First elected in 2010, Tipton represents a rural district on the Westen hillside of Colorado and was not expected to have a difficult primary. He got an endorsement from President Donald Trump and spent nearly $ 530,000 in mid-June, at Boebert’s $ 120,000.
Boebert campaigned as an ardent defender of the 2nd Amendment. His restaurant is called Shooters Grill, and his campaign website notes that he gained “recognition in September 2019 by attending presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s rally to tell him directly, ‘Hell, no, they won’t take our weapons.'”
The district leans toward Republicans and has moved further to the right in the Trump era. The president won the district by 12 points in 2016; Mitt Romney won it by 6 in 2012. But he hasn’t hosted particularly competitive House races in recent years. Tipton won in 2018 by 8 points.
Democrats have shown some interest in contesting the seat. Diane Mitsch Bush, the 2018 nominee, easily won the Democratic primary. She had more than $ 350,000 in the bank in mid-June. Boebert had less than $ 14,000.
Tipton is the fourth starter to fail to rename, joining reps Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), Steve King (R-Iowa) and Denver Riggleman (R-Va.). Rep Eliot Engel (DN.Y.) follows his Democratic challenger, Jamaal Bowman, in last week’s New York primaries, but there are still many ballots remaining.
If Boebert won in November, it would be one of the growing continents of incoming candidates who have expressed some belief in the QAnon conspiracy theory that sinister forces within the government are working to thwart Trump. “I hope this is real,” he said of the theory in an interview with a conservative media outlet.
