One of the reasons for these setbacks is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). When originally signed into law in 1970, NEPA was designed to ensure environmental impacts were carefully considered while allowing energy and infrastructure projects to move forward. More than 50 years later, the process has grown longer and more vulnerable to litigation, creating significant barriers for projects Colorado depends on.

Today, completing the NEPA process takes an average of four-and-a-half years, with many taking even longer to reach a decision. A study from Resources for the Future found a project that took 12 years just to reach a record of decision. Energy transmission projects now average over six years, and even clean energy projects can take over four years before construction begins. For a growing, energy-producing state like Colorado, those timelines are not sustainable.

The issue is not environmental protection, but a permitting process that has lost sight of its original purpose. NEPA requires federal agencies to assess environmental impacts using Environmental Impact Statements, but those reviews have become increasingly lengthy, rigid, and open to litigation. NEPA is now the most litigated environmental statute in the country and has been the subject of 17 Supreme Court cases. The Council on Environmental Quality found that environmental impact statements between 2013 and 2018 averaged 575 pages, with one-quarter exceeding 621 pages. Reviews of that size are difficult to distribute amongst teams and guarantee future delays.

A clear example of NEPA overreach locally is the Uinta Basin Railway, designed to connect Utah oil producers to refineries in Colorado. Despite clearing an initial environmental impact statement, the project was halted for years by litigation The project remains pending today.

NEPA is not the only statute contributing to the problem. Ambiguous language in the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and Endangered Species Act has fueled continued litigation, adding up delays for energy infrastructure throughout the West. The result of these seemingly endless delays is a permitting system that prioritizes the actual process of obtaining a permit more than the environmental impact itself. This hinders both energy reliability and economic growth, hurting Americans across Colorado and the U.S.

It is also important to note that permitting reform is not a partisan issue. The Bipartisan Policy Center found that 61% of voters support expediting permitting reform and lawmakers from both parties have repeatedly tried to act. In 2024, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act, and more recently, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AK) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) introduced the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act, which would limit litigation unless direct harm is demonstrated as a result of the project in question. These efforts show bipartisan agreement on the problem, even if Congress has yet to deliver a solution.

Governors are increasingly vocal as well. At the National Governors Association Winter Meeting, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt noted that permitting reform is one of the rare issues where Republicans and Democrats largely agree on both the problem, yet Congress continues to neglect the solution. That same meeting led to the creation of a bipartisan governors’ working group focused on NEPA, judicial review, and transmission siting.

Colorado cannot afford a permitting system that obstructs the creation of safe, effective energy projects. Reforming NEPA does not mean abandoning environmental responsibility; it means restoring balance so that critical energy and infrastructure projects can move forward responsibly and on time. Refusing to act continues to raise costs for workers, consumers, and communities across the state. Congress has the bipartisan will and public support to act; the only question is whether or not they will prioritize a solution.

Congressman Scott Tipton served Colorado’s third congressional district from 2011- 2021 and was a member of the House Agriculture, Livestock, and Natural Resources Committee.

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“She’s in it to make these outrageous comments,” suggested Fetchenhier, a Democrat who owns Fetch’s Mining & Mercantile on Greene Street in Silverton and also serves on the San Juan County commission. “Even Republicans are getting tired of the shenanigans.”

Meet Thomas Moore Jr., who voted for Boebert in 2020 and last year.

“She’s vitriolic, she’s sensationalistic, she draws attention to herself,” said Moore, a Pueblo native and loyal Republican who’d just left that county’s courthouse on a warm September afternoon after picking up collector plates for his 1986 Mercedes-Benz 420SEL. He speculated about her high-profile congressional perch: “I think it’s gotten to her head.”

Whether it’s incendiary comments Boebert has made to colleagues in Congress, her shouting at the president during a State of the Union address or her recent ejection from a musical in Denver for inappropriate behavior, plenty of residents in her district — including some who liked her in the past — have had enough.

More than three years have passed since Boebert, a handgun-toting former restaurant owner from the Rifle area, rocketed to prominence by ousting a seasoned Republican congressman in a party primary, on her way to winning the seat. The headlines and attention that initially won her fans have taken a toll.

Now Boebert, 36, has exactly one year to refurbish her image and reassure voters across her massive congressional district that she deserves their support in the Nov. 5, 2024, election. That is, if she makes it through a GOP primary next June that already has some big names lining up behind one of her opponents.

“She’s a polarizer rather than a back-bencher. She’s going to raise a lot of money and she’s going to raise a lot of money for her opponent,” said David Wasserman, a senior editor and elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, which . “Her fate rests with the voters who didn’t show up for the (2022) midterm but will show up in 2024.”

Boebert, in moments of reflection during a recent interview with The Denver Post, acknowledged the challenges she faces in her re-election bid, especially after the theater incident. But she said she doesn’t plan any drastic changes in her approach to the job.

“I didn’t come here to go along to get along, and just do things the way they’ve always been done — because they aren’t working,” she said.

The Post found no shortage of opinions about the second-term congresswoman during a recent swing through Colorado’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District, which swoops from the northwest corner of the state down through many of its southern counties. It takes in Western Slope ranching communities and ritzy ski towns before reaching Pueblo and the plains.

While some voters sounded caution about another Boebert term in Congress, others feel she is the perfect answer for a state that has turned decidedly blue, at a time when there’s a feeling that the chasm between rural and urban Colorado has only deepened.

Dan James, a staunch Republican and gun shop owner in Pagosa Springs, said Boebert has “more balls than many of the people in Congress do.”

“Sometimes her toughness shows,” James said, as he offered up a free copy of the U.S. Constitution from a stack of booklets on his front counter at PS Guns & Ammo on an early fall afternoon. “We have a government that doesn’t want the citizens to be armed. And Lauren, a little itty person, she acts like she’s 10-foot tall.”

But the same thing can rub Christina McCleary the wrong way. The La Veta Democrat doesn’t like Boebert’s sometimes undiplomatic approach to those who don’t agree with her.

“I don’t have a problem with her speaking her mind, I have a problem with the way she does it,” said McCleary, who was stopping at a liquor store after work in this Huerfano County town of fewer than a thousand people. “It does not flatter our district at all.”

The varying assessments reflect the wildly divergent effect Boebert has had on the nearly 565,000 registered voters in her district since her 2020 election.

“Lauren is polarizing, like (Donald) Trump,” said Greg Brophy, a farmer, consultant and former Republican state lawmaker from Wray who first met Boebert at her Rifle restaurant a decade ago, during his run for governor. “Either they love her or hate her.”

