January 17, 2020 09:35 AM UTC

Susan Beckman Gets Last Laugh On Ken Buck

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: The Denver Post’s Alex Burness:

[Beckman] did not specify what her new job will be, nor did she immediately respond to a call from The Denver Post. The White House has not yet responded to a question about Beckman, and a spokesperson for the state GOP declined to comment…

In late March, Beckman narrowly lost the election for the next Colorado Republican Party chair, a role that would have led to her resignation from the legislature. Promising to “shine a light on the backpack consultants that are getting millions and millions of dollars on the backs of Republican losses,” [Pols emphasis] Beckman grabbed a plurality of votes on the first ballot but couldn’t capture the majority needed.

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The subject du jour at the Colorado Capitol today is the announcement this morning that Republican Rep. Susan Beckman of Arapahoe County will resign, effective immediately, to take a job in the Trump administration. She’s the third GOP state lawmaker from Colorado to take this particular route out of electoral harm’s way:

Our very own Representative Susan Beckman announced her resignation today as Representative of House District 38 to take a position in the Trump Administration.#coleg #copolitics pic.twitter.com/qNyHdo3gOQ

— CO House Republicans (@COHouseGOP) January 17, 2020

Rep. Beckman’s last election in 2018 was one of the night’s big nailbiters, with Beckman only narrowly prevailing over her Democratic challenger Chris Kolker by 374 votes. It’s possible that this brush with defeat inspired Beckman to start looking elsewhere for career advancement, but Beckman failed–again by a narrow margin, and this time fraught with controversy–to defeat Congressman Ken Buck in the race to lead the Colorado Republican Party.

Since then, of course, Buck’s absentee mismanagement of the party has given Beckman plenty of grounds to feel vindicated. And with Arapahoe County leading the state’s blueward shift that accelerated in 2018, we may look back in a year and observe that Beckman bailed out at exactly the right time.