When earlier this year the video broke of U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s theater debauchery, more than a few people started seeing the traces of writing on the wall of her political future. When the campaign finance numbers emerged a little while later showing her most likely Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, enjoying a historically ludicrous lead with a campaign account in the seven figures, that seemed to all but seal her electoral fate, enough so the 3rd Congressional was shifted from solid-R to toss-up, and finally to toss-up-leaning-Democrat.

It seems Ms. Boebert reached a similar conclusion when she announced right after Christmas she was abandoning the ship of the 3rd CD and swimming across to the potentially friendlier decks of the 4th. In other words, the homecoming queen changed schools when it became apparent she was not going to become the Prom Queen.

This bit of drama says quite a bit about Ms. Boebert. Her stint in Congress has always been less about the job than the publicity that came with it. She displaced Scott Tipton, a staunch conservative workhorse who was always more concerned about ably representing the vast district in Washington D.C., and putting in the dull, grinding, less-headline-generating daily effort required to effectively push back against the ravenous appetite of an overweening federal government. That is of secondary, at best, importance to Boebert, whose skills et is more in the rhetorical realm, well suited for the soundbite reductionism of Twitter and cable TV.

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It was not too long before even some members of her base began to view her theatrics as less of a rebellious street-fighting resistance against an entrenched leftist order – the answer, as she styled herself, to the excesses of AOC – and more of a political profiteering on grave political concerns.

So what does this mean going forward? Well, Jeff Hurd, the responsible, conventionally conservative Republican who was challenging Boebert in the primary, obviously stands the most to gain. Indeed, the Cook Political Report shifted the district back into the “R” side of the ledger soon after Boebert’s announcement. Hurd is an impressive candidate who had already earned the backing of several prominent Republicans and conservatives in the state, and was offering her an unexpected internal threat, providing a glimmer of hope for the district’s conservative Republicans who would dearly love to return to yelling “STOP” at progressives rather than at the fringe-right driving the Republican Party to the abyss. But for all his positive qualities, he was not the incumbent, and going up against Boebert’s carefully cultivated pop-star persona was always more of an uphill climb than one would want. That obstacle is now removed.

Naturally this news is a bit of a setback for Frisch, who is a rather conservative Democrat, but a Democrat nonetheless. His chance at the seat lay in the coincident facts he was a moderate, Joe Manchin-like candidate running against Lauren Boebert. Hurd’s gain is Frisch’s loss, in a district expected to elect the most conservative candidate who can win (with the new caveat of not making a spectacle out of themselves).

That said, it’s not a fait accompli for Mr. Hurd. Frisch still enjoys that enormous war chest, and has a big head-start; he’s been campaigning for the seat since he ran and (barely) lost in 2022. And it is not a given Hurd is indeed the presumptive nominee. With Boebert’s exit, the 3rd CD is now an open seat for the first time since 2004, and it is expected others may soon hop in the GOP primary arena. One already has in fact; Ron Hanks, probably the only person other than Boebert who could lose the district to a Democrat, announced his candidacy last Friday. Other, more viable, candidates could announce as well, potentially setting up some interesting dynamics in the primary.  

And what does this move mean for the gestating 4th CD field? It will be interesting to see how Boebert is received. She is bound to be subject to a barrage of slings and arrows labeled with epithets like “opportunist”, “carpet-bagger,” and the like. Perhaps her celebrity status will see her through. Or maybe she will finally get that cable spot she has been auditioning for for the past four years. In any case, it ought to be great fun to watch Boebert hit the 4th CD trail and try to tell someone like Jerry Sonnenberg he is not conservative enough.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.