Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) came in fifth place in a straw poll of voters in the district where the controversial congresswoman recently relocated and is trying to win reelection to the House.
Boebert, who was first elected to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District in 2020, announced last month she would switch districts and instead run for reelection this year in the 4th District, after its House member, Rep. Ken Buck ®, decided to retire from Congress.
The new district for Boebert would likely give her a significantly better chance at reelection if she wins the Republican nomination. She currently represents a swing district, and Boebert had seemed likely before her switch to face off a second time against Democrat Adam Frisch, whom she defeated in 2022 by fewer than 600 votes.
The 4th District, meanwhile, is a solidly Republican district that has elected a Democratic House member only once in the past 50 years.
But the results of the straw poll Thursday, which followed the first debate among GOP candidates running for that district, indicates Boebert may have an uphill battle.
one of the fundamental problems of legislation is that, whatever law you put into place, eventually the most horrible asshole you can imagine will be in charge of implementing and enforcing it. if you make it so that you need to pass a test in order to run for office, look forward to the opposition party doing their best to game those tests to selectively disqualify their opponents. it’s inevitable in a competitive system like this because people who don’t take every advantage tend to lose to people who do.
Just broadly speaking, I’m extremely skeptical of arguments that we can’t do X because it could be or has been abused, because as you’ve pointed out, everything can be abused with sufficiently bad people running it. Having a system that’s not open to abuse simply isn’t an option. If we can’t keep bad people out of power, we’re just fucked, so there’s no point in worrying about systems that will be abused by the bad guys, because if it gets to that point, you’ve already lost, and all your safeguards against abuse will be swept away anyway. At best, you can slow down the bad guys while they’re consolidating their power and maybe give time for some kind of counterattack.