Chef's kiss! How Ken Buck kicked Lauren Boebert to the curb
The knife in the back stabs deepest. We thank you, Ken Buck, for your service to the State of Colorado.
Oh I so admire Rep. Ken Buck. Dude has done a great service to the country. Not by resigning his seat from Congress, though that was the masterstroke through which he executed the plan. What Buck has done is checkmated Rep. Lauren Boebert, who may not find her seat in Congress come January 2025. The best part is I believe she never saw it coming.
Let me tell you how he did it.
Last November, Rep. Ken Buck announced he wasn’t going to seek another term in Congress. “The Republican Party of today, however, is ignoring self-evident truths about the rule of law and limited government in exchange for self-serving lies,” he said.
Buck has been one of those Republicans who believe, you know, that conservative values are more than kissing the orange-tinted throne where Florida Man plants his recumbent keister on a pile of skulls. The skulls are frequently those of Republicans who thought they could bargain with the transactional guy and found themselves deeper and further from their own values than they ever believed possible. The ones who still live (like Rep. Jim Jordan and Speaker Mike Johnson) have long cast away any values, if they ever had them in the first place.
Recently, Buck has served as one of the few voices who shout against impeachment fever: he voted against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and as a member of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, is running obstruction against efforts to impeach President Joe Biden.
By announcing his intention not to seek re-election, Buck created a hole in the Colorado Republican delegation. And serving in the next district over from the very conservative, very red 4th Congressional District, we have Rep. Lauren Boebert, who has been tainted by nearly as many public scandals as the Florida guy in such a short time.
Boebert began her congressional career by tweeting out the location of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the January 6th Capitol riot. In 2022, she violated decorum during Biden’s State of the Union address, joining her spirit animal, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, in chanting “Build the wall!” and turning her back in the middle of the speech.
She accused MTG of spitting at her last June in a cat-fight over who was going to file impeachment articles against Biden, when Greene called her a “little b—ch.” And of course, there was the incident of some heavy petting in a theater filled with families and kids during a stage performance of “Beetlejuice” where she and her boy-toy ignored all social norms: vaping, taking flash photography, and getting handsy in his lap.
“A class act,” my stepfather would have said, meaning the facetious opposite. Few people who get their news from places other than TMZ and Newsmax would disagree that if anyone deserves to be defenestrated from the Capitol, Boebert is in the top 1% of that list.
So, Buck announced he was not going to run, and Boebert, eyeing the larger and more influential 4th CD seat, could not help herself but to run for it. Then, she reasoned, she could endorse someone, as a mentor, to take the 3rd district seat, having her own little klatch of MAGA in Colorado, with her taking the role of Asmodeus.
Against Buck, Boebert would have no chance. This reminds me of MTG in Georgia: by all rights, Greene should run for the 6th Congressional District, which includes Alpharetta and other north Fulton cities—because it’s where she lived for many year and still has a home. But there’s no way in God’s green earth she could win the 6th CD, which lately has been a bright shade of purple, switching between Republicans and Democrats like a metronome (currently, Dr. Rich McCormick, a Republican, has the seat). In any case, MTG ran in the 14th CD, which includes Floyd County and Rome, Georgia (where Trump had a rally last week).
Similarly, Boebert could not win the Colorado 4th CD, unless Buck cleared the way. And he did. Phase one complete.
Boebert declared her candidacy for the Republican nomination for the Colorado 4th CD, which will be decided in the state’s Republican primary on June 25th (you know, the one where Trump was not going to be on the ballot, until he was again). And there is where the trap was sprung.
Colorado state law requires any seat that’s vacated before the end of a term to be filled by a special election, which the governor must set between 85 to 100 days after that event. On Wednesday, Ken Buck announced his resignation, effective March 22. Then Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, set the date for the special election, which happens to fall between 85 days and 100 days—June 25th. Of course, why not? It makes sense for the state not to pay for another election, which costs money.
Needless to say, Ken Buck knew exactly when 95 days after his resignation effective date would fall. And he knew why that’s important. Phase two, the trap claps shut.
See, in order to run for the 4th CD seat in the special election, Boebert would have to first resign her seat in the 3rd CD. In Colorado, you can’t run for a seat in Congress while you occupy a different seat. So Boebert, in order to be the incumbent in the 4th CD in November, would have to resign now. She’s not going to do that.
In June, Colorado 4th CD voters will have two slates: for all voters, there will be the special election to fill the Congressional seat, which will not have Lauren Boebert on the ballot; and there will be the primary ballot, for Republicans only, which will have Boebert running for the nomination for the general election, but she won’t be the incumbent.
The Denver Post reports:
So far, Logan County Commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg, a former state lawmaker, and former state Sen. Ted Harvey are the only Republicans to confirm they will seek the seat in the special election. State Reps. Richard Holtorf and Mike Lynch said they were still considering their best path forward, with Lynch writing in a text message Wednesday that he was hesitant to create a vacancy in the state House of Representatives.
Mike Lynch, a West Point graduate, is running for the nomination, and also likely will be in the running for the special election. He’s the guy who said the obvious: why would voters split their ballot between a Republican for the special election and a different one for the nomination? He’s right, they won’t. Boebert isn’t on the ballot for the special election, and therefore it’s unlikely she will win the nomination.
In other words, it’s likely Boebert, who said she was leading the fight for the nomination by 25 points, will end up without a seat in Congress come January 2025.
Touche! Bravo! Chef’s kiss!
Boebert, as is her M.O., threw a tantrum.
“The establishment concocted a swampy backroom deal to try to rig an election I’m winning by 25 points,” Boebert said in a statement, citing a late February poll by Kaplan Strategies in which she led the primary field with 32% support among 558 likely voters.
“Forcing an unnecessary Special Election on the same day as the Primary Election will confuse voters, result in a lame duck Congressman on Day One, and leave the 4th District with no representation for more than three months. The 4th District deserves better.”
Yes, Lauren, the 4th CD does deserve better. Better than you.
Well played, Ken Buck.
Let's all chant at once; "deep state, deep state, deep state."
Kudos to the "deep state" and to Steve (or was it David? said with a laugh) for pointing it out to the rest of us who aren't part of the giant conspiracy to stop maga.
This made my day. Well played indeed.