Testing district’s strong Republican lean

Though her largely rural district leans firmly Republican, with a in GOP affiliations over Democrats, voters nearly spurned Boebert last November for her challenger, former Aspen City Councilman Adam Frisch.

The 546-vote difference separating the two — out of more than 327,000 ballots cast — triggered an automatic recount under state law.

In pursuit of a rematch, Frisch has developed a formidable fundraising advantage over the incumbent and all other declared candidates. A poll commissioned by his campaign over the summer showed a statistical dead heat in the 3rd District, with Frisch leading by 2 percentage points.

As Boebert, a bomb-throwing member of the far-right Freedom Caucus in Congress, has made headlines for her antics and actions both on and off the House floor, Democrats have found themselves with potentially their best hope to reclaim a seat they haven’t won in 15 years.

“CD3 leans solidly Republican, so the incredibly close 2022 results showed substantial fatigue among many in the district with the drama — and a willingness to consider a moderate Democrat in the name of pragmatic legislating,” said Paul DeBell, an associate professor of political science at Fort Lewis College in Durango.

Boebert, he said, does better “when she focuses on pragmatic issues of legislation and less on churning out firebrand soundbites.”

The congresswoman publicly apologized for being thrown out of a performance of “Beetlejuice” at Denver’s Buell Theatre on Sept. 10. She’d found herself at the center of a national media firestorm as surveillance video showed her vaping, recording the performance and groping her male companion. It’s an incident that has prompted in her district.

But she told The Post she doesn’t intend to be a “wallflower” in Washington, D.C. Boebert doesn’t see her feisty and combative approach as chaotic, but rather as a necessary, if sometimes “uncomfortable,” way of forcing change in the national’s capital.

“Not one of my colleagues campaigned on continuing with the status quo. We all campaigned (by) telling our voters that Washington is broken, that we need a new way to legislate,” she said.

This year, Boebert sponsored and passed several bills out of the Republican-controlled House. She worked with Colorado’s two U.S. senators on a bill that aims to preserve hundreds of jobs in Pueblo following the closure of the U.S. Army’s Pueblo Chemical Depot. She regularly works on water, energy and inflation challenges that impact her constituents directly, she said.

“Look at my odometer in my car and see how much boots-on-the-ground time that I have in the district,” Boebert said. “I don’t see it as drama. I don’t see it as chaos. I don’t see it as dysfunctional. I’m a mother of four boys, I’m a previous restaurant owner — I know chaos and dysfunction very well.”

Primary challenge looms as “an escalating problem”

But looking ahead to 2024, several high-profile state Republicans have recently thrown their support to Grand Junction attorney Jeff Hurd, who announced in August he would challenge the incumbent in the GOP primary.

They include former Gov. Bill Owens, former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown, and John Suthers, a former Colorado attorney general and recent Colorado Springs mayor. Several county commissioners in Boebert’s district also have backed Hurd.

Former U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn, a Trump appointee who supports Hurd, that the Buell Theatre contretemps was “the straw that I think broke the camel’s back” for some party faithful. Dunn declined to elaborate when contacted by The Post.

The intraparty challenge is Boebert’s “immediate problem, and it is an escalating problem,” said Justin Gollob, a political science professor at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction.

“Recent endorsements of Jeff Hurd from local Republicans are not good news for her campaign and signal trouble ahead,” he said. “While this is a storm that can be weathered by her campaign, it is hard to ignore the gathering storm clouds.”

Wasserman, from the Cook Political Report, predicted a tough road ahead for Boebert in the next year, saying she has “done very little to rehabilitate her image since her close call” against Frisch. Nonetheless, he isn’t sure she will be so easily dislodged by fellow Republicans in June.

“I’m very skeptical Boebert can be beaten in a primary, given her viral following among Republicans and her primary victory in 2022,” he said, referring to her nearly 2-to-1 crushing of former state Sen. Don Coram.

And if Trump is the Republican presidential nominee next November, Brophy said, that should help her by rallying his supporters.

With next year’s race resting largely in the hands of the district’s roughly 250,000 unaffiliated voters, Boebert will have to figure out how to appeal once again to those who aren’t part of her base. And with Frisch more than capable of attracting national money in what will be one of the most closely watched races in the country, Wasserman said the congresswoman will need to be at the top of her game.

Boebert says she has beaten expectations before — no more so than during her successful quest in 2020 to defeat then-Rep. Scott Tipton in the Republican primary. Her chances were roundly dismissed outside conservative media, including by Tipton himself.

“I was elected to Congress as a fighter. I had to fight like heck to get here,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to win my primary against a five-term incumbent. I was outspent in my general election. I had $6 million in negative ads running against me — they were raining down on me — and I still won that election.”

Hope Scheppelman, the vice chair of the state Republican Party and a resident of Bayfield, near Durango, said Boebert’s record of “standing up for her conservative principles is unmatched.” Her background, which also includes work in Garfield County’s natural gas industry as a pipeline mapper, also helps her connect with people.

“For rural Colorado, she’s one of us at the end of the day,” Scheppelman said. “She’s proud of her roots and voters can relate to her story, they feel a connection with her when she speaks and they know she’s not one of the typical politicians that we see too much of in D.C.”

Legislative record in focus

Scheppelman also suggested Boebert’s effectiveness has benefited from Republicans’ retaking of the House majority at the start of the year, giving her bills a better chance of moving forward — though Democrats still control the Senate.

“She’s been able to push bills through the process that truly benefit 3rd District voters, and that will help immensely in this upcoming cycle,” Scheppelman said. “That wasn’t something voters were aware of in 2022, which I think hurt. But we’ve seen the difference this year and that’s just one reason she will win in 2024.”

Boebert points to bread-and-butter issues that she has worked on in Congress, including gas extraction and veterans benefits, as proof she is not constantly playing for the cameras. This year, she has sponsored and passed seven bills out of committee and three bills out of the House, while attaching more than 50 amendments to legislation.

One of Boebert’s bills, which passed the House Natural Resources Committee, aims to protect four species of threatened and endangered fish. Another bill she helped craft would extend the length of oil and gas drilling permits from two to four years; it was passed by the House.

She also points to a bill, which has made it through committee, that would yield local benefits by allowing Mesa County to buy 31 acres of federal land in Clifton for economic development purposes. The deal has the backing of the Bureau of Land Management, her campaign said.

“There is a real rural and urban divide that takes place, especially in Colorado, and our rural voters are often ignored,” she said. “The policies from these urban areas are forced on Colorado’s 3rd District and the area’s surrounding rural areas. So I want to give them the voice they never had.”

