Boebert Opts Out of Special Election to Focus on Colorado Primary

Lauren Boebert’s decision will protect the House Republicans’ razor-thin majority, but it could make her pursuit of the new seat more challenging.

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Representative Lauren Boebert nearly lost her district to a Democrat in 2022. She now wants the seat being vacated by Representative Ken Buck.

Representative Lauren Boebert, the firebrand Republican from Colorado, said on Wednesday she will not resign her current seat even though the seat she ultimately wants is now being vacated by her House colleague, Ken Buck, sooner than she expected.

The decision by Mr. Buck, a Republican, to resign next week rather than at the end of the year complicated what was already a rocky path for Ms. Boebert to secure his seat. The state’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, quickly announced a special election would be held on June 25 to fill Mr. Buck’s seat.

That left Ms. Boebert with a conundrum: If she resigned from her current seat in order to run in the special election, she would risk reducing the Republicans’ already razor-thin House majority by teeing up a special election in her current district, where a Democrat has a chance of winning.

To the relief of Speaker Mike Johnson, she opted not to do that.

In 2022, Ms. Boebert nearly lost her district, which is on the Rockies’ western slopes, to Adam Frisch, a Democrat. If she had resigned by May 14, it would have given Mr. Frisch a shot at winning her seat in a special election. (Democrats have excelled at mobilizing for low turnout special elections.)

Now that won’t happen. Instead of running in the special election in Mr. Buck’s heavily Republican district, she will keep her focus on winning a crowded Republican primary for the seat, which will be held on the same day.

That means she needs to convince Republican voters in her newly-adopted district to vote for one Republican in the special election against a Democrat, while simultaneously voting for her in the primary. That will be no mean feat in a district where she is already facing the “carpetbagger” aspersion. The district is in Denver’s eastern suburbs and Colorado’s Great Plains.

Ms. Boebert, who has the backing of former President Donald J. Trump, seemed to recognize her disadvantage in the statement she released on her decision. She portrayed herself as fighting a cabal of mainstream Republicans and Democrats, which she called the “Uniparty.”

“Ken Buck’s announcement yesterday was a gift to the Uniparty,” she said. She added: “The establishment concocted a swampy backroom deal to try to rig an election.”

Jonathan Weisman is a politics writer, covering campaigns with an emphasis on economic and labor policy. He is based in Chicago. More about Jonathan Weisman