{"id":42352,"date":"2022-02-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-strategy-to-unseat-rep-lauren-boebert\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T09:06:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:06:46","slug":"a-strategy-to-unseat-rep-lauren-boebert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-strategy-to-unseat-rep-lauren-boebert\/","title":{"rendered":"A strategy to unseat Rep. Lauren Boebert?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Don
Don Coram and Lauren Boebert<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Democrats registered in the 3rd Congressional District are being asked to change their voter registration to \u201cunaffiliated\u201d in a growing campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in the Republican primaries in June.<\/p>\n

Indivisible Durango, which bills itself as a nonpartisan organization but promotes progressive ideals, floated the idea to members who are registered Democrats in a Feb. 1 newsletter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are a Democrat or a Libertarian, you can change your party affiliation to \u2018unaffiliated\u2019 in order to vote (on) the Republican primary ballot,\u201d the newsletter read. \u201cIf you are already unaffiliated or a Republican, we encourage you to consider voting for a reasonable, centrist Republican in the Republican primary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The newsletter identified state Sen. Don Coram, Boebert\u2019s strongest Republican opponent, as the politician whom \u201csome believe (creates) the best chance of having a different representative in U.S. Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mario Nicolais, a columnist for The Colorado Sun, posited a similar strategy benefiting Coram.<\/p>\n

The strategy comes five months before the Republican primaries, a victory to which unaffiliated voters undoubtedly hold the key. According to the Colorado Sun, 40% of the 3rd District\u2019s 513,000 active voters are unaffiliated. Registered Republicans account for 32% of voters, while 27% are registered as Democrats. Unaffiliated voters gained the right to vote in the primaries with Proposition 108, a 2016 ballot measure approved by voters and enacted by the state Senate.<\/p>\n

In an interview Friday, Indivisible Durango Council member Debbie Meyers said the organization wasn\u2019t telling people how to vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may be that the only option is to primary Lauren Boebert, and she can call it what she will, but it is the law,\u201d Meyers said. \u201cBut we\u2019re not telling people how to vote or how to register, we just wanted to provide information so that people would know their options.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meyers said the organization\u2019s campaign was intended to clarify voting options only for members of Indivisible Durango, but she acknowledged \u201cthe information will seep out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement to The Durango Herald<\/em>, a spokesperson for Boebert\u2019s re-election campaign derided the strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnaffiliated voters are overwhelmingly frustrated by the left\u2019s destructive policies on crime and our economy,\u201d the spokesperson wrote. \u201cAny effort to con them into voting for liberal candidates posing as Republicans will be rejected wholeheartedly.<\/p>\n

\u201cColorado\u2019s (3rd District) will elect Lauren Boebert because she is fighting to open our economy back up, secure the border, manage our forests responsibly, make our communities safe and put an end to the left\u2019s insane policies,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Dave Peters, the La Plata County Republican Party chairman, called the strategy a \u201cweapon to manipulate primary elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems their only hope is to masquerade as Republicans and interfere with the process,\u201d Peters said in an email to Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Brenda Freeburn, a Gunnison resident unaffiliated with Indivisible Durango, said she and five of her close friends are on a letter-writing campaign to inform 3rd District voters of their options if they register as unaffiliated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started talking and other people were saying, well, you know, if you want to vote in the Republican primary, it\u2019s easy enough to switch and it just kind of started snowballing a little bit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Freeburn and her friends have published letters to the editor in papers across the 3rd District, she said, in the hopes that unaffiliated voters like herself can oust Boebert.<\/p>\n

Ted Johnson, a 71-year-old retired businessman, said he also isn\u2019t connected to Indivisible Durango but heard about the idea of changing one\u2019s affiliation through word of mouth.<\/p>\n

Johnson wrote a letter to the editor this week in support of the strategy, encouraging Democrats to change their registration and hand Boebert a loss in the Republican primaries by electing Coram.<\/p>\n

Johnson has been registered as an unaffiliated voter for eight years. Before that, he was a Republican. He said Boebert appears to be more interested in the limelight of controversy than working across the aisle to accomplish legislative wins for her constituents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the gentleman that\u2019s running against her is, from my research and discussions with people that know him, somebody that can work both sides of the aisle,\u201d Johnson said in an interview with the Herald<\/em>. \u201cBut to me clearly Boebert is not interested in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Coram\u2019s congressional campaign said it was unaware of the strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Sen. Coram has said from the beginning, he\u2019s running to represent the 80% in the middle who have been ignored by the fringes on both sides,\u201d the spokesman wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s clear by the conversations we\u2019ve had on the trail that this is a message that is resonating with voters from every walk of life and political persuasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skye Witley, a senior at American University in Washington, D.C., is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez. He can be reached at switley@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats to switch party affiliation to vote in Republican primary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[981,28,1722,934,367],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-3rd-congressional-district","tag-headlines","tag-regional-elections","tag-state-sen-don-coram","tag-u-s-rep-lauren-boebert"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42352","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=42352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85302,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42352\/revisions\/85302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42352"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}