Good news for Lauren Boebert: Republicans chose a special election candidate who won’t run against her in the primary

Former Mayor Greg Lopez was chosen to serve out the remainder of former Rep. Ken Buck’s term, and he says he won’t run against Boebert in the primary.

AP Photos/Thomas Peipert and David Zalubowski

Colorado Republicans narrowly chose former mayor Greg Lopez to complete Rep. Ken Buck’s term.That’s good news for Rep. Lauren Boebert. None of her primary opponents will get an edge over her.She sat out the special election because it would’ve triggered another special election.

Colorado Republicans narrowly chose Greg Lopez to serve the remainder of former Rep. Ken Buck’s term.

That’s great news for Rep. Lauren Boebert.

Lopez, the one-time mayor of Parker, Colorado and a twice-failed GOP gubernatorial candidate, has pledged to serve only the remaining six months of Buck’s term. In other words, he won’t run against Boebert in the ongoing GOP primary to represent Colorado’s 4th congressional district for a full term.

His victory late on Thursday night was a surprise, coming after nearly 100 party delegates churned through six rounds of voting at a party convention in Hugo, Colorado. Lopez narrowly defeated Jerry Sonnenberg, a former state lawmaker and current Logan County Commissioner who’s won the backing of GOP establishment figures and is running against Boebert in the primary.

Given the conservative bent of the district, Lopez is all but certain to be elected to Congress on June 25 — the same day as the primary election to serve a full term.

The controversial congresswoman dodged a bullet: Republicans were expected to choose one of her current primary opponents to replace Buck, who made clear on his way out of Congress that he was no fan of Boebert.

“She makes George Santos look like a saint,” Buck said of Boebert recently.

That would’ve put her at a potential disadvantage in the ongoing primary, given that she’s been dogged by accusations of “carpetbagging” since abandoning her previous district in December.

Boebert had already said that she would not seek the nomination, given that her selection would have triggered another special election in Colorado’s more competitive 3rd district, which she now represents.

She has argued that Buck — who had grown increasingly disenchanted with his party over the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and persisting falsehoods about the 2020 election — resigned early for the express purpose of boxing her out. Buck has denied this multiple times.

The congresswoman, who had previously expressed hopes that Colorado Republicans would choose a caretaker candidate, congratulated Lopez on his victory — and the vacancy committee for doing “what is best” for the district.

The congresswoman, who won by less than 600 votes in 2022 and whose image has taken a hit since her ejection from a Denver showing of “Beetlejuice” in September, has argued that she’s protecting her voters from an onslaught of Democratic spending by opting to run in a redder district.

Since making the switch, she’s been working to win over voters in the 4th district but has struggled with perceptions that she’s primarily interested in preserving her own political career.

Recently, Boebert was one of 40 House Republicans who voted against a government funding bill, despite securing millions of dollars in federal funding for her old district.

She later celebrated that funding, saying she “can’t wait for the ribbon cuttings.”