U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn would be advised to keep his head down. Even as he hardly needs my advice on the matter. Laying low as the walking embodiment of nondescript and undistinguished comes rather naturally to him.

Though relative to Colorado’s two other Republican members of Congress, Lamborn is a font of political stability.

Looking to the west and south, Lamborn’s GOP colleague, the lightning rod Lauren Boebert, is embroiled in a political battle of survival, one she may well not win. Turning to the east and north, the only other GOP part of Colorado’s congressional delegation, Ken Buck, has offered his sayonara after having been front and center in the biggest political battles of the year.

A state that has quickly grown quite solidly blue will now feature two political battles on what remains of reddish turf.

Without any statewide races in 2024, congressional districts 3 (Boebert) and 4 (Buck) will take center stage. The only incumbent Democrat who looks to have any kind of contest on her hands is first-term representative Yadira Caraveo in the suburbs north of Denver. That district was drawn to be the ultimate in competitiveness.

But unless the Democratic brand does a hard fade or Republicans defy recent history and pull their act together, the odds are that Caraveo lays longer-term claim to the seat. Republicans were unable to beat her in an open district with as strong a candidate as they are likely to find in State Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer.

If Kirkmeyer could not pull this off, it is hard to see how a Republican of less appeal dislodges Caraveo with her advantages of incumbency in a district with a continually growing Latino influence.

Given Boebert’s well-honed knack for drawing headlines and controversy, her reelection scramble is destined to be center stage. (Sorry for theater reference.)

Having won her 2022 race by a scant 546 votes despite the district having a solid Republican lean of nine points, Boebert has drawn an array of challengers this time out.

Adam Frisch, Boebert’s opponent a year ago, has turned into a Democratic fundraising machine. His check-magnet status has precious little to do with Frisch and everything to do with Boebert. Donors here, there and everywhere could really care less about Adam from Aspen, but they are passionately motivated by the prospect of Boebert’s exit.

Grand Junction Mayor Anna Stout is also a credible candidate for the Democratic nomination. The question is whether she can compete in a primary with Frisch’s campaign dollars raised by virtue of his having come ever so close to being the Boebert-slayer last time,

Though before Boebert can devote her full attention to Frisch or Stout, she has to first navigate a surprisingly competitive GOP primary against well-regarded Grand Junction attorney, Jeff Hurd.

Hurd is everything Boebert is not if matters like education, preparation and seriousness are your thing. He is a conservative’s conservative in both values and ideology, though that grounding has something of an old-school quality to it.

While the Trump-led Boebert and others like her are all about spectacle, sensationalism and social media clicks, Hurd harkens back to the days of Republicans like Bill Owens and Hank Brown, both of whom have endorsed him.

Owens and Brown are joined on that endorsement list by former legislator and Mesa University president Tim Foster, along with former state attorney general John Suthers and a growing number of Republican county commissioners.

Boebert still enjoys a sizeable financial advantage over Hurd, even as he netted a respectable sum during his first quarter in the race. As one of his key supporters noted, most of Hurd’s money came in before Boebert’s infamous night at the theater.

Indeed, no current column about Colorado’s notorious congresswoman is complete without note of her bombshell performance as a part of the audience at “Beetlejuice”. The story is well known by now – Boebert’s vaping, against-the-rules photography, dissing of a pregnant woman, mutual groping with her date, and as a final salute flipping off the security personnel who escorted them out.

Even by Boebert’s low standards, this was vulgar, juicy stuff. My political supposition is that she is paying a heavy price for her bad conduct. For someone already skating close to the line – witness her stunningly narrow margin of victory last year – this may well have been an irreversible tipping point.

Political outrage is one thing. We have grown accustomed to it on a daily basis. But personal outrage crosses a line. Becoming a national punchline is not enviable political positioning.

If Boebert goes on to lose this election, either in the primary to Hurd or come next November presumably to Frisch, the night out at “Beetlejuice” will go down not as the start of the bloodletting but as the coup de grace for which there was no political tourniquet.

With that, let’s move across the state to the eastern plains district where Ken Buck is saying goodbye. Rated as a plus-13 Republican district, deeper red than even Boebert’s territory, a Democrat is unlikely to be competitive here unless the GOP completely mucks it up. Which is never an impossibility.

The Republican field to replace Buck is still taking shape, but it will be large and replete with some well-known names. Between confirmed and rumored candidates as of this writing, that list includes 2022 gubernatorial nominee Heidi Ganahl, former prosecutor George Brauchler, former legislator and longtime rural champion Jerry Sonnenberg, conservative radio talker Deborah Flora, state House Republican leader Mike Lynch and state Rep. Richard Holtorf, who has been flirting with his own challenge to Buck.

Not all will get to the starting line, much less the primary election ballot. But it promises to be a spirited, robust race.

For Buck, no shrinking violet in his own dedication to conservative principle, it all became too much. The histrionics of his caucus, the premium on performance over lawmaking, the fact-free election denialism and now a fact-free impeachment inquiry led him to the door.

These two primary elections – the challenge to Boebert and the dogfight to replace Buck – will tell us much about the state of the Republican Party. Is it a party serious about governing in consequential times or does it remain in thrall to Donald Trump on a headlong sprint to crazytown?

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for Colorado Politics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at?EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann