{"id":26903,"date":"2024-06-29T19:40:38","date_gmt":"2024-06-30T01:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/why-lauren-boebert-likely-wont-lose-to-a-democrat-in-november\/"},"modified":"2024-06-30T01:40:38","modified_gmt":"2024-06-30T01:40:38","slug":"why-lauren-boebert-likely-wont-lose-to-a-democrat-in-november","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/why-lauren-boebert-likely-wont-lose-to-a-democrat-in-november\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Lauren Boebert likely won\u2019t lose to a Democrat in November"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rep.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., arranges a Make America Great Again hat and a pair of gold Converse All-Stars basketball shoes on the stage at her primary election watch party Tuesday, June 25, 2024, in Windsor, Colo. (Hart Van Denburg\/Colorado Public Radio via AP)<\/span>(Hart Van Denburg\/Colorado Public Radio via AP)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

If the results from Tuesday\u2019s primary and special election in Colorado\u2019s 4th Congressional District are any indication, Democrats\u2019 best chance to oust Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert has gone up in smoke.<\/p>\n

Boebert\u2019s large margin of victory over her five primary challengers and Democrat Trisha Calvarese\u2019s walloping in the special election suggest that the congresswoman will cruise to a win in November.<\/p>\n

Yes, Boebert nearly lost her 2022 reelection bid on the other side of Colorado in the 3rd Congressional District. But the 4th District, where Boebert moved to shore up her political future, is far more favorable to Republicans \u2014 and the election results this week only reinforce that fact.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a closer look at evidence pointing to a Boebert win in the fall.<\/p>\n\n

Boebert\u2019s share of the vote in the 4th District Republican primary was holding steady Wednesday afternoon at 43% as the final ballots were being counted. She won in all but six of the district\u2019s 21 counties. One of her county-level wins was in Douglas County, the district\u2019s population center.<\/p>\n

The district also includes Loveland and sweeps across the Eastern Plains.<\/p>\n

While she didn\u2019t secure a majority, Boebert\u2019s victory was decisive enough to indicate she can consolidate support among Republicans. Her margin of victory over her next closest opponent was 29 percentage points.<\/p>\n

\u201cEastern Colorado, a lot of counties got behind Boebert,\u201d said state Rep. Richard Holtorf, an Akron Republican and one of Boebert\u2019s primary rivals. \u201cIt was a surprise. I don\u2019t know what was the motivator for that, probably the Trump endorsement was part of that. That Trump endorsement carried a lot more weight than maybe I anticipated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holtorf said he frequently heard on the campaign trail from voters who said they would never back Boebert.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then, when it came time to vote, obviously people voted in favor of her to be their congresswoman,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"State
State Rep. Richard Holtorf, R-Akron, speaks at a debate for Republican candidates running in the 4th Congressional District. Behind him is Lauren Boebert. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

850 KOA radio host Mandy Connell, who backed conservative commentator Deborah Flora in the 4th District Republican primary, said she\u2019s not sure it is accurate to say the district belongs, politically speaking, to Boebert now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think that Lauren obviously won handily,\u201d Connell said.<\/p>\n

Connell said she plans to vote for Boebert in November.<\/p>\n

Even Boebert\u2019s primary opponents are already throwing their weight behind her heading into the general election.<\/p>\n

Former state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, now a Logan County commissioner, pledged in a written statement that he would help her win in November. He came in second in the primary, with 14% of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Trisha Calvarese lost by 24 percentage points in the special election<\/div>\n

The 4th District is a Republican stronghold.<\/p>\n

Former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican, won his last two elections in the district by 23 percentage points each. The district\u2019s voters backed Republican Cory Gardner by 23 percentage points in Colorado\u2019s 2020 U.S. Senate race, Republican gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton by a 24-point margin in 2018 and Donald Trump by a 30-point margin in 2016.<\/p>\n

A nonpartisan analysis of election results in the district dating back to 2016 conducted by state redistricting staffers estimated the district leans 27 percentage points in the GOP\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n

By comparison, the 3rd District, which Boebert currently represents, was estimated to have a 9 percentage point lean in the GOP\u2019s favor. Trump\u2019s margin of victory there in 2016 was 8 points.<\/p>\n

Calvarese\u2019s big loss Tuesday to Republican Greg Lopez in the 4th District special election to determine who will serve out Buck\u2019s term in Congress reinforces how favorable the district is to the GOP. (Buck resigned March 22.)<\/p>\n

Calvarese, a first-time candidate who previously worked as a speechwriter and an intern for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, was trailing Lopez by 24 percentage points as of Wednesday afternoon. And she was losing to Lopez, a twice-failed Colorado gubernatorial candidate with a history of run-ins with law enforcement, in each of the district\u2019s 21 counties.<\/p>\n

The AP called the race for Lopez on Tuesday night just 30 minutes after the polls closed.<\/p>\n

Still, Calvarese, who is pro-union and supports the Medicare For All policy proposal, is bullish on her chances in November. She blamed her special election drubbing on a lack of money and name recognition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was running another race simultaneously,\u201d she told The Colorado Sun \u2014 the Democratic primary in the 4th District that she won Tuesday against a better known candidate in retired U.S. Marine Ike McCorkle, who was running for the seat for a third consecutive time. (McCorkle was the Democrat who lost to Buck by 23 percentage points in 2020 and 2022.)<\/p>\n

Calvarese, who attended Douglas County schools growing up, emphasized her own ties to the area in contrast to Boebert, though each of them only moved to the district recently.<\/p>\n

Calvarese moved to Highlands Ranch from Virginia in October 2023 to take care of her terminally ill parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know personally the economic challenges that we face,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In May, Calvarese shared with Politico the results of an internal poll of a hypothetical general election matchup between her and Boebert. It showed her trailing the congresswoman by 10 percentage points, 46%-36%.<\/p>\n

The Keating Research survey, conducted from April 18-24 among 500 likely November voters, indicated that 18% of those polled were undecided or didn\u2019t know who they would vote for in the hypothetical contest. The poll had a 4.4 percentage point margin of error. Keating is a Colorado-based, Democratic pollster with a solid record of predicting races in the state.<\/p>\n

Something else to keep in mind: Turnout in the special election Tuesday (about 33%) was much lower than it was in the district\u2019s general election in 2022 (62%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican congresswoman won a decisive victory in the GOP primary in Colorado\u2019s 4th Congressional District <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[266,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-26903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26903"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=26903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}