'Outmaneuvered' Lauren Boebert's path to election now 'strewn with obstacles': analysis

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) was thrown for a loop last week when Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) announced that he would be retiring, thus boxing her in to remaining in her current congressional district until this fall.

A report in The Guardian, which describes Boebert as being "outmaneuvered," explains that Buck's resignation triggered a special election that meant Boebert would have had to resign her current seat in order to compete in Buck's former district.

But Boebert's resignation from Colorado's 3rd Congressional District would have in itself triggered its own special election in which there was a possibility that Democrats could win her seat and further shrink the GOP's already small majority.

Given this, Boebert has decided to not compete in a special election -- and that will give an incumbency advantage to whomever voters choose to be their representative.

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"Boebert’s next steps are unclear, although her pathway to the fourth district seat, if she still wants to pursue it, is now strewn with obstacles," The Guardian notes. "She can run in the crowded fourth district primary also on 25 June without resigning her current seat – but to be successful she would have to persuade voters to elect one Republican as a 'caretaker' in the special election before then rejecting that same candidate in the primary in her favor."

Boebert for the last two years has been plagued by scandals, most notoriously when she was ejected from a production of the "Beetlejuice" musical in Denver last year for vaping during the performance.

Surveillance footage subsequently showed that Boebert and her date at the theater were aggressively groping one another, and that Boebert flipped theater staffers the middle finger as they were escorting her out.

Boebert showed contrition and apologized for her actions, although the drama surrounding her has continued this year, as her 18-year-old son was arrested for allegedly robbing a woman with a brain tumor late last month.