DENVER (AP) — Former Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Buck resigned from Congress, frustrated by a flank of the Republican Party’s unwavering commitment to the former president Donald Trump. Now he will likely be replaced by one of their most vocal leaders, Rep. Lauren Boebert.
Boebert, who has made a name for himself as a headline-grabbing Trump supporter, won the Republican primary in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District on Tuesday night. Boebert entered the district’s race last year, escaped what would have been a tough re-election in the seat she currently holds and nearly lost to a Democrat in 2022.
The congressman’s political game was successful. Buck’s hope for a more moderate Congress apparently was not, at least in his former seat.
While other Boebert-style Republican candidates lost their primaries in Colorado on Tuesday, Boebert has a clear path to victory in a dark-red district that trailed Trump in 2020.
After her victory Tuesday, Boebert donned reflective gold shoes sold by Trump and a “Make America Great Again” hat with his signature and defended her unyielding politics. While some may disagree with her style in Washington, she said, “Nothing happens without violence.”
But that path to victory in Tuesday’s primaries was not so clear. The roll of the dice for hop districts was made even trickier by an embarrassing moment when the congresswoman was caught vaping on tape and caused a disruption with a date at a musical production of “Beetlejuice.” Boebert was also plagued by carpetbagging accusations from fellow Republicans during her trip.
Buck, a staunch fiscal conservative and alum of the hardline House Freedom Caucus that includes Boebert, has avoided publicly expressing his thoughts on his likely replacement. He declined a request for comment on this article.
But the former congressman has widely criticized his party’s parroting of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, has questioned efforts to impeach President Joe Biden and has challenged some of his party’s claims rejected that the suspects in the January 6 riots in the capital are political prisoners.
Boebert largely had a hand in it. In a recording of Buck at a private event initially reported by Politico, the former congressman said, “She makes George Santos “He looks like a saint.” Santos was expelled from Congress last year.
Drew Sexton, Boebert’s campaign manager, said voters supported Boebert because they saw her political stubbornness in Congress as promises about the campaign process and her apologies as sincere.
“She has shown that she is contrite. She is committed to doing things better for her personally, and she is absolutely voting the right way,” he said.
The replacement of more traditional Republicans with MAGA supporters is a broader trend, said Seth Masket, director of the Center on American Politics in Denver.
“Some of them have tried to fight it and some of them have just decided to resign and for the most part they’ve been replaced by people who are much more loyal to Donald Trump. That is very consistent with the direction of the party,” said Masket.
While Boebert has a roughly 30% lead over the Republican runner-up with nearly all votes counted Wednesday, more than half of voters cast their ballots for one of the other five candidates.
“Boebert offers a kind of mixed lesson to other Republicans,” Masket said, pointing to her close loss in 2022 in an otherwise Republican-leaning district. “There may not be such a high price, but there is a price to be paid for acting very brashly and for embracing Trump too much.”
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Jesse Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.
