Lauren Boebert Is Feeling the Heat in Colorado

“Man, I hit a wall,” Lauren Boebert said, sounding ready to pack it in.

Hovering near the back of a high school cafeteria in Otis, a tiny speck of a town in eastern Colorado, the uber-MAGA congresswoman had just wrapped up her third candidate debate/forum in three days. It was after 10 p.m., and she still had ahead of her a two-hour drive home, along with a packed weekend of campaigning for Tuesday’s primary election, which will determine her political fate. She scanned the room, clearly in no mood for more handshaking — no matter how much she needed the votes. The high-octane culture warrior, it turns out, has an off switch.

“I’m going to sneak out of here,” she told me.

The event hadn’t gone too badly, but it didn’t lend itself to the far-right trolling and bomb throwing she excels at, either. Hosted by a local farm bureau, the discussion was about agriculture and energy policy, and Ms. Boebert and the other five Republicans in the primary had been warned to keep it civil.

Not that there had been much of an audience to play to, with only five dozen or so people and a dearth of reporters on hand. Even when Ms. Boebert got in a dig at President Biden or the “weaponized federal government,” the low-energy crowd wasn’t feeling it. Her go-to zinger — “My least favorite product that’s made in China is Joe Biden” — drew barely a chuckle.

As the hour had grown late, the congresswoman repeatedly tripped over her tongue, at one point joking that it would be great if anyone had some coffee, “praise the Lord.” That phrase is like a verbal tic for her, used frequently, less as an exclamation than as a filler or a bridge, especially at awkward moments. And one of the surprises during my time with Ms. Boebert was how many awkward or uncertain moments she seemed to have — at voter events, in debates or simply standing unnoticed in a crowd.

She appeared a far cry from the outrage artist who so aggressively heckled Mr. Biden during his first State of the Union address that she embarrassed her own party’s leadership. But this election has forced Ms. Boebert out of her comfort zone, as she works to woo a set of voters on the opposite side of the state from the area she has represented the last few years.

The shift has been an exercise in humility, flexibility and self-restraint for Ms. Boebert. She is attempting to balance the seemingly irreconcilable: her brand as an uncompromising MAGA warrior hellbent on destroying the libs, on the one hand, and on the other, her message to Coloradans that she is an effective legislator who can deliver on the issues they care about. She needs to persuade at least some skeptical Republicans to give her a second look — though fewer than if the crowded primary field were not splintering the anti-Boebert vote.

If she loses on Tuesday, she will be the flashiest Trump minion to fall. If she wins, it will in part be thanks to her ability to modulate for different audiences, much like a regular ol’ politician. Either way, her electoral fate will tell us something about the limits of over-the-top Trumpism by candidates not named Donald Trump, and how much wiggle room such candidates have within its strictures.

These are rocky political times for Ms. Boebert. She rode into office in 2020 on the give-’em-the-finger, burn-the-place-down attitude that defines Trumpism, promptly getting lumped in with other outrage artists, such as Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. But over the next two years, she behaved so outrageously that she turned off many of the folks back home.

In 2022, she came within around 500 votes of losing her Republican district to a Democrat no one had ever heard of. Then, last September, things went totally off the rails. Ms. Boebert, in the midst of a rough divorce, got tossed out of a Denver theater after vaping and getting handsy with her date during a performance of “Beetlejuice.”

Chin-deep in turmoil, Ms. Boebert decided to leave the Third District and has set her sights on a safer Republican seat recently vacated by Representative Ken Buck in the Fourth District. She is the acknowledged alpha in the race, flush with campaign cash and packing the endorsement of Mr. Trump. Even so, she continues to field harsh attacks from opponents who contend she is too toxic to win the general election. They have not been shy about hitting her as an ineffective, attention-hungry, disruptive drama queen — not to mention a carpetbagger.

Plenty of Republicans in Ms. Boebert’s new district have their doubts about her. A Kaplan Strategies poll from late May found that fewer than half of likely G.O.P. primary voters viewed her favorably. To win people over, she and her team have been crisscrossing the sprawling Fourth District: hosting meet-and-greets, schmoozing local officials and community leaders, connecting with the local media and participating in small, unglamorous events like the one in Otis.

Sensitive to the charges of ineffectiveness, she boasts of the measures she has inserted into legislation, the money she has brought back to the state (first rule of Congress: Federal dollars aren’t evil when they benefit your voters) and her smattering of bipartisan projects. The basic strategy seems to be to overwhelm people with her normalness, to convince them she is more than a self-serving agent of chaos.

It can be a tough sell. On the Saturday evening after the farm bureau debate, Ms. Boebert found herself standing on the deck of Oscar’s Bar & Grille in Limon, trying to answer voter questions over the country music blaring from the restaurant’s speakers. Of the roughly three dozen people sitting around sipping drinks, some were Boebert fans. Others were not. And some of the questions carried a whiff of suspicion or accusation.

More than one person wanted to know what the heck was up with Speaker Mike Johnson’s playing nice with Democrats, spurring Ms. Boebert to explain why she had not supported his ouster from leadership. The gentleman seated next to me asked if she thought Mr. Johnson was “compromised.”

It was a question she definitely did not want to tackle, so she went with a biblically themed dodge about the difference between pride in one’s abilities and faith in God. It was a convoluted answer with a murky point, and no one much looked satisfied.

After the Q. and A., as Ms. Boebert posed for pics, I asked a tableful of people for their impressions. “I’m still trying to get my mind around the idea of her winning,” a middle-aged man named Chris told me.

Chris and his friends didn’t have a problem with her politics. And they pooh-poohed her personal drama, expressing a who-among-us-could-live-under-a-microscope view. But they were plenty miffed that she had moved across Colorado to run in their district when the going got tough in hers. If she abandoned those constituents, how do we know she won’t dump us at the first opportunity? reasoned Chris, who pronounced her that slipperiest of all creatures, “a politician.”