But Paul Henricksen, who lives in Pueblo County and served as a U.S. Army infantry staff sergeant in both Iraq and Afghanistan, said Boebert failed veterans when she voted against the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act last year. The $325 million bill, which passed through Congress, to burn pits, Agent Orange and other toxins.

Hendricksen, who is president of the Pueblo Veterans Council, said Boebert is so partisan in how she governs that she’d rather spend her time “trolling the liberals” than helping vets.

“It’s about denying the other party any success,” he said.

Rocky Mountain Values, a progressive dark-money group, in an ad campaign against her this summer.

Scheppelman, who served as a hospital corpsman in the Navy for four years, said Boebert voted against the PACT Act because it was a poorly written bill that had “no funding mechanism” and threatened to create a backlog in getting veterans their benefits.

She pointed to four other major veterans bills Boebert voted for that “directly impacted and improved the lives of veterans in the 3rd District.” Among them were money for veterans’ benefits and of about 6% for veterans’ disability compensation that Congress passed last year.

Brophy said Boebert has been plenty busy in her district, but the public wouldn’t know it because much of the media “cannot help but blow up the more flamboyant things that she does that constitute a tiny fraction of her actual work.”

“They are as fascinated with her as Fox News is with AOC (New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez),” he said, “and for exactly the same reasons: She’s attractive, controversial and drives clicks.”

“This isn’t about one night,” Boebert says

At the top of the Boebert media-feeding frenzy is the ignominious boot she got from “Beetlejuice.” Bolstered by the security video of Boebert in a revealing dress, the story went ferociously viral. The congresswoman quickly became a point of national ridicule for everyone from comedian John Oliver to radio host Howard Stern to Saturday Night Live.

In a , Western Slope GOP state Rep. Matt Soper said he heard from Boebert shortly after the incident.

“She talked about the stresses of her divorce that was almost finalized at that time and the excitement of going on a first date for the first time in years,” he told the magazine.

Boebert told The Post: “I did mess up, plain and simple, and I’ve taken accountability for my actions and I’ve apologized directly to my voters.” And her constituents, she said, are “abundantly merciful and graceful.”

“I believe wholeheartedly that my voters know this isn’t about one night,” Boebert added. “This is about the future of our country.”

DeBell, the Fort Lewis College professor, said the news media, which “deserve some culpability for our outrageous politics,” has developed an almost co-dependent relationship with Boebert.

“Sensational coverage gets more attention, and that provides incentives for outrageous statements and behavior in order to gain political prominence and get ahead in electoral contests,” he said.

While that may work in the fast-paced national media climate, DeBell suggested that “it plays much less well here in the 3rd District — where many voters, including many in the Republican Party, do not want to be known as the home of such outrageous political drama.”

The drama began as Boebert took office. On Jan. 6, 2021, in Arizona and Pennsylvania, calling the results in Arizona a “travesty.” A few days later, she refused to turn over her bag to Capitol police after she set off metal detectors. She had vowed to carry her Glock throughout Washington, D.C. in previous days and was rebuked by the city’s police chief for saying so, given the city’s restrictive gun-carrying laws.

In late 2021, Boebert apologized after being captured on video implying that Ilhan Omar, a fellow member of Congress and a Muslim, could be a suicide bomber. The following summer, Boebert was lambasted for critiquing a cornerstone principle of the American republic.

“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk,” she told a gathering in Basalt.

Jim Harper, whose family owns the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad and the Grand Imperial Hotel in Silverton, said in an interview that it was time to lower the temperature of the political discourse. As he threw sheets and towels into a washing machine in the basement of the 140-year-old hotel in September, the registered Republican chose his words carefully when asked about Boebert.

“National politics are national politics — we need to focus on home,” Harper said. “Maybe it’s time to focus on home and mending those fences. I’m Silverton-first, I’m Colorado-first.”

GOP challenger: “Our district is lacking the leadership it needs”

That’s precisely what prompted Hurd, one of four announced Republican challengers, to enter the district’s GOP primary in August. The 44-year-old attorney, who specializes in working with electric co-ops across the 3rd Congressional District, said voters want a “reasonable Republican.”

“I think people in the district want someone who is focused on local headlines, not national ones,” Hurd said. “I feel our district is lacking the leadership it needs.”

The “Beetlejuice” incident, he said, amounts to a character question for voters.

Dissatisfaction with Boebert goes beyond just big-name Republicans. Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis recently switched his allegiance to Hurd. His colleague, Commissioner Bobbie Daniel, did the same.

“I have supported the congresswoman over the years, but it¶¶Ňőap become less about her constituents and more about her,” Davis said. “We need to elect leaders focused more on fixing the problems that ail our country, and that starts with electing a new generation of representatives.”

In neighboring Delta County, Republican commissioner Don Suppes said last month that . And on Thursday, Rio Blanco Commissioner Ty Gates became local Republican Western Slope officeholder to endorse Hurd and not Boebert.

But Wendell Koontz, who sits on the dais with Suppes in Delta County, says he’s sticking with the incumbent.

“To put it in perspective, she made a dumb move — but we’ve all made dumb moves,” he said of the “Beetlejuice” incident. “I like candidates who have suffered some of life’s hard knocks and picked themselves up and learned from them.”

But will the seemingly endless controversy swirling around Boebert impede the flow of money necessary to mount a successful campaign?

Frisch, the Democratic frontrunner among several candidates seeking that party’s nomination, has so far in the 2024 cycle. Hurd, meanwhile, raised about half of Boebert’s $800,000 third-quarter haul, despite having been in the race for only six weeks. Another notable Democratic entrant is Grand Junction Mayor Anna Stout, who’s raised just over $100,000.

“It is certainly a poor sign for Boebert, though it is difficult to determine how much this is predictive of fundraising over the next year,” Fort Lewis College’s DeBell said. “One thing is for sure, she has serious challengers in both major parties who are well-organized, working hard and focused on winning her seat.”

That will keep a bright spotlight on the race. Case in point: A small group of protesters — complete with someone dressed in a striped Beetlejuice costume — gathered at the edge of Buckley Park in downtown Durango in late September to protest Boebert, a full 13 months before the election. Rocky Mountain Values had a hand in organizing the rally.

“It feels embarrassing to live in this district,” said a sign-wielding Nikki Bauer, a 25-year-old Minnesota transplant who works at the local Unitarian Universalist Church. “She doesn’t govern — she’s just making a scene for the media.”

