Lauren Boebert made herself very visible as a leader of the 20 people resisting Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid to be Speaker of the House this week. She nominated an supported far right candidates as alternatives to McCarthy though there was no way for such a candidate to prevail in the mostly moderate GOP House.
Who is Lauren Boebert?
Lauren Boebert, who is arguably now one of the most powerful people in the House, is from a town called Rifle in western Colorado. Her husband is an oil industry guy who worked his way up from roughneck to a low-level executive in oil drilling in western Colorado. They are raising 4 boys.
Lauren owned Shooters Steakhouse in Rifle where the waitresses wore tight clothing and loaded guns as required by Lauren. She refused to comply with county order to close Shooters during the height of the pandemic. Her Shooters Steakhouse diner lost money and she lost her lease last year. She also ran other eating establishments in Rifle including a food truck in 2017 that served pig meat at the Garfield County Fair. 80 people contracted food poisoning from her food truck and the county found it was “unsafe”.
For fun Lauren and her children shoot guns, drive ATVs and side by sides around in the desert, damaging wildlife habitat, making noise, and causing erosion. The sheriff was called to their residence in the last year when Lauren or her husband ran over their neighbor’s mailbox with one of their motor toys and then used profanity toward their neighbor when they objected. They displayed guns to their neighbors.
Lauren dropped out of high school when she got pregnant. She never went to college.
Lauren replaced a Representative named Scott Tipton in 2020, winning by almost 10 points by calling him a liberal and criticizing him for not supporting Donald Trump. He was a moderate republican who supported business and generally opposed environmental protections but was willing to compromise. He was pro-oil, pro-cattle, pro-tourism, pro-agriculture, and he supported the colleges in his district. Lauren has been widely criticized for doing very little for her district and spending her time raising money and appearing on right wing media outlets to advance conspiracy theories and general anti government rhetoric.
She supports gun ownership and emerged into public view by opposing gun control measures in Colorado, including those meant to keep guns away from the mentally ill and criminals.
This recent election she was opposed by an Aspen businessman Adam Frisch who is a conservative democrat. The democratic establishment didn’t provide Mr. Frisch with much support as Boebert was considered safe. In the end, she barely won. Her victory was by 540 votes or less than a half of one percent. Adam Frisch turned down a legally mandated recount and conceded. Rather than be humbled by her narrow victory, she went back to Washington guns blazing with fierce anti-government feelings.
Her district runs from the poverty-stricken former steel city of Pueblo on the east, through the poverty-stricken San Luis Valley (with a high Spanish-speaking immigrant population) which is one of the coldest places in the US, then goes into the tourist country of Durango, Telluride, Crested Butte, and Aspen. These are all democratic strongholds. But it also includes Montrose and Grand Junction which are large working-class towns full of chain stores, gun shops and mega churches.
Her district is full of public lands. It has some of the most beautiful mountains in the West including the West Elk Mountains and the San Juans, mostly managed by the US Forest Service. There are National Park Service areas as well, including Mesa Verde National Park and the Curecanti National Recreation Area and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Tourism is a big part of the economy in her district with skiing and a flood of Texans in the summer who come to enjoy the beauty and escape the heat and humidity in Texas. Livestock oriented agriculture, dependent on federal subsidies occurs here as well.
Lauren made a real scene in the House during the republican struggle for a speaker in early January 2023. She and her 20 buddies from the “Freedom Caucus” made demands but their end game is unclear. Many predict the scene they made over McCarthy will play out often in the house over the next 2 years. In 2024 voters will make their judgement.
