginia last year to provide them with end-of-life care. She said her late parents, lifelong Republicans, both urged her to give everything she could to help her community. Calvarese now lives in Highlands Ranch, where she grew up.
She didn’t shy from digging at Boebert at the Loveland event. She highlighted her opponent’s removal from a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” last year in Denver, where security cameras recorded her vaping, apparently groping her date and flipping off staff. Calvarese also highlighted Boebert’s vote against a bill to expand health care coverage for veterans who were exposed to toxic burn bits. The latter, including Boebert heckling Biden as he discussed the program during his State of the Union speech, is the subject of Calvarese’s first TV ad. Boebert’s campaign says her no vote was over concerns about funding for the program, and she previously said the heckling was about the 13 soldiers killed as U.S. forces pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021.
“(Voters in the district) want representation,” Calvarese said, calling the interest in her campaign “electric.” “They are hungry for it,” she added. “And unlike Boebert, I didn’t ditch one district for another one after embarrassing myself at ‘Beetlejuice.’ ”
Boebert: New district “has liberated me”
Boebert switched districts after winning the 3rd Congressional District by less than 600 votes in 2022 and in the aftermath of a contentious divorce from her husband. She moved to Windsor, in the northern Interstate 25 corridor. Speaking to a gathering of Elbert County conservatives on Wednesday night, Boebert pinned the move explicitly to family matters and called it “one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever made,” but also one of the best when it comes to her children. Still, she acknowledged the political benefits of the move.
“We’re not taking our heavy R advantage for granted,” Boebert said of her political affiliation. “We either run unopposed or like we’re 10 points behind. However, being in a more Republican district … has liberated me to help Republicans statewide. So every day isn’t an in-the-mud fight. I am able to stand strong for far more than I ever would have anywhere else.”
The Republican advantage in the district can’t be understated, political analysts say. Dick Wadhams, a Republican consultant and former state party chairman, called it “virtually unlosable for a Republican candidate.” Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at Colorado State University, echoed the sentiment, calling it “the safest Republican district in Colorado.” Boebert, too, been a strong fundraiser, though she hasn’t disclosed more recent totals yet. New reports are due from both candidates this week. Boebert’s speech Wednesday, at a rented church, weaved between sermon and politics as she invoked scripture and the Founding Fathers.
She likened the nation’s recent elections to Moses and the Israelites running into the Red Sea, facing the obstacles thrown up by Biden’s policies. To part that sea, voters must have faith — and vote — this November, she said. She said that under former President Donald Trump, who’s again the Republican nominee, the country had a booming economy and a secure U.S.-Mexico border. “This isn’t a Christian nationalist story here,” Boebert told the crowd, directly referencing a 2022 Denver Post story about her close ideological alignment with the movement. “This is about life and peace and personal freedom. Not the immorality of our national debt … this is about securing our nation and securing our people. Securing our freedoms that are not given to us by dirty, corrupt, greedy politicians. They are given to us by God and secured in our Constitution.”
In an interview, Boebert also highlighted specific local legislation she’s championed as part of the key stakes in the race, including a bill to help Pueblo transition following the closure of a chemical plant there that was approved as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. Another was a bill to give small Colorado communities unique ZIP codes.
Chance to “restore honor to our district”
Calvarese likewise highlights the hyper-local issues on the minds of district voters: How to spur local manufacturing of the pesticides that farmers rely on and research on better crop yields, as well as how to help people get into tech fields through training with large language models (the basis of artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT). She also mentions the health care needs of the district and her parents’ struggles in finding care in Douglas County. But in the big-picture stakes of the race, Calvarese returns to her opponent.
The election is a chance to “restore honor to our district” and “dignity” to Coloradans caught in the crossfire of Boebert’s public incidents, she said. “When you are a person from Colorado and you meet other people from other states — or even around the world — the first thing you don’t want to hear is, ‘Oh my God, Lauren Boebert: that embarrassment,’ ” Calvarese said. “So I think it’s a real opportunity for us. Not just Colorado, but the whole country.”
Asked to respond to Calvarese’s comment about dignity, Boebert said she was proud of her dignity. She also highlighted Calvarese’s own relatively recent return to the district and her work on the Inflation Reduction Act. Boebert characterized the IRA as raising the national debt in order to push “the Green New Deal” championed by some progressives. “To me, that is not dignity at all,” Boebert said. “That is deception at its finest — lying to the American people about the policies that you were pushing and (which are) obviously costing Americans each and every day.”
The results of the race could last longer than just this election cycle. Wadhams, the Republican consultant, called Boebert’s 2022 nail-biter the result of “extraordinary circumstances” following a term in office that left many voters there unhappy. Chief among them: a perception that Boebert was more focused on national attention than on serving the district. This race gives her a chance to reset — and if she focuses on the needs of the district, he said, it could be hers for the long haul.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Saunders, the CSU professor. Though the race has drawn a lot of attention and Democratic money, both could dry up after a decisive win next month. With longevity — and political safety — would come the opportunity for Boebert to build even more influence in the Republican Party. “You can always lose,” Saunders said. “But she could be in that seat for 20 years, very easily.”
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Originally Published: October 13, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.