Nearly four hours away via winding roads and over towering mountain passes, Elizabeth Brim likes Boebert’s forward style. She flies an anti-Joe Biden flag outside her house in Gunnison, and she particularly embraces the congresswoman’s “gun stance and her opposition to the Democrats.”

“I love people with no filters,” said Brim, as she juggled kids and groceries in the doorway of her home. “I like hearing the truth, even if the truth is something I don’t want to hear.”

But if that kind of outspokenness has had a strong appeal in the political turmoil of recent years, it’s wearing thin for other voters. Joe Martinez, the owner of the stalwart business Martinez Shoe Repair in Alamosa in the San Luis Valley, said he started off open to Boebert, despite being affiliated as a Democrat.

But the headlines she has created have become too much for him.

“She started off really good, and then it fell apart,” he said.

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Third-quarter fundraising totals reported in recent days in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District show the Republican incumbent was outraised by her most prominent Democratic foe, Adam Frisch, by a factor of 4-to-1. And Jeff Hurd, a Boebert challenger in next year’s GOP primary, posted sizeable totals indicating he also might pose trouble for the two-term congresswoman.

Boebert’s haul for the period from July 1 to Sept. 30 was just shy of $854,000, according to the recent campaign finance reports. Earlier this month, ahead of filing his full quarterly report, former Aspen city councilman Frisch, who narrowly lost to Boebert in 2022, touted a nearly $3.4 million haul during the same time frame.

Hurd, a Grand Junction attorney, collected just over $412,000 despite launching his campaign only in mid-August.

“As someone who is not a politician and who entered the race halfway through the quarter, I am proud to have raised $412,000,” Hurd said in a statement to The Denver Post on Tuesday.

Hurd has managed to gain the backing of several prominent Colorado Republicans, including Bruce Benson, a former University of Colorado president; John Suthers, the former Colorado Springs mayor and state attorney general; Daniel Ritchie, a former University of Denver chancellor; and former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown.

In recent weeks, several Republican county commissioners on the Western Slope have broken with their party’s incumbent to throw in with Hurd, . The parties’ primaries are set for June 25, with the general election in November 2024.

Paul DeBell, an associate professor of political science at Fort Lewis College in Durango, said that while Boebert’s third-quarter contributions, standing alone, were solid, her significant lag behind her top Democratic opponent was a warning sign for her campaign.

“The 3rd District is the Republicans’ to lose,” DeBell said.

Boebert on Tuesday thanked her supporters in the district, which encompasses much of the western and southern parts of the state. She said her fundraising “has always been powered by the working-class families of rural Colorado, which is why I’ve worked tirelessly to deliver substantive results for them on the local issues they care about most.”

DeBell said Frisch has been able to focus “singularly” on the potential rematch while Boebert has been mixed up in controversies, some of her own making. Voters in her district may be feeling “exhaustion” with the headlines and drama that seem to follow the congresswoman wherever she goes, he said.

“It’s pretty clear he has this seat in his sights and is working really hard to turn it,” DeBell said of Frisch. “It doesn’t bode well for Boebert.”

The conservative firebrand, who was first elected in 2020 and then barely kept her seat in last November’s election — edging out Frisch by 546 votes — has attracted attention for her outspokenness and bare-knuckle political style. That style was on full display at the beginning of the year when she became a major thorn in the side of Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to become House speaker.

McCarthy succeeded, but he was ousted from the speakership on Oct. 3 — though Boebert was not among the representatives who voted to give him the boot.

She was roundly criticized and mocked for her behavior last month at a performance of the Broadway touring musical “Beetlejuice” at Denver’s Buell Theatre, during which she was escorted from the venue for inappropriate and ribald conduct. She apologized several days later.

Frisch has raised more than $7.7 million since the beginning of the year, versus just over $2.4 million for Boebert. The congresswoman had $1.4 million in cash on hand at the start of the month, while Frisch’s war chest had more than $4.3 million.

Russ Andrews, a Republican engineer and financial adviser running to take on Boebert in next year’s primary, raised nearly $34,000 in donations during the third quarter, in addition to about $255,000 he loaned or gave his campaign, according to his finance report.

On the Democratic side, Grand Junction Mayor Anna Stout garnered just over $100,000 after announcing her run in late July. Several other candidates from both sides of the aisle reported less significant or nominal sums.

The Cook Political Report rates the race, which is likely to be one of the country’s most closely watched next year,

A Democrat hasn’t won the district since John Salazar won reelection 15 years ago. Salazar lost his seat in 2010 to former Rep. Scott Tipton, a Republican who served five terms before his surprise loss in the 2020 GOP primary to Boebert.

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Polls and politicos said far-right incumbent U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert was supposed to have as much as a . Now, all that¶¶Ňőap gone as Colorado and the rest of the country watch a neck-and-neck, back-and-forth race unfold. Boebert’s only leading Democratic challenger Adam Frisch by a fraction of a percentage point.

Frisch, a former Aspen City Councilman, held the country’s attention for much of the week, forcing even the most skeptical observers to wonder if he could beat the incumbent congresswoman, of Silt.

Ultimately, Boebert jumped ahead in the vote count Thursday and held the advantage into Friday. Her lead sits a few hundred votes outside of Colorado’s automatic-recount threshold and Frisch’s only hope of a comeback rests with the scattered and undetermined number of ballots flowing in from out-of-state. Those votes aren’t expected to be counted and reported until later next week.

No matter who wins in the end, Democrats and Republicans alike are studying the race, trying to figure out how it wound up like this.

“Did he over-perform or did she underperform?” Justin Gollob, a political scientist with Colorado Mesa University, asked. “It¶¶Ňőap hard to ignore the argument that this was an anti-Boebert election.”

Even before Boebert won the office away from then-incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton in the 2020 primary election and then Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush in the general election, Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District was considered a relatively safe Republican seat.

The district is the largest in the state and covers the Western Slope and much of southern Colorado, reaching as far north as Pueblo, its largest city. Congressional redistricting, finalized last year, deepened the seat¶¶Ňőap Republican bent.

Not only did that redistricting benefit Boebert¶¶Ňőap party generally but she also held the power of incumbency, a strong advantage anywhere in the country. Plus she had deep pockets full of cash, a strong fundraising system in place and a louder voice on social media than most politicians.

But the congresswoman was not without her disadvantages, even if they weren’t immediately apparent, according to Casey Burgat, a legislative affairs program director at George Washington University.

While Boebert is widely considered to be a star of the far-right, her constant tweeting and confrontational demeanor pushed voters away as much as it garnered attention. The congresswoman’s first term in office has been marred by controversy far more than it benefitted from policy successes.

