State Sen. Don Coram has ended a month of speculation about whether the Montrose Republican would challenge U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in this year’s GOP primary.

He’s in, as reported Wednesday by the Montrose Daily Press.

Coram will find himself a state senator without a seat after the 2022 election, after legislative redistricting maps were approved by the Colorado Supreme Court last November. Coram was drawn into the same district as Republican state Sen. Bob Rankin of Carbondale. Since Rankin was elected to his seat in 2020, he keeps the seat, leaving Coram without a chance to run for re-election in November, unless he were to move.

Instead, he’s running against Boebert, the Silt Republican who toppled five-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton in the 2020 GOP primary in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District.

Coram is the second Republican to mount a challenge to Boebert, joining first-time candidate Marina Zimmerman, the Archuleta County industrial crane operator who has been running a low-budget campaign since last spring.

Calling himself a moderate who can get the job done, Coram told Colorado Politics he intends to focus on jobs and the economy and pointed out that the district is largely agricultural. He’s also interested in infrastructure and health care, and noted, “I’ve been very vocal on public lands, wildfires and what we can do to manage the public lands better.”

“I’m not an unknown in the congressional district,” Coram said, adding he’s built relationships in the district for the past 14 years along with a reputation that has earned him the respect from both sides of the aisle at the state Capitol.

Six Democrats are running for the nomination in the sprawling 3rd CD, which leans Republican and covers most of the Western Slope and parts of southern Colorado, including Pueblo County and the San Luis Valley. Among the candidates: state Rep. Don Valdez, D-La Jara, and Pueblo community organizer Sol Sandoval.

Boebert, who owns a gun-themed restaurant in Rifle and is among former President Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters, reported raising nearly $2.8 million through the end of September and had $1.7 million on hand. Campaign finance reports for the year’s final quarter are due Jan. 31.

Coram served three terms in the Colorado House before being selected in January 2017 by a vacancy committee to replace state Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, who stepped down to focus on her family and law practice. Roberts left the Republican party later that year.

Known for his quick wit and ability to work across the aisle, Coram’s legislative agenda has focused on water, broadband expansion on the Western Slope and hemp production. Coram is a hemp farmer, and in one 2019 op-ed was called the father of the modern-day hemp industry in Colorado.

During the past two legislative sessions, Coram tangled with Gov. Jared Polis over lack of representation from rural Colorado on boards and commissions. Coram advocated for better representation from rural Colorado, particularly Eastern Colorado, a message Polis said he would take to heart in 2020, after a closed-door meeting between Polis and a handful of senators on the last day of the 2020 session.

Coram had enough Democratic votes to kill three Polis appointments to the state fair authority board that day. The Senate never voted on those appointments, which under the law meant they had to leave the board. Polis later re-appointed the same people, which Coram and others said was likely illegal, but those appointments were not challenged in the courts.

In the 2021 session, Coram persuaded eight Senate Democrats to join the GOP caucus in rejecting an appointment to the state’s groundwater commission, marking the first time a Polis pick had been blocked.

“I think the biggest obstacle in the Legislature, when you get here, is not Democrat-Republican, it’s rural-urban. I think everyone who represents Southwest Colorado realizes that when you get here. Your district is more important than your party,” he said on his Senate website.

Republican consultant JD Key is managing Coram’s campaign. Key was political director for then-U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman’s 2016 successful re-election bid. Key was also a former Colorado House GOP staffer.

This story has been updated with comments from Coram.