Lauren Boebert named top candidate in race to replace Ken Buck at Colorado GOP assembly

Rep. Lauren Boebert had leg surgery just days before the Republican CO-4 assembly, but that didn’t stop the far-right representative from strutting around the stage in her signature high heels.

“I don’t care if I have to come to the assembly on a stretcher, I am honoring the delegates who have invested their time,” Boebert told the crowd Friday morning at the Southwest Motors Event Center in Pueblo.

Boebert won the most delegates at the assembly and will be the first candidate listed on the June primary ballots.

Here’s what Boebert said and what Friday's proceedings mean for the race for CO-4.

‘I hung me a lost Buck’: Boebert takes shot at Buck in address to crowd

Boebert, the incumbent in Colorado’s 3^rd Congressional District, switched to running in the 4^th District in late December 2023.

While she’s still representing the Western Slope and parts of southern Colorado for the rest of her term, she moved to Windsor and is vying to stay in Congress, representing the Eastern Plains and parts of the Denver suburbs.

She vowed to continue to “take on the swamp” and advocate for Colorado in Congress. She made a few references to her Christian faith, including when calling out other lawmakers for not having “courage” to reject funding for Ukraine “while we have an invasion at our southern border.”

"Strength takes humility, not paying attention to just your outward circumstances and all of the impossibilities, but knowing that God is on our side and there are far more for us than there are against us," Boebert said.

The congresswoman also targeted Ken Buck, the former representative for CO-4 who recently resigned before his term ended, as a part of the “uniparty.”

“You know, he said he was going to drain the swamp and he became the swamp, but it’s okay because I, Lauren Boebert, am a professional RINO (Republican in name only) hunter and I hung me a lost Buck,” Boebert said.

In her acceptance speech, Boebert said she "promised not to treat this as a coronation" to earn support from the party. She said her departure from CO-3 isn't a goodbye but "an expansion" of Republican representation in Colorado to 80% of the state's land area.

Boebert narrowly won re-election to her second term in November 2022.

Who else is on the CO-4 Republican ballot?

Of the 749 eligible delegates in the 4^th Congressional District, 527 were present and voting. By the numbers, this district is the most favorable to Republicans in Colorado and has been mostly represented by the GOP in recent decades.

Candidates can get on the ballot in multiple ways: they can submit enough petition signatures, get support from delegates at the Congressional assembly, or do a combination of both.

Just one candidate, Ted Harvey, tried to get on the ballot just through the assembly. He needed to get support from 30% of the delegates, but was 24 votes short of achieving the threshold.

Jerry Sonnenberg and Richard Holtorf also spoke at the assembly and have filed petitions. Both met the 10% minimum threshold of delegate support, but their signatures are still under review by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

The final deadline to certify the list of candidates on the ballot is April 26.

Several other candidates avoided the county assembly and are also awaiting a decision about their petition signatures. Deborah Flora is the only other candidate besides Boebert whose petition signatures have been approved.

Buck first announced that he wasn’t seeking re-election last fall. He also decided to leave Congress early and officially resigned in late March.

Republicans selected Greg Lopez as their party’s candidate for the special election in late June to serve the rest of Buck’s term. Lopez, a former Republican hopeful in the 2022 gubernatorial contest, is not in the running for the general election.

Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics at the Pueblo Chieftain. She can be reached at awinfrey@gannett.com. Please support local news at subscribe.chieftain.com.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Lauren Boebert garners most support for CO-4 at Colorado GOP assembly