Boebert on Thursday on low enthusiasm for up-ticket Republican candidates.

Republicans underperformed both in Colorado and across much of the rest of the country. And turnout in Boebert¶¶Ňőap district , nearly matching the under Tipton, who was far less successful in exciting the Republican base than Boebert.

Still, Burgat said Boebert¶¶Ňőap own behavior is likely the biggest factor in the CD3 race.

America saw a similar effect in the 2020 presidential election when then-President Donald Trump lost ground with some traditional Republican voters, Burgat said.

Boebert has not only embraced Trump’s style of governing but also the former president himself, along with his penchant to spread conspiracy theories and attack political opponents.

Voters shifting away from the congresswoman can be seen as a direct repudiation of her behavior, Burgat said. And, to a lesser extent, Trump.

“Voters sometimes get tired of defending the actions of their representatives,” Burgat, a Colorado native, said. “They get tired of explaining �I agree with her on policy but, man, I’m so tired of how she’s representing that policy.’”

Perhaps one sign of the trouble ahead for Boebert was a primary challenge from state Sen. Don Coram. While she beat him in a landslide (65% to his 35%), that still meant a sizeable chunk of Republicans in the district were moving to oust the congresswoman.

Enter Frisch, who began watching Boebert early in her first term and figured she was much more vulnerable than her contemporaries in Congress like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan.

Frisch said after the June primary that he believed he could grab some of the Republicans that supported Coram and like-minded independent voters. So he hit the district broadcasting an even-keeled message and continually lambasting Boebert¶¶Ňőap position in what he calls the “anger-tainment” industry.

“I knew I could earn the trust of some Republicans and a lot of independents and build a coalition,” Frisch told The Denver Post Tuesday night. “Now people are listening with a little more seriousness.”

“She was acting like she had a 75% win margin like Marjorie Taylor Greene but she never bothered to look and nobody bothered to let her know that she only won by five points in 2020,” Frisch added.

Eventually Frisch gained steam, landed spots in the national media and even began raising more money than Boebert. But he had outside help.

Among the most prominent anti-Boebert campaigners was David Wheeler, head of the American Muckrakers political action committee, which helped unseat the similarly controversial in his North Carolina primary bid earlier this year.

Wheeler amplified stories – some of dubious origin – highlighting Boebert¶¶Ňőap negative traits and uplifted Frisch’s positive traits.

Among the most impactful stories, Wheeler said, were those surrounding several dogs shot and killed on Boebert¶¶Ňőap property (she didn’t shoot them) and a recording of a 911 call after Boebert¶¶Ňőap husband confronted neighbors during an argument.

In the end, Gollob said Frisch’s strongest argument for voters on the fence was probably just that he wasn’t Boebert.

Plus, the congresswoman committed a few unforced errors, Wheeler said. She spent a lot of time outside of her district when she should have been courting votes. He called it “Campaign 101 malpractice.”

“Look where she spent her time in the last month,” Wheeler said. “Florida, Tennessee. She was in North Carolina on Sept. 23. That is un-freakin’-heard-of.”

Little reason existed on paper for the congresswoman to change course, Gollob noted. Most political experts considered Frisch to be such a longshot that there wasn’t much polling done in the district. The few polls published showed Boebert with a sizable lead, but Frisch argued he was still within striking distance of the congresswoman.

In the meantime, Frisch kept his head down and stuck with campaign fundamentals, Wheeler said. Ultimately, all the factors combined against Boebert.

“It¶¶Ňőap the cumulative effect of all the bulls—,” Wheeler said.

Boebert lost ground in many of her district¶¶Ňőap most populous counties. She received a this year in Alamosa, La Plata, Mesa, Moffat and Pueblo counties than she did in 2020. She also lost in her home territory of Garfield County by over 13%, more than twice her losing margin there in 2020.

Boebert¶¶Ňőap race against Frisch isn’t yet finished. Even if either candidate wins with enough votes to avoid an automatic recount, they can still request one themselves, so long as they’re willing to pay for it.

Out-of-state ballots can continue to be counted as long as they arrive by Wednesday and votes needing additional signature verification can be fixed until then too. In a race this close, those scattered votes could make all the difference.

As of 5:21 a.m., Frisch, of Aspen, held a slim lead over Boebert, of Silt, at 50.59% to 49.41%, .

Much of the country is watching the race now, noting that for Tuesday’s midterms. And many people outside the sprawling Western Slope district are probably wondering, who is Adam Frisch?

Frisch is a former Aspen City Councilman, who’s been consistently down in the polls throughout the race. He began to garner national attention in recent weeks and eventually began to raise more money than Boebert.

He speaks with a reserved voice, frequently posing for campaign photos wearing jeans and a flannel shirt characteristic of a Western Slope candidate. Frisch frequently warns that Boebert¶¶Ňőap incendiary demeanor is not only a poor representation of Colorado’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District but that it¶¶Ňőap dangerous to the country’s democratic foundations.

“Anger-tainment,” he calls the congresswoman’s approach.

Frisch spent the first few years of his life on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeast Montana before his family moved to Minneapolis, where he spent the rest of his childhood. He’s a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder and after college he moved to New York City where he dove into the financial industry as an analyst and then a currency trader.

In the early 2000s, Frisch moved to the Western Slope (first Vail, then Aspen) where he met and married his wife. He first won his seat on the Aspen City Council in 2011 and held the spot until 2019. Affordable housing and education sat among the top issues during his time in local government.

After Boebert unseated then-incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton in 2020, earning a national following, Frisch told The Denver Post that he began to take notice of her growing reputation. He decided she was perhaps the only vulnerable representative of the Republican cohort in Congress regularly making news for their controversial remarks, so he decided to run.

Throughout the campaign, Frisch has developed as a moderate Democrat, leaning on his business acumen to try and sway disenchanted Republicans to his side. He supports a shift to renewable energy, but wants to lean on Colorado’s natural gas and coal during that transition. He’s said he supports responsible gun ownership but also red flag laws and background checks.

Top priority, Frisch said in August, would be the economy, specifically inflation and unemployment. Healthcare, education, water and the environment also top the list.

During debates and town halls, Boebert often attacked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Frisch leaned on one phrase in particular during those moments: “I’m Adam Frisch, not Nancy Pelosi.”

And Frisch has reiterated that if he’s elected to Congress, he wouldn’t be beholden to Pelosi but instead the people of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. The first thing he’d try to do in the position is join the Problem Solver’s Caucus, a bipartisan group of representatives looking to work on some of the country’s most serious issues.

