As the Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul reports, the heavily congested race to succeed retiring Rep. Ken Buck in Colorado’s safely red Fourth Congressional District added yet another contender to the mix this morning as Colorado House Minority leader Mike Lynch threw his designer cowboy hat in the ring:
“I’m sick of being represented by people that are not sincere in their service,” Lynch told The Colorado Sun. “I think what’s wrong with this country is (Congress) has become a job where your first concern is yourself. I think the people of CD4 deserve to have somebody that’s fighting for them who knows how to do it.”
The 4th District seat will be open after U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, R-Windsor, announced Nov. 1 that he wouldn’t run for reelection this year, citing the GOP’s embrace of election conspiracies and Congress’ inability to get work done.
The 4th District, which spans the Eastern Plains and includes much of Douglas County and Loveland, is considered the most Republican congressional district in Colorado, a state that has recently been dominated by Democrats. The 4th District leans 27 points in the GOP’s favor, according to a nonpartisan analysis of election results from 2016 to 2020 by staffers for the Colorado legislature.
So the first takeaway from this announcement is further evidence that Rep. Lauren Boebert’s desperate switch to run for Buck’s safer seat is not only failing to clear the primary field, she isn’t deterring additional candidates from jumping into the race. A good contrast to this was then-CD-4 Rep. Cory Gardner’s jump into the 2014 GOP U.S. Senate primary, which swamped the extant field of second-tier candidates. Boebert isn’t having anything like the same effect on this race, and that’s very bad for her prospects.
As for Mike Lynch, it’s difficult to see what distinguishes him from the other candidates in the race with state legislative experience. Lynch’s job as House Minority Leader has been to effect whatever limited obstruction he can on the wrong side of a Democratic supermajority while making excuses for the embarrassments in his caucus like Reps. Scott Bottoms and Ken DeGraaf. Primary voters have both better-known candidates with legislative experience in career politician Jerry Sonnenberg, and more stridently conservative choices like Rep. Richard Holtorf. And that’s even assuming that GOP primary voters in the district care about experience at all with “MAGA King” Trent Leisy and conservative culture warrior Deb Flora in the mix.
Or for that matter, Lauren Boebert. We will say that despite Boebert’s telling failure to clear the primary field, there’s a scenario in which a gaggle of candidates dividing the opposition to Boebert helps her compete. That pressure along with the natural attrition of candidates who fail to thrive makes it likely that the field will narrow well before the June 25th primary.
In the meantime, we’re filling up the clown car.
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I would say it helps Bimbobert- the more (unknown ) candidates the more likely she wins the primary with 25% of the vote. She will have more money and name recognition than any of the other candidates.
Mike Johnson has endorsed The Boebs in the 4th. Ordinarily, I still sort of say "who's Mike Johnson," but now that it's Speaker of the House Mike Johnson the endorsement might carry some weight.
Maybe some will confuse him with Mike Johnston with a "t" and think that she has gone all woke librul with an endorsement from the communist mayor of Denver.
Right, "I heard she wants to house all the migrants in La Junta!"
I think it is odd that the speaker gets into picking favorites in a primary for an open seat. But I've suspected that the move was not Bobert's idea but suggested to her by leadership which is only concerned with counting to 218.
The North Carolina legislature has basically wiped out the four seats the Dems were probably going to net courtesy of the New York legislature. Since that was a wash, both parties are going to get into the tall weeds and fight district by district to hit 218.
If you asked me before the North Carolina redistricting was confirmed, I would have said the Dems had the edge taking the House. Not as confident anymore. It's either even odds or a slight GOP edge.
Mike "I like gigantic hats and I cannot lie" Lynch. What a cartoon caricature of a man LOL