Colorado Republican House Rep. Ken Buck is done with a capital D and it’s not only caught GOP House leadership off guard in the worst kind of way but serves to put Lauren Boebert’s political career in serious jeopardy of being oven very soon.
Buck recently announced that he intends to retire after 9 years in Congress and will not be seeking reelection in the upcoming term. However, Politico politics bureau chief Jonathan Martin spoke with MSNBC’s Morning Joe today and said that the CO Republican House Rep.’s decision came as a complete surprise that “blindsided” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who only recently got the gig.
“No, he was blindsided, as was Steve Scalise, the No. 2 in the House leadership,” Martin said on MSNBC today. “Ken Buck has not been happy for a long time. It kind of reflects the sort of radicalization of somebody in Ken Buck, who came to some level of prominence running as a Tea Party candidate in 2010, which feels like the ice age for the U.S. Senate, a political outsider who gets to the House, has done 10 years in the House.”
The 118th Congress has been wracked with scandal, dysfunction, and all-around chaos for quite some time now, which only shows signs of worsening as a whopping 23 Republican lawmakers thus far have either resigned from their positions early or announced that they will not be seeking reelection. Buck was at the heart of many of the power struggles inside the Republican side of Congress, as he repeatedly expressed his disdain and frustration with these senseless impeachment inquiries into President Joe Biden, alongside many other legislative priorities within the House that he didn’t agree with.
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“He has come to the conclusion, as quite a few folks have in the House at this point in time, this place is not worth it anymore, and Buck realized that and decided not to run,” Martin explained. “But he’s so frustrated now he says, ‘Take this job and shove it – I’m leaving next week.’ It’s an extreme version of where a lot of people are in the House. He just says it out loud.”
The GOP is already suffering from a painfully slim majority in the House and Buck’s untimely departure only serves to further narrow the gap that’s led to their shakey and thus far wildly unsuccessful reign of power. As such, the party can only afford a measly two votes on any legislation before they find themselves in dire need of Democratic support to pass their nonsense, which they’re not likely to get.
With all that said, the Colorado Sun now reports that this uproar within the Republican House only serves to further complicate and jeopardize scandal-ridden Lauren Boebert’s attempt to replace outgoing Rep. Buck as Colorado’s representative for the 4th congressional district.
Boebert made the infamous switch from CO’s 3rd district to their 4th, more Conservative district at the beginning of this year, after she and her family were wracked with an absolute monsoon of scandal, most of which was related in some way to her messy divorce from now-ex-husband Jayson Boebert.
Lauren seemed to choose Buck’s district as her target following his retirement announcement, in large part to avoid going head-to-head with Democrat Adam Frisch in the 3rd district, where she knew she was highly unlikely to secure a victory. However, Buck’s decision to immediately leave Congress triggers a special election in the district, which will see Democrats and Republicans choose their respective nominees for the open seat — a nomination that Boebert is in no way guaranteed to secure.
To make the matter even more complicated for the scandal-plagued congresswoman, Lauren would be forced to resign and vacate her current 3rd district seat to be able to run in that special election, as Colorado law prohibits candidates from running for more than one office at a time. That possible resignation would open up yet another special election in Colorado’s House before the end of this year.
Watch the MSNBC segment here:
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