As of 9:33 p.m. on Tuesday, unofficial results showed Boebert, of Silt, with 64.52% of the vote to Coram’s 35.48%. The Associated Press affirmed at 7:37 p.m. that Boebert had won the race.

Not only did Boebert raise more money for her campaign but she spent more and enjoyed the endorsement of former President Donald Trump. Despite any controversies surrounding the congresswoman — and there were many — she maintained a strong hold on her district.

Coram entered the race relatively late and as a long shot. He couldn’t compete with Boebert’s reach on social media and his grassroots campaign strategy apparently failed to materialize.

Boebert leaned heavily into her conservative credentials during the relatively low-key campaign. All the while, Coram attacked her for failing to pass a single piece of legislation in Congress and said he would more readily work with Democrats.

The incumbent congresswoman also successfully fended off attempts to smear her campaign with anonymously sourced rumors from the same group that helped defeat first-term U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a like-minded, far-right Republican from North Carolina.

But the political action committee publishing those rumors, American Muckrakers, shows no signs of slowing as Boebert looks to enter the general election. If the results hold, she’ll square off against Democratic candidate Adam Frisch, who appears to have defeated Sol Sandoval and Alex Walker, early results show.

Each of the Democratic candidates touted their ability to unite the sprawling district, which covers Colorado’s Western Slope, much of the southern border and on up to Pueblo. Each lambasted Boebert over her incendiary — and sometimes racist — comments in person and on social media.

Frisch, a former Aspen City Council member, held 43.76% of the vote, early results show. Sol Sandoval, a community activist from Pueblo, held 40.3% of the vote and Alex Walker, an engineer living in Eagle, took home 15.94% of the vote.

During an online forum earlier this month, Frisch especially took aim at Boebert’s unwillingness to work with Democrats during her first term and called her a leader in the “anger entertainment industry.”

Boebert, who owns a gun-themed restaurant in Rifle called Shooters Bar and Grill, has made firearms a mainstay of her platform, regularly pushing back against any new regulations. Instead, she said after the , which left 19 students and two teachers dead, that more guns would make schools a safer place.

Frisch said this month he supports responsible gun ownership but also red flag laws and background checks.

Looking toward the November general election, Justin Gollob, a political science professor at Colorado Mesa University, said he’ll keep an eye on money from the national parties to determine how well Frisch might fare.

“If the Democrats spend big, that will tell us something,” Gollob said. “If they hold back, that will also tell us something.”

That lost lawsuit may help rescue the GOP from a curse that could haunt it in the November general election: A Colorado ballot stuffed with “Big Lie” repeaters and other far-right extremists.

Under a measure that voters approved in 2016, Colorado’s 1.7 million unaffiliated active voters — a far bigger number than the state’s 957,000 Republicans and 1.07 million Democrats – have been allowed to take part in either major party’s primary. That¶¶Ňőap led to a huge increase in voter participation in primaries over previous elections.

In February, a handful of state Republicans sued to bar independent voters from the party primaries. They wanted the primaries open only to party members. But a federal judge dismissed the suit in April.

With unaffiliated voters able to weigh in, chances improve that Republicans will emerge from their primary with more electable candidates.

Democrats now hold all but one statewide elective office in Colorado, as well as both chambers of the legislature. Big counties like Arapahoe and Jefferson where Republicans once prevailed now . And Democrats won the last four presidential votes and the last three gubernatorial elections in the state. In 2020, Democrat John Hickenlooper unseated GOP incumbent U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner by 9.3 percentage points.

Even with runaway inflation and President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings to help them, Colorado Republicans will face headwinds in the fall. What the party doesn’t need are candidates so far out of the mainstream that they’ll draw few votes from independent voters and Democrats, who combined outnumber Colorado Republicans almost 3-1.

Candidates like Greg Lopez, are back running for governor again after being trounced in 2018. At times he has said Donald Trump won in 2020 (no, he didn’t) or that “the jury is still out” on the election (no, it isn’t). He also wants abortion banned without exception in Colorado, a state where voters several times have rejected abortion regulations.

Candidates like Ron Hanks for U.S. Senate, who also backs the Big Lie that Trump won the election and who was on the scene for Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 election-denying rally ahead of the deadly attack on the Capitol. (Hanks was a plaintiff in that unsuccessful lawsuit targeting unaffiliated voters.)

Candidates like Tina Peters for secretary of state, who as Mesa County clerk has been a full-throated and who has been indicted in an alleged scheme to breach voting systems.

Candidates like Lori Saine for the newly established 8th Congressional District, who was arrested at the Denver airport in 2017 for carrying a loaded gun to security (she denies knowing she had a weapon with her), who rails against “’Republicans’ who act like Democrats” and who vows to try to impeach Biden. That¶¶Ňőap in a district that was engineered to be politically split down the middle.

Candidates like Holly Kluth for Douglas County sheriff, a former undersheriff who is , outgoing Sheriff Tony Spurlock, over her demotion and firing from the department, and who was investigated for allegations that she that showed she had been the subject of a domestic-violence report in 1988. (Kluth is one of four candidates in the GOP primary, which will in effect choose the next sheriff since there are no Democratic candidates.)

What¶¶Ňőap more, a number of the GOP’s primary candidates challenge the integrity of Colorado’s all-mail voting system and the technology it uses.

It¶¶Ňőap hard to see that as a winning issue when even Kirstjen Nielsen, then Trump’s secretary of homeland security, praised Colorado in 2018 as a national leader in safeguarding elections and “an example of what other states can adopt.”

Sadly, polls – including — consistently show that a majority of Republicans nationwide still buy into the notion that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump and that election fraud was widespread.

So the participation of unaffiliated voters in Colorado’s party primaries will help the GOP overcome the party’s core voters seduced by election myths and instead choose serious-minded candidates who stand a chance in November.

Republican candidates like Heidi Ganahl for governor, Joe O’Dea for Senate, Pam Anderson for secretary of state and both Barbara Kirkmeyer and Jan Kulmann in the 8th Congressional District are closer to the pre-Trump Republican mainstream, are more focused on real issues and less on stolen-election fantasies, and logically would stand a better chance in November.

That isn’t to say they’ll win in the general election. Democratic and Democratic have net positive approval ratings despite Biden’s sagging support, and Polis has extremely deep pockets.

But having at least some independent voters take part in the Republican primary improves the party’s odds of making a respectable statewide showing in November.

