Lauren Boebert danced in red stilettos down a gauntlet of Republicans wielding foam pool noodles in a faux “American Gladiator” event during one of the more surreal moments of a final campaign appearance Thursday – before voters in a district she’s just moved to decide whether they want her representing them in Congress.
Her opponent in Colorado’s 4th congressional district, Richard Holtorf, pawed the ground with his foot before revving up to run the same gauntlet at full speed – presumably in a nod to the livestock his family has reared for three generations. He’d ditched his trademark cowboy hat for a “Freedom” baseball cap.
The two congressional hopefuls participated in the good-natured pool noodle run during the candidate forum of Douglas County Republicans’ Freedom Fellowship – a “Christian, conservative group,” attendees were told during a starting address. “All are welcome here, but in this group we try to advance Christian, conservative principles here in Douglas County.”
The vibe was friendly, raucous and unabashedly conservative on Thursday in the event room at Blue Spruce Brewery in Centennial, just over 10 miles southeast of downtown Denver. (Denver and its liberal voting bloc were favorite verbal punching bags all night.)
Boebert and Holtorf, who will face an additional four candidates in next week’s Republican primary for the CD4 seat, appeared alongside seven other GOP hopefuls running for different state and local offices. The forum was recorded by a phone camera mounted on an overturned bucket atop a table.
In another surreal moment, proceedings began with a prayer as Justin Timberlake’s What Goes Around Comes Around played over brewery loudspeakers before the volume was adequately lowered. Then those gathered, numbering about 75, recited the Pledge of Allegiance in the direction of a large unfurled flag held aloft at the front of the room by another attendee.
Each candidate was given seven minutes to speak, and those who overshot the time limit were pelted by nerf guns in the hands of the same front-row “Gladiators.”
Neither Boebert nor Holtorf faced hard questions about the major controversies that have plagued both campaigns. Staunchly pro-life Holtorf has been grilled about paying for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion; Boebert, meanwhile, is bogged down by family and personal scandals alongside criticisms of carpet-bagging.
She only entered the crowded Republican primary in December, announcing around the holidays that she would abandon her re-election campaign in her home constituency of CD3 – hundreds of miles away on the other side of the state – for a chance in the more heavily-conservative CD4.
She and Holtorf have repeatedly taken aim at each other during the campaign but chatted seemingly amicably throughout the event – though he faced a voter question about an interview last month in which he said Boebert needs “to learn how to dress.”
“When I got here, I went to Congresswoman Boebert, and I told her – I said, ‘You look lovely tonight. You’re dressed really nice,” he said Thursday night.
Boebert, shaking her head, countered: “He said, ‘Ever since I said that, you’ve been dressing much better’” – eliciting a chorus of “boos” from those assembled.
The two-term CD3 representative looked at ease in the days before the big primary, answering questions succinctly and with specifics and giving examples of successes she’d already achieved.
She also went to great lengths to highlight her faith.
“In all of this, there is something that I prioritize a little more than policy, a lot more than policy, because it influences everything I do legislatively, and it guides my life – and that is my walk of faith,” she said, her voice and posture slipping into preacher patois.
“I love freedom, because I have been set free. It is for freedom that we have been set free,” she said, to claps and hoots. “I have lived that life, bound by sin and shame, and I know what it’s like to have those doors open up and walk into an abundant beautiful life.”
She joked the last phrase sounded like Trump; a long-time loyalist of the 45th president, he has an endorsed Boebert in the 4th.
And just like Trump, Boebert then segued into the us-versus-them, good-versus-evil battle cries of the far-right, injecting it all with Christianity and at one point seemingly equating the biblical trials and sacrifices of King David with her first job at McDonald’s.
“When we have politicians who are doing everything that they can to destroy our country because they don’t have a moral compass, because they have insulted themselves to think that they are God, and that your rights come from them and not our creator, God, we can counteract their destruction with joy,” she said. “You cannot defeat us, because Jesus paid too high of a price … for us to be defeated.”
