This story by Allen Best appeared of BigPivots.com on February 22, 2025.
In 2020, Lauren Boebert was running a gun-themed restaurant in Rifle called Shooters Grill and Smokehouse. A political unknown, having never been elected to so much as a town board, she defeated Scott Tipton, the incumbent representing Colorado’s Third Congressional District in the Republican primary. She was 34 years old.
Her ascendancy shocked many. It had a precedent of sorts, as was noted during a panel discussion during the Colorado Water Congress annual conference in late January.
“She had a great political antenna, “said Dick Wadhams, a Republican political consultant who moderated the discussion with two former members of Congress. “She saw an opportunity to take out a respected incumbent, Scott Tipton. And nobody saw that coming.”
Wadhams noted that another member of Congress from the Western Slope had also been upset in a party primary. That was in 1972. Wayne Aspinall, a Democrat and a vital member of Congress in delivering federal dollars to build the massive water infrastructure of the Colorado River Basin in the 1960s, was ousted by Alan Merson of Breckenridge. Democrats in that district decided that Aspinall was too conservative — although it was a Republican Jim Johnson of Fort Collins, who went on to win the general election.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert posted this image on her campaign website. It is obviously on the Western Slope, but now she makes her home — and represents a district — on Colorado’s eastern plains.
“You do have upheavals in the parties from time to time,” said Wadhams. “That year it was the Democratic Party. This year it’s the Republican.”
Amid his analysis, Wadhams was posing questions to two former members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat, represented the metropolitan area’s western suburbs in Congress from 2003 to 2023. Ken Buck represented the Eastern Plains of Colorado and some fringes of the Front Range beginning in 2015. If very clearly conservative in his political views, he took positions apart from the Trump-dominated Republican majority and resigned in 2024. He was facing a primary election he likely would have lost but denied that that was the cause for his resignation.
Wadhams asked the former members of Congress what did they make of the new Trump presidency?
“When I watch the left react to Trump, it makes me smile, because Trump does so many things that are crazy that the things that are really damaging to the left get missed in all the other crazy stuff,” said Buck. That crazy, he suggested, was part of his strategy.
“If you just look at what he says, it’s going to drive people crazy. If you look at the point of what he’s saying and the strategy behind what he’s saying, you still may think it’s wrong, but at least it’s a little more understandable and people will calm down a little bit.”
He cited the flow of fentanyl into the United States from other countries, especially Mexico, as a problem that the Biden administration had not taken seriously enough.
Perlmutter agreed that Trump’s outrageous behavior is intended to move the conversation.
But if Republicans hold a trifecta in Washington D.C. with a president, plus majorities in both the Senate and House, it’s a very narrow majority in the House: three votes. To actually get a bill passed, such as for appropriations, will require some help from Democrats. And that help, said Buck, comes at a high price.
“They want their programs in Greece, and that’s when you start getting the Marjorie Taylor Greene and others who will say, ‘OK, we’re going to take this speaker out because he’s now working with Democrats.’ Well, you don’t’ have a choice. You can either shut down government or work with Democrats. And that’s the choice that (House Speaker Mike Johnson) has. So he will work with Democrats.”
At that point, added Buck, there will be three or four weeks while Republicans figure out a new speaker of the House. That job, he added, is the worst.
Perlmutter said Democrats will likely regain the majority in the House in the 2026 election, and it will then be the task of the speaker they elect to rein in the wishes of the more extreme elements of the party. Nancy Pelosi, he said, did a pretty good job of it.
In the meantime, the extreme voices can be shrill. Perlmutter cited the example of Boebert. “Her voice is going to be loud now. Whether that’s to get stuff done productively or not. That’s a whole other question. She has the capacity and the ability to do it, and on a one-on-one basis, she’s okay. But you know, she can be pretty out there when she wants to be.”
The two former congressmen agreed that Colorado’s members in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, can come together on many issues that are, as Perlmutter put it, Colorado-centric type issues such as water, transportation, and energy.
“There are going to be the hot-button issues of immigration, some environmental issues, but generally our members are very close on those kinds of things,” said Perlmutter.
“You’re talking about eight people who see each other every day on the floor (of the House) and oftentimes sit together and have conversations,” said Buck. “I think that Colorado is really well represented on both sides of the aisle.”
Both men served in the Colorado Legislature before their election to the federal offices. Since 2019, Democrats have had majorities in both chambers at the Capitol. Colorado’s electorate has changed dramatically in the last seven or eight years, Wadhams observed. Voters are younger, more socially liberal – and more inclined to be unaffiliated. They’re very anti-Trump and favorable to Democrats but – maybe not always so. He cited Proposition HH, a property tax proposal heavily supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans. It was defeated by a 20% margin.
Perlmutter also noted swings in Colorado’s electorate. He was the first Democrat elected to the Colorado Legislature from the Jefferson County communities of Lakewood, Wheat Ridge, Arvada. and Golden in 50 years. It now is overwhelmingly Democrat.
Colorado Republicans held sway in 1998, the year that Bill Owens was elected governor. He was the only Republican governor in Colorado in the last 50 years.
Today’s unaffiliated voters – 50% of the electorate – swing left, noted Perlmutter. Biden won Colorado by 23% percentage points and Kamala Harris in 2024 by 12%.
“It’s still obviously pretty left, but if you’re an independent, if you’re unaffiliated, you can move pretty quickly,” Perlmutter said. He suggested fellow Democrats need to be careful to not get too far afield from the core concerns of the electorate.
Allen Best publishes the e-journal Big Pivots, which chronicles the energy transition in Colorado and beyond.