As a sidelight, thousands of Democrats in Colorado’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District recently , sparked at least partly by to defeat far-right, Trump-endorsed incumbent U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert by voting for mainstream-Republican challenger Don Coram.

Coram will need whatever help he can get; he was and Boebert has been showered with campaign cash, much of it from out of state.

Still, Boebert herself rose from obscurity to defeat Trump-endorsed five-term GOP incumbent Rep. Scott Tipton in the 2020 primary. With Coram backed by an untold number of unaffiliated voters, it¶¶Ňőap hard to say what might happen this year.

Mark Harden has been a Colorado journalist for three decades, serving as an editor and reporter at The Denver Post, the Denver Business Journal, Colorado Politics magazine, Colorado Community Media, The Colorado Sun and Rocky Mountain PBS.

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After a contentious apology attempt with Omar, a second video, , spread around social media of Boebert making almost the same remarks about her colleague at a different event. She also called Omar and Democratic U.S. Rep. Rashida Talib, who is also Muslim, “black-hearted” and “evil.”

Unlike Colorado’s newest and politically competitive 8th Congressional District, the 3rd Congressional District favors the Republican incumbent. Boebert boasts a seven-figure war chest while the next best fundraiser has only a fraction of that cash on hand, campaign finance records show. The leading contender for the Democratic nomination, state Sen. Kerry Donovan, dropped out of the race in November after congressional redistricting placed her outside of the district.

Boebert appears unlikely to face any repercussions for her most recent comments, either from her own party, Democratic House leadership or those giving money to her campaign, Seth Masket, a political scientist with the University of Denver, said.

“Every day she says a bombastic thing and gets a headline for it,” Masket said. “There are some donors that see that as a positive thing. They like that she’s offending Democrats.”

Masket said he’s watching the national Democratic party and organizations like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to see if they’ll move more aggressively to back an existing challenger or find a new one.

So far no high-profile challenger has emerged within Boebert’s party and the chances of one coming are increasingly unlikely, former GOP administrative chair for the 3rd Congressional District.

Marina Zimmerman, a crane operator in Arboles, announced her primary challenge to Boebert in August, . But she has not yet filed any campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission.

Jenkins, who also served as chair of the Pitkin County Republican Party, said continued Republican support for Boebert indicates the electorate’s shift away from former U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, whom Boebert defeated in the 2020 primary. He described Tipton as humble, quiet and effective and said ultimately voters forgot about him. He said he wouldn’t use the same adjectives to describe Boebert.

“There’s nothing soft spoken or humble about her, but what the heck?” Jenkins said. “Voters like someone who will wear their issues out on their sleeve and wear them with intensity.”

Boebert¶¶Ňőap recent remarks or spat with Omar won’t hurt her with voters in her district or donors across the country, Jenkins said.

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” Jenkins said.

But the people in Boebert¶¶Ňőap district do suffer, Donovan said, expressing regret that redistricting pushed her out of the race.

“She wears her hatred and her racism on her sleeve,” Donovan said. “And it¶¶Ňőap very sad that an individual like that is now the voice of the Western Slope in Colorado.”

Progressive Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman, of New York, did push Republican House leaders on Wednesday to remove Boebert from her committee assignments, .

House GOP leadership stripped then-U.S. Rep. Steve King, of Iowa, after he questioned when “white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization” became “offensive language.” Months later to primary challenger Randy Feenstra.

But at the moment Boebert likely won’t lose her committee assignments and even if she did Masket said it might not hurt her in the same way it hurt King.

“Increasingly that¶¶Ňőap the kind of person that gets rewarded within the party,” he said. “It¶¶Ňőap simply about saying the most eye-popping thing that will offend Democrats.”

Neither representatives of the Colorado Republican Party nor House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy returned messages seeking comment.

Challengers and cash on hand

The top two Democratic fundraisers competing for Boebert¶¶Ňőap seat are Debora Burnett, of Jackson County, and Soledad “Sol” Sandoval, of Pueblo, according to filed with the Federal Election Commission. As of the end of September, Burnett had $55,712 on hand and Sandoval had $48,965.

The next closest is state Rep. Donald Valdez of La Jara, whose reports show he had $29,182.

Only two other candidates — Colin Wilhelm and Colin Buerger — broke into five-figure territory by the end of September. Kellie Rhodes reported $2,036 on hand and Root Routledge reported $214.

All of that cash combined amounts to about a tenth of Boebert¶¶Ňőap $1.7 million on hand.

Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will likely see an influx of money from local and national donors looking to unseat Boebert, Masket said. But even so, they’ll have a large divide to bridge.

Donovan tweeted this week that she won’t accept donations for now because the proposed map for the 3rd Congressional District, which Boebert represents, doesn’t include Donovan’s hometown of Vail or her ranch in neighboring Wolcott.

The map submitted to Colorado’s Supreme Court for approval places Donovan in the 2nd District, which is represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse. It also changes 3rd District lines to more heavily favor Republicans, based on recent election results, as part of a redistricting process that creates a new eighth district for Colorado.

Federal law requires members of Congress to live in the state they represent, but they aren’t required to live in a district they wish to represent — meaning Donovan can still seek Boebert¶¶Ňőap seat without a residence in the 3rd District, The Grand Junction Sentinel reports.

However, congressional candidates who do so almost always face harsh criticism for being from outside the districts during their campaigns.

Donovan, who is term-limited, has raised about $1.2 million for her campaign. Boebert is seeking a second term representing a district that covers much of western and southern Colorado and has raised about $1.8 million so far.

Donovan complained that the proposed map would make the 3rd District less competitive and that the statewide redrawing could produce a delegation that¶¶Ňőap split 4-4 between Democrats and Republicans even though Colorado has trended Democratic in recent years.

Democrat Joe Biden won last year’s presidential election by 13 percentage points, and Democrats control the statehouse, the governorship and nearly all statewide offices. Democrats currently hold four of Colorado’s seven congressional seats.

The proposed redistricting creates a new, competitive eighth district north of Denver.

“This new map, if finalized, ignores the will of the voters and makes the district less competitive than it was, and I can’t in good conscience continue to raise money from hardworking Americans for a campaign that lacks, for the moment at least, a clear path forward,” Donovan said.

She added: “Regardless of what happens in the next few weeks, please know that I’m not going anywhere, and I will keep fighting with everything I’ve got for the people of Colorado.”

In an interview Wednesday, Donovan emphasized she isn’t abandoning her campaign but is suspending acceptance of donations, noting she has received more than 60,000 individual contributions in a “grass-roots” campaign not accepting corporate political action committee support. She said she will closely monitor what the Supreme Court decides before deciding her next steps.