In person, Ms. Boebert is more reserved and less vibratory than you might expect. At least she appears that way in this new-to-her district. In unguarded moments, she looks reserved and tentative — she has a tendency to nervously smooth down her long hair — and seems braced for someone to say something mean. She can easily get lost in a crowd.

That may have something to do with her being diminutive, even in her trademark stilettos. One female fan spoke of her as a “beautiful Barbie doll,” a comparison that might not sit too well with Ms. Boebert, who works to portray herself as tough as nails — a requisite in today’s machismo-soaked G.O.P.

When we sat down after a rally this month, the congresswoman shared her frustrations about an emergency surgery she recently underwent to remove a blood clot from her leg and the trio of blood thinners she is still on.

“I need to be careful, but I want to be me. I am radically Lauren Boebert. I don’t know how to slow down,” she said in a tumble of words, before concluding matter-of-factly, “I am basically taking rat poison.”

She says she doesn’t get offended by even sharply personal attacks — for instance, when one of her primary opponents said in a radio interview that she dressed like a prostitute. Whatever you think of Ms. Boebert, this reeked of sexism. But she declines to take the bait.

Her opponent “has spoken enough that people know who he is,” she told me. Does she get this sort of criticism a lot? “Have you seen my Twitter?” she responded. She then started in on how “even well-intended women” often ask her variations on the shouldn’t-you-be-staying-home-with-your-kids? question that has forever plagued female candidates. She went on about it long enough that it kind of seems that she does get offended, or at least defensive.

Then there is the “Beetlejuice” brouhaha. Ms. Boebert told me “this is not what voters are concerned about.” She nonetheless did an apology tour over the episode earlier in the campaign. And she is still fielding questions about her character and judgment, if not for the behavior in the theater, then for initially lying about it. (At first she denied the incident, but there was video.) Pressed, she accused her Republican opponents of deploying “Democrat talking points.” No matter, she said: “Every attack that comes my way, just like with President Trump, makes me that much stronger.”

No question, her thick skin and willingness to poke fun at herself have come in handy. On her way out of Oscar’s, she was joking with someone about needing to find herself a good rancher now that she is divorced. When she turned and noticed me standing nearby, her eyes popped wide, and she burst into flustered laughter. “I forgot you were still here!” she exclaimed and, quick as a bunny, grabbed my shoulders from behind for a half-hug. She was still laughing at her gaffe as she drifted out to the parking lot.

A true MAGAite, the congresswoman downplays her political failures, including her near loss in 2022. “There were 50,000 Republicans who didn’t turn out,” she says whenever the subject comes up, and her explanation for that points to everything but her performance. The Democrats spent a ton of money in the state, she told me. Democratic voters were “radicalized” by the fall of Roe v. Wade. There was apathy among her voters, possibly based on the assumption things would turn out fine. And many Republicans felt disenfranchised by the 2020 presidential election — which, of course, she says, was stolen.

“When people think their vote doesn’t count, then we have a problem in America,” she said. “I’m working to build that back up. I think a lot of people will show up again, especially for President Trump.” Last time, she said, “there wasn’t strong motivation to get out and vote.”

This sounds a lot like an acknowledgment that, without Mr. Trump on the ballot, Trumpist candidates don’t do so hot. But that is a worry for another year.

Ms. Boebert can sound even more defensive about her congressional record. Having introduced only one bill that got signed into law (which, to be fair, is more than, say, Jim Jordan can point to), she is forever asserting there are more creative ways to advance her priorities. And when I asked if she felt that she had grown into the job, her voice assumed a rare edge.

“Of course I did. I had to. I didn’t know about the job when I got elected,” she said. “Every day is a learning and growing experience.”

As for balancing her national and local priorities, she is dismissive of the inherent tensions: “I can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Maybe. But the delicate dance required can hinder her ability to project the relentless belligerence that translates as political authenticity for many voters, and that is her happy place. Indeed, the only time I saw her cut loose and go the full Boebert was at the Saturday rally at the Wide Open Saloon, an upscale biker bar in Douglas County, a wealthy suburb of Denver. Although super-Republican, the county is more old-school conservative — so, not really her kind of place. But as home to nearly half the district’s voters, it cannot be ignored.

Whatever her challenges in the broader county, Ms. Boebert was among her people at Wide Open. The back barroom was packed, the crowd rocking MAGA hats, biker gear and anti-Biden shirts. One guy could not believe I didn’t know that Mr. Biden “has committed treason” multiple times. “Come on? Really? China Joe?” he jeered.

The beer was flowing and even the dead-sober folks were fired up, including Ms. Boebert. Her speech was a barnburner, full of lavish praise for Mr. Trump, along with apocalyptic warnings about “the demise of our country and our Constitution!”

“None of us want to live in a time of war, and I’m certainly not calling for war,” she clarified. “But if we are going to have a time where we must stand strong and principled and give back to those who are destroying our country everything that they are doing to us, let it be now!”

She went hard on biblical references and quotes, giving the event that tent-revival vibe. She even turned to the Book of Revelation to call out “Republican lite” politicians too chicken to fight the good fight. God said, “Since you are lukewarm, you are neither hot nor cold, I will spew you from my mouth,” she noted. “Y’all, it’s time to choose a side!”

Choose a side, indeed. Forget the Boebert I had been watching all week. This was clearly the political skin in which she was comfortable — the one we will surely see much more of if she wins. Who knows? She might even dial it higher if Mr. Trump triumphs and the MAGAverse is again centered in the White House.

I hope Colorado Republicans know what they’d be getting themselves — and all of us — into.

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