Lauren Boebert’s sketchy re-election plan is already blowing up in her face

Even though anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) recently decided to run for re-election in a different district to increase her chances of success, her plan is already backfiring. In fact, she might not even end up on the ballot.

Boebert switched her re-election campaign from Colorado’s Third District (where many expected her to lose) to the state’s Fourth District. But for her name to appear on the June 25 Republican primary ballot, she needs to collect 1,500 signatures of district residents and win at least 10% of support from the delegates at the Republican party’s biennial convention, according to the left-leaning political website Crooks and Liars.

Related:

Colorado GOP turns on Lauren Boebert & says her Beetlejuice behavior should cost her reelection

“What she did at Beetlejuice was altogether indefensible,” one state Republican official said.

Even if Boebert collects the 1,500 required signatures by the March 19 deadline, she’ll still need to win over delegates in a district where she has been a relative stranger. Collecting signatures can be a costly process, and the signatures can be tossed out if they’re successfully challenged under a fraud claim.

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Furthermore, even if she makes the ballot in the heavily Republican district, Boebert will be joining an already crowded field of seven other candidates, including state House Minority Leader Mike Lynch (R) — and all of them will spend the primary trashing Boebert over her headline-grabbing misbehavior.

“I think it’s an unfortunate turn of the field, to be honest with you, because that distraction [of Boebert’s political theatre] really takes away from the issues we should be focusing on,” Lynch recently told Colorado Public Radio. “Obviously, she’s got more money and more name recognition, but that is my job to present a better candidate than her. And I don’t look at it as much different from any other race.”

State Rep. Richard Holtorf (R), another of Boebert’s opponents, asked, “Does she think we’re that stupid? Does she think we’re going to be fooled by this trickery?… Seat shopping isn’t something voters look kindly on.”

Former state Sen. Ted Harvey (R) also piled onto Boebert, saying, “She has lost the confidence of the conservative voters in the Third Congressional District, so much so that she was probably going to lose that seat. And so now she’s decided to cling to power and continue to be a career politician. It’s sad, first and foremost, because she ran to say that she wasn’t going to be a career politician.”

Dave Williams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, also recently said that Boebert’s move hurts the party as a whole.

“We now are going to have a nominee that is not as well known, that doesn’t have as much money or the ability to fundraise as much money as Lauren Boebert did,” Williams told The Durango Herald. “So from a party chair’s perspective, we’re going to have to spend more money, more resources, and more effort boosting a nominee that doesn’t have as great of a name ID.”

He added, “[Boebert will have to explain to voters] why it’s appropriate for her to leave [her old district] and represent a completely different geographical, and I think, cultural constituency.”