Boebert Wins
It was a squeaker, but this one is a win for the MAGAs.
Via the Colorado Sun: Lauren Boebert narrowly wins reelection in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District after Adam Frisch concedes.
Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert won reelection in Colorado’s GOP-leaning 3rd Congressional District on Friday, barely overcoming voters’ forceful rebuke of her highly controversial tenure in Washington over the past two years to help her party expand its slim majority in the U.S. House.
Boebert was leading Democrat Adam Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman, by 551 votes on Friday morning when Frisch conceded in a video news conference with reporters. The contest will have one of the closest margins of any congressional race in the U.S. this year, if not the closest.
Frisch said in a call with reporters that he wasn’t asking for the mandatory recount paid for by the state that he’s entitled to under Colorado law, but that he supports the recount “to ensure continued faith and the security of our elections.”
If it does occur — Frisch can waive his right to the recount, which must be completed by Dec. 13 — it’s highly unlikely to make a significant dent in the margin between the two candidates.
A reminder that recounts almost never result in a different winner.
Too bad. She’s a waste of space. And taxpayer’s dollars. OTOH, I’m sure Kevin McCarthy is just thrilled.
Remember Pearce? the guy who claimed in 2018 that Democrats winning 40 seats and taking the House constituted a massive defeat for the Democrats?
I don’t miss him, either. But I wonder what kind of massive win he’d be claiming for Benito now that Boebert barely squeaked out a win.
What’s interesting to me is that the new redistricting made CO-3 slightly more Republican than it was last time around, when she won her first election. And yet she still unexpectedly almost lost.
@Kathy: Over the past few days I’ve seen various clips from conservative media on how they’ve been dealing with last week’s election, and one was between podcaster Tim Pool and Milo Y. Incredibly, Milo was the voice of reason in this conversation. From what I’ve seen, Pool lies at the outer bounds of right-wing hackery (there are clips of him in 2020 predicting Trump will literally win all 50 states). In this recent clip, Pool insists Republicans won the midterm, because they won the House. Milo was like, c’mon, admit it, we got our asses handed to us by the Dems. But Pool wouldn’t back down and continued to claim it was a Republican victory.
“A reminder that recounts almost never result in a different winner.”
In larger elections like Congressional races, agree.
At the smaller level, if there are close margins, recounts can change things.
New Hampshire’s House, for example.
One state rep seat had a recount that has resulted in a tie, and Republicans currently lead in seats by…one.
Too bad, I was really hoping she would lose.
Definitely.
And also a reminder that voting and marginal voters matter.
It didn’t seem the make the national news, but there were some pretty, let’s say, concerted, efforts to get people with rejected ballots to get them cured, including both candidates calling individual voters asking them to cure their ballots.
@Kylopod:
I imagine there are Republicans who are repulsed and embarrassed by her.
As someone pointed out the other day, she certainly has the stripper strut down pat.
The Cook Political Report has CO-03 at R+6 points.
She won by less than 600 votes or ~2/10ths of a point.
At least MTG now has competition for dumbest member of Congress.
Oh, and Garland appointed a SP to investigate Trump.
Recounts won’t change the winner, except in double digit margins where there needs to be a determination by a human of the voters intention.
As much as we would have liked to have seen her go down in defeat, we can take comfort in the pain she’ll be for Murphy. One wonders if she’ll tone down her act, given her near defeat?
@Sleeping Dog:
LOL…you crack me up!!!
@Kylopod:
There seems to be something like a delusion of victory, where those who have lost, or barely won, or have no chance at all of winning, nevertheless are convinced they won, they had the greatest victory ever, or are so certain to win everyone else should just go home and stop wasting time.
Key word there being “mandatory”. The difference is less than 0.5% of the votes received by the candidate with the most votes. Colorado statute requires that there be a recount when that happens. The difference won’t be hundreds of votes, but there will be some. Those will be marginal ballots the scanners couldn’t handle, and in a few cases different people will make different subjective decisions about it.
Compared with Lauren Boebert … Louis Gohmert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andy Biggs, and Paul Gosar seem like Rhodes Scholars or Nobel Biochemistry Prize winners.
Seriously, her re-election tells us how much the majority of her district voters hate government.
I’m sure that winning by such a slim margin will lead Rep. Boebert to moderate her rhetoric and policy positions in order to better serve her constituency.
…
Wait, I’ll come in again…
[BTW, Boebert auto-corrects to Bieber. That’s fitting, I think.]
Well, she’s my rep for another two years. My county voted for her plus 10 (Mesa) while her home county (Garfield) voted against her. Anyway, she stays out of here most of the time staying busy hooting like a Howler at SoUs and parading around in skinny jeans and Glocks. Fortunately the grown-ups run the state so there’s that.
@Kylopod: Yeah I’ve been absolutely floored by Milo being the more reasonable voice among those on the right.
Just a note that a “concession speech” is in no way a requirement of anything. It just means the candidate isn’t a raving lunatic.
Once the tallies are done, candidate can ask for a recount if it’s close enough.. or the candidate is no longer a candidate because the race is over.
The MAGA assertion “If I don’t concede I haven’t lost yet” is not far away from sovereign citizen One Weird Trick Phrase nonsensitude.
@Kathy: I’ve often wondered about Pearce and if he’s finally accepted his Trumpublican status, or if he’s still trying to play the good Democrat for appearances sake.