In today’s primary election, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert and state Rep. Gabe Evans are both leaning hard on their Colorado endorsements from Donald Trump — and both are using the former president’s thumbs-up to attract Republican voters.
A Trump image is featured on the front page of Evans’ campaign website, while Boebert’s is on the endorsements page.
On the campaign trail, both candidates refer to the Trump endorsement, knowing that Republican primary voters in Colorado largely are Trump backers. Boebert went so far as to say that her rivals have “no path to victory” due to her endorsement from Trump.
In the background is the question of how the Trump endorsement and MAGA-related stances will play with voters in November’s general election — if, as widely expected, both Boebert and Evans win their primary contests tonight.
For Boebert, there’s little worry that her broad and well-known support for the Trump agenda will hurt her in November’s general election in her ultra-conservative district, which is located in Colorado’s Eastern Plains. No Democratic candidate has earned more than 40% of the vote in the 4th District, since 2010. If she wins her primary, she will face the winner of the Democratic primary — Trisha Calvarese, Ike McCorkle, or John Padora.
In fact, Boebert will likely continue leaning on all things MAGA — should she win the primary — to distract from the personal baggage (e.g., Beetlejuice vaping and groping, self-promotion, wild antics) that turns off Republicans in her new 4th Congressional District, according to at least one poll.
For Evans, the path forward after the general election is a minefield. His Congressional District 8, mostly north of Denver, is one of the most competitive in the country, and both his Trump endorsement and other MAGA credentials are likely to be liabilities as opposed to the assets that they are in the primary — though it’s not clear how serious some of the liabilities will be. Furthermore, Evans will also face a potential spoiler in Libertarian Eric Joss, who pledged to suspend his campaign only if the Colorado GOP’s preferred candidate Janak Joshi wins his party’s primary.
Republican Barb Kirkmeyer, who wasn’t endorsed by Trump, narrowly lost the 2020 congressional race in the district, which was won by Democrat Yadira Caraveo, a physician. The prevailing thinking is that a Trump endorsement would have hurt more than helped Kirkmeyer, who notably said the 2020 election wasn’t stolen.
The impact of Evans’ agreement with Trump on specific MAGA issues is hard to gauge definitively, but his opponents will surely use the sum of his stances, plus his Trump endorsement, to paint Evans as a MAGA candidate who’s a bad fit for a purple district.
His alignment with Trump in opposing Roe v. Wade could be particularly problematic, as political observers point to abortion as a key factor in Kirkmeyer’s loss in 2022. He’s said he opposes a national abortion ban, as Trump does, which would leave abortion decisions to the states, but he calls Colorado’s law protecting abortion rights “radical.”
Also damaging could be Evans’ view that the 2020 election may have been stolen, which is a tenet of Trump’s campaign. He’s refused on multiple occasions to state the election was legitimate, saying it’s not a “yes-no” question.
On other issues, Evans’ support of the Trump tax cuts, favoring big corporations and rich people, could be used by Democrats to draw support from blue-collar voters in Evans’ district. And Evans’ backing of Trump’s extreme call for the mass deportation of all undocumented immigrants might not sit well with the district’s large Hispanic population. His Trumpy attacks on public schools may prove problematic, as well as his dismissive stance on climate change, which he refers to as “climate alarmism.“
