Congresswoman Lauren Boebert recently took flack from the moderate wing of her party, when Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis announced his decision to endorse her primary opponent. Now a prominent grassroots Republican, Lori Cutunilli, has used her group’s social media platform to interview another Boebert challenger, Libertarian candidate James Wiley.
Wiley dismisses Boebert as someone who is good on camera but whose politics are “conservative-lite” rather than “hard-right conservative family values.” He says that if she had been willing to sign the pledge negotiated between Colorado’s GOP and Libertarian party chairs, he wouldn’t have entered the race.
“[Boebert] has always stayed in her lane,” says Wiley. “She’s always done what she’s told. She speaks from the teleprompter really well. Great script reader, pretty face, all that. It’s not what’s necessary for the people now in CD3. They’re looking for actual representation that’s going to put a hard line down and pivot hard to the right, absolutely. Protect our rights above anything else, fight for children, fight to end child trafficking, human trafficking, eliminate the influence of the cartels and everything that’s happening at our southern border, fight for unborn children, fight against abortion. That’s a new position that the Libertarian Party is moving towards as well: pro-life.
“We’re cornering Lauren Boebert by taking away all the different things from her platform that she’s championed for a long time and actually bringing fulfillment of those subjects. Not the conservative-lite that she offers, but full-on hard-right conservative family values, traditional values. That’s what I’m going for. And I think the Libertarian Party is absolutely the home for that concept. So I’m proud to be a longtime Libertarian, but now to be able to actually act on that and step up and and to put my values up against hers. She was just defaming and disowning and claiming as unworthy our values in her disregarding our pledge that we had offered to her as an opportunity where we wouldn’t challenge her. We offered a pledge. If she would have signed the pledge, we wouldn’t have challenged her. Of course, she defamed our pledge and compelled us to challenge her.”
Libertarian candidates rarely win, but they typically earn a few percentage points’ worth of the general election vote total, which can be enough to impact the outcome. Last year Libertarian Dan Ward, running in the new 8th Congressional District received over 9,000 votes, almost four times more than the margin by which Democrat Yadeira Caraveo defeated Republican Barb Kirkmeyer.
Frustrated by Ward’s spoiler role, Colorado GOP Chair Dave Williams approached Libertarian Chair Hannah Goodman and negotiated a pair of pledges for the GOP’s (federal and state) candidates. Those willing to sign will not see a Libertarian in their race. So far, not one Republican has publicly announced that they’ve signed.
Wiley’s entrance into the CD3 race has even more potential for impact: Boebert eked out her 2022 win over Democrat Adam Frisch by just 546 votes — the closest race in the nation. In 2020, when Boebert easily defeated Democrat Dianne Mitsch Bush, Libertarian John Keil still received over 10,000 votes. Wiley clearly recognizes this, having dubbed his campaign website: Wiley4vengeance.com.
Cutunilli, who ran for Secretary of the Colorado GOP earlier this year, runs an election-denier group called Moment of Truth. She previously led multiple failed recall efforts against Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) from 2019 to 2021. The group is named after My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell’s 2022 election fraud conspiracy conference.
Cutunilli and Wiley both attended the event, along with former state Sen. Kevin Lundberg (R-Berthoud), who runs the Republican Study Committee of Colorado, and Colorado Republican Party Secretary Anna Ferguson.
Listen to Cutunilli’s full interview with Wiley here.
