Frank Evans, Ray Kogovsek and Mike Strang are turning in their graves. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Scott McInnis and John Salazar have their heads spinning.

While Scott Tipton is still trying to get the number of that freight train that ran him over.

These seven gentlemen (yes – men, all) have represented Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District since time immemorial. Well, specifically, since 1965. Strang, McInnis and Tipton served as Republicans; Evans, Kogovsek and Salazar as Democrats.

As if to underscore the centrist, low-on-partisanship nature of this district, Campbell was a Democratic congressman and a successful Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate only to then change his affiliation to the GOP early in his Senate tenure.

In short, this district defined by its vast acreage, the predominance of small-town and rural voters, and the importance of agricultural, tourism and energy interests has time and again chosen grounded, pragmatic, non-ideological representatives. The Democratic members skewed a degree or two left; the Republicans a shade to the right. But all of them had a clear sense of the center of the district’s political pendulum.

Until 2020. When like so many other things we took for granted, all that shifted.

Enter Republican nominee Lauren Boebert, fresh off her decisive upset of somnolent, what-me-worry, why-spend-my-war-chest Tipton in the June primary. And Democratic nominee Diane Mitsch Bush, getting her second bite at the apple after losing to Tipton by eight points in the general election two years ago.

The decimation of moderates in Republican ranks began in the Gingrich years and then gained an exclamation point in the ascendancy of the Tea Party. Democrats were slower to this dance, but they have arrived as well with the cleansing of many deemed insufficiently activist and progressive.

Which brings us to Boebert and Mitsch Bush. What their debates may lack in substance will be made up for in attacks and media hype.

Central casting outdid themselves in delivering Lauren Boebert. A young, hip, pistol-packing mama who owns Shooters Grill in the town of Rifle. For real.

She’s Sarah Palin, though better armed. Michele Bachmann in jeans and with a more compelling life story. It is as if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC in the vernacular) instead of having been a bartender had owned her own place called Social Justice Tavern in the city of Wokeville.

Boebert’s detractors, not a small group, point to her lack of education. She sports a high school GED, though is said to be taking online courses through Colorado State University. Without a college diploma myself, I am far less concerned with her academic credentials than with her lack of evident intellectual heft. Her website indicates that she’s big on “freedom”; “pro-gun”; “pro-life”; wants to “drain the swamp”; and, again, more “freedom.” Details apparently to come.

An e-mail to her campaign chief with a half-dozen policy questions elicited not much more than a courtesy response and the assurance that, “Boebert is spending time meeting with various stakeholders throughout the district and putting together her full policy advisory board.”

In English, that translates to, “I don’t know” or “I don’t care” or “check back with me later after I’ve practiced my lines.”

Yet, at least Boebert’s campaign provided a reply, such as it is. That is more than can be said for the overmatched staff of her opponent which couldn’t be bothered to even acknowledge a similar set of inquiries.

Mitsch Bush should be primed to make a serious run at this seat in light of Boebert’s over-the-top persona, which repels as many as it attracts, to go along with lingering divisions and resentments attendant to her toppling of a 10-year incumbent congressman.

But one wonders.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s arm for wielding power in targeted districts, seems to have made something less than a full-fledged, all-out commitment to this race. Witness the apparent staffing shortfall. Mitsch Bush appears uncertain how to campaign and engage voters in the age of COVID. That said, the early defiance of public health orders by Boebert’s restaurant doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Most of all, Mitsch Bush’s candidacy hardly evokes images of previous Democratic winners of this seat. Her doctorate in sociology (yes, quite the educational contrast between these two) doesn’t connote much dirt under the fingernails. Or perhaps carry a whole lot of saliency in small, rural communities that still consider themselves part of the frontier and where “intersectionality” means just the junction of two county roads a mile out of town.

Mitsch Bush’s on-again, off-again endorsement of the Green New Deal may win applause and big majorities in Aspen and Steamboat Springs but prove less endearing in Pueblo, Del Norte, Delta and Rangely.

Boebert’s candidacy would ordinarily give Democrats a shot. But bear in mind that this district voted for Trump by 12 points while the state as a whole gave Hillary Clinton a five-point win. As Colorado has become a more pronounced shade of blue, the 3rd District, like much of rural America, has grown ever more red. Even Pueblo County, long a Democratic stronghold, went for Trump. It is hard to conceive of a more Trumpian candidate than Lauren Boebert. Or one whom Trump would more like to hit on.

We’ll end where we started. Not only has the cast of characters changed in this district, but the political ethos has as well. Center is now just a small town in the San Luis Valley, not a sought-after governing standard. Both parties are dominated by their loudest, most ardent noisemakers in a political culture of ever-increasing volume.

As our political process has changed, so has what passes for a congressional job description. Service these days is far less about legislating, appropriating, coalition-building or trouble-shooting than it is an endless game of camera-hunting, sound bites, provocation and feigned outrage. Our representatives can’t be bothered to pass an annual budget. But they sure know their way to the cable television studio.

Politics is now very much theater. Complete with heroes and villains, but lacking nuance or compromise much less traditional, serious legislative work. Lauren Boebert and Diane Mitsch Bush welcome you to this new era.