Despite winning reelection by just 550 votes in a race that’s now undergoing a recount, Rep. Lauren Boebert this week won a vote of confidence from her fellow Republican members of the U.S. House as she was elected to join the party’s policy committee.
The office of Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold on Thursday announced Boebert’s unexpectedly close race with her Democratic challenger, Adam Frisch, would go to a recount under state law.
“When Boebert is writing your policy, you know the MAGA inmates are officially running the asylum.”
In Colorado, any election race within a 0.5% vote differential must be recounted; the 3rd Congressional District race is currently within 0.34%.
The close race surprised election-watchers, as former President Donald Trump, with whom Boebert is strongly aligned, won the 3rd District by eight points in 2020.
The recount was announced just after Boebert was elected to be a new member of the Republican Policy Committee, which serves as an advisory panel and provides “conservative policy solutions to the House Republican Conference.”
Boebert—whose party takes narrow control of the House in January—will represent Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma on the committee.
The congresswoman, who has represented the 3rd District since 2021 and is the owner of a gun-themed restaurant in Colorado, has garnered outrage by threatening to carry a firearm on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol; joking in a video that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Muslim, was a member of the “jihad squad” and saying she felt safe riding in an elevator with her only because she didn’t “have a backpack”; celebrating fascist electoral victories in Europe; and making anti-LGBTQ+ comments.
“Question: Who is the House Republican Party looking to for policy leadership and ideas? Answer: MAGA Congresswoman Lauren Boebert,” tweeted Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, referring to the abbreviation for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett noted that along with Boebert’s new role, the Republicans are also expected to allow Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who have both advocated for violence against Democrats on social media, to rejoin congressional committees from which they were earlier removed.
“This is the Republican Party after a catastrophic midterm underperformance,” said Hackett.
