Lauren Boebert primary: MAGA Republican easily wins Colorado race after scandal and district switch – live

Ron Hanks, acknowledging Boebert’s victory on the other side of Colorado in CD4, labeled her “probably the least deserving of all the pro-MAGA candidates.”

“I’m worried about another theater incident or something in the near future that tanks her, and they’re going to put in an establishment person,” he said, referring to Boebert’s ejection for misbehavior in September from a Denver musical performance.

Hanks, who has complained about GOP-affiliated PACs funding ads against him, dug further into his deeply split party while digesting news of the loss.

“This party has basically made itself irredeemable,” he told The Independent. “This party should fall. This party should collapse.

A gun-themed restaurant helped Republican firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert to fame. At the unrelated Shooters in the new district she hopes to win – where she’s running as a carpetbagger – there hasn’t been the same level of Boebert talk or tourism … yet.

Sheila Flynn reports from Byers in the 4th congressional district. Read more here:

In Colorado, not everyone loves Lauren Boebert — but the people who do really do.

Lauren Boebert beat a group of more traditional, homegrown primary candidates who had far less name recognition and generally less combative political styles to claim victory in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District on Tuesday.

They were: former state Senator Jerry Sonnenberg; current state Representatives Mike Lynch and Richard Holtorf; and parental rights advocate Deborah Flora.

Boebert is expected to also win the November general election in the district, which sweeps across a wide expanse of ranches, ghost towns and conservative parts of the Denver metro area that make up much of the plains of eastern Colorado.

Its voters overwhelmingly backed former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

The controversial congresswoman said she switched districts to ensure another Republican could win her seat, which she nearly lost in 2022, and she blamed outside groups for targeting her.

But she had already become a fundraising magnet for that other district’s likely Democratic candidate, who has pulled in millions that may help him flip a seat that has leaned Republican in recent years.

Lauren Boebert echoed rhetoric of former president Donald Trump following her win in Colorado on Tueday, describing November’s election as “the most important election of our lifetime.”

“November 5 is coming up and we need to put President Trump back in the White House,” she told reporters. “We need to take the Senate and we need to keep the house. America deepends on it.”

She continued: “This is the most important election of our lifetime every two years… We’ve got to get this right and I want to fight alongside of the good people of Colorado’s 4th district, our entire state and our nation to ensure that we take this great country back.”

Boebert’s main rival in Tuesday’s Colorado GOP primary said that the “vast majority” of people in the district did not want the controversial congresswoman to be their nominee.

Speaking to The Independent, Deborah Flora said: “I think the reality is, Lauren Boebert will always have a floor and a ceiling.

“There will always be a certain amount of people that will just vote for whoever Donald Trump endorses. Now, president Donald Trump, we all expected him to endorse Laura, and he’s loyal. He endorsed her before, it was no surprise.

“So I think she’ll always have a floor because of that, but I think she has a very hard ceiling. And I think the vast majority of people in this district do not want her to be the nominee.”

She added: “I think everybody knows that this is a two woman race completely. I would have no problem winning this evening.”