The redistricting panel of four Democrats, four Republicans and four unaffiliated voters, none of them officeholders, approved the map last week. The panel’s criteria for making its redistricting decisions included race competitiveness and goals such as keeping communities of interest together and ensuring that minority voting rights take precedence.

Boebert defeated five-term Rep. Scott Tipton in the 2020 Republican primary and defeated Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush by a 6.2% margin.

She has closely aligned herself with former President Donald Trump and is a vocal critic of the Biden administration and congressional Democrats.

For people, policy and Colorado politics

What’s The Spot? You’re reading an installment of our weekly politics newsletter. .

Thousands of Coloradans are bracing for the end of federal unemployment benefits, which will be cut off Saturday.

Gov. Jared Polis says he never wanted them here to begin with.

“We would’ve loved as Colorado to use that money in some other way. And it could have been better used for almost anything — infrastructure investments, tax cuts,” he said at the conservative Steamboat Institute’s last week.

(In case you missed it, at that conference he also called for eliminating Colorado’s income tax.)

Of the federal unemployment money, he added, “I do believe, of course, our only option being to turn it down or accept it, we accepted it. And so that money entered our economy. People spent it, people saved it, they bought homes, whatever they did.”

They probably didn’t buy homes with that money. The Post has talked throughout the pandemic with people relying on unemployment benefits, and it suffices to say they’re using it on basic needs more than real estate transactions.

Anyway, Polis continued: “Absolutely, we would’ve loved to have done almost anything else with it, from investing in infrastructure and roads to cutting taxes, but it was simply expressed as, ‘Do you want this $600 million to $800 million or not?’ And we took it.”

Colorado could have opted out of these benefits sooner, as 20 states did. The thinking for those states, in large part, was that more people would return to the workforce and economic growth would pick up if folks weren’t opting for government checks over earned wages. It hasn’t exactly worked that way, as a Denver Post story from this week explains.

To support the important journalism we do, you can become a Denver Post subscriber .

Questions?

Have a question about Colorado politics? Submit it here and it’ll go straight to The Denver Post politics team.

Top Line

Colorado abortion providers and advocates say they’ll increase capacity as they expect Texans to seek reproductive health care out of state, now that abortion has been largely banned in that state.

Capitol Diary • By Saja Hindi and Conrad Swanson

Afghan refugees

Colorado’s refugee resettlement groups are preparing for an influx of Afghan refugees in the coming weeks, and one new state agency could help provide additional resources.

Lawmakers took steps this year to make the state more welcoming for refugees and immigrants, including by creating the Office for New Americans. takes effect this month and the office has until Jan. 1 to come up with recommendations on how best to meet the goals for refugee services.

“The Office of New Americans has the power to convene state agencies to comprehensively plan for welcoming and integration,” said sponsor Rep. Iman Jodeh, an Aurora Democrat. “(The need) has never been more apparent than right now, as the state plans to welcome Afghan refugees, and the ability to continue those coordinated practices moving forward.”

The exact number of refugees who will make it to Colorado is still fluid, said Colorado Department of Human Services spokesperson Madlynn Ruble. About 40 Afghan refugees have arrived in Colorado since Aug. 1, and 53% of the people Colorado resettlement agencies helped this year have come from Afghanistan.

“Colorado has made a clear commitment to supporting our new Afghan neighbors and these services will support families to create new lives here,” Ruble said.

President Joe Biden’s administration said Wednesday that the U.S. is working to build capacity for at its military bases that would then be connected to resettlement agencies. It could take months before the refugees make it to their new homes, and many may settle in other countries. But Denver as one of 19 communities that could provide a welcoming place for refugees with special immigrant visas (for those who worked with the U.S. government) to live.

That list of 19 also includes Phoenix, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, Portland and Houston.

Mayor Michael Hancock met the news, and the city’s prospective residents, with open arms.

“As our community showed with the Syrian refugee crisis and Central American children at the southern border, Denver is ready to help and welcoming to those looking for a better life for themselves and their families,” the mayor said in a statement. “That welcoming spirit is no less diminished for those now fleeing the turmoil in Afghanistan, and we’re here to support their resettlement in any way we can.”

Earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat, also introduced legislation to increase the number of for Afghans.

Although Biden increased a historically low cap that former President Donald Trump set for the 2021 fiscal year ending Sept. 30, the U.S. is still expected to see of refugees resettling here this year.

More Colorado political news

• Former Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm remembered for bold leadership, landmark legislation at memorial service
• Gov. Jared Polis: State income tax should be “zero”
• The federal eviction moratorium is dead. Here’s what that means for Colorado.

Federal Politics • By Justin Wingerter

Boebert pushes impeachment, again

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert on Tuesday the impeachment of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris (whose first name she mispronounced) and much of the presidential line of succession.

“It is time for action,” the Silt Republican said at a press conference about Afghanistan. “Impeach Biden, impeach Kamala Harris and throw in the secretary of state, if you can get him back from vacation. Take a vote to vacate the chair to get Nancy Pelosi the heck out of here.”

If the president and vice president are both removed from office (which has never happened), the speaker of the House becomes president. If that position is vacant, the job falls to the president pro tem of the Senate. That is Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who is 81.

Boebert, who shocked the political world by beating then-Rep. Scott Tipton in a GOP primary last year, said any Republicans who do not go along with her plans to impeach Biden et al. “will be facing your own primaries and no amount of your precious money will be able to save you.”

This was the second time that Boebert has called for the impeachment of Biden, who has been in office for seven months. In June, that Biden’s immigration policy “is actually worthy of impeachment and that is what we should be doing right now.” (Under the U.S. Constitution, presidents can only be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, not policy decisions.)

That still puts her behind Rep. Ken Buck though. The Windsor Republican said last February — a year before Biden took office — that he could be impeached then for Hunter Biden’s actions.

More federal politics news

• Colorado’s secretary of state sued to stop Mesa County’s clerk from running elections.
• Then Mesa County’s deputy clerk was charged with felony burglary.
• With the start of classes Monday, nurses in Denver Public Schools felt a more pronounced sting than normal since they’re spread thin as ever, district officials and employees said.
• All Aurora Public Schools employees will be required to get a COVID-19 vaccination now that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fully approved the Pfizer one.
• All students, staff and visitors in a large swath of the metro area are required to wear masks in school, following a decision Monday evening by Tri-County Health Department officials to expand the agency’s mask mandate to kids 2 and older.

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