Rifle's Lament: A Rural Town's Inability to Elect Honorable Leadership

Lauren Boebert defeated G.O.P. incumbent Scott Tipton in the Republican primary race for Colorado’s 3rd congressional district on June 30th. Scott Tipton was a five-time incumbent but was handily defeated by Boebert and her surging support in the district. 

“I am a mother to 4 boys. My husband and I are raising them to be strong men! I refuse to send my children into a socialist nation. Their freedom IS my motivator! Threaten the liberty of Americans, and I'll be there to hold you accountable!” Boebert said on Twitter.

Donald Trump retweeted this.

“Congratulations on a really great win!” the President said.

Only a few days after the big win, Boebert attended a July 4th celebration with Trump.

I paid extra close attention to Colorado’s primary election results. I spent a good chunk of my childhood in Rifle, Colorado. There, I graduated high school, made lifelong friends and created some of my most cherished memories. The town itself isn’t much to look at. Rifle has been tied to a dying and ever-turbulent oil and gas industry for most of its history. Only recently has the city looked to diversify its economic resources.

Mike Samson, Garfield County Commissioner, wrote about this issue in a commissioner’s column in the Post Independent.

“During my tenure on the BOCC (Board of County Commissioners), my fellow commissioners and I have worked to develop more diversification in the economy. We have worked to support the construction of the infrastructure necessary to attract visitors and outdoor recreation as well as to attract remote workers along with business and industry that have different business cycles than the energy industry,” he said.

Rifle is doomed to rise and fall with energy economics. It is being leeched by companies that suck up the area’s resources, overlook environmental protection laws and then depress the economy during any hints at a recession. The people of Rifle are first and foremost hardworking. Being a rural town, there’s a rebellious edge to its people that make up the personality of the area. If you’re from the Western Slope, you know of the stereotypes that surround Rifle. 

Neighboring towns have long seen Rifle as the lawless part of Western Colorado. There’s a right-wing mystic to the town to say the least. Boebert’s antics only exacerbates the radical right that used to lie dormant in the town.

In 2014, Lauren Boebert first caught national attention for opening Shooters Bar and Grill. 

Brian Abrams of Death+Taxes Magazine wrote, “[Shooter’s] puts a right-wing interpretation on the Hooters chain–more specifically, exploiting firearms instead of scantily clad women.”

Abrams interviewed Boebert in that 2014 article. It was soon published on Business Insider.

“I consulted with my Christian friends and everyone said ‘Shooters’ sounded like a bar or a strip joint. But … this is Rifle. It was founded around guns and the Old West. We called it Shooters and started throwing guns and Jesus all over the place,” Boebert said.

In September of 2019, Boebert made headlines again when she attended a Beto O’Rourke rally and took the microphone.

“I was one of the gun-owning Americans who heard you speak regarding your ‘Hell yes I’m going to take your AR-15s and AK-47s.’ Well, I’m here to say hell no you’re not,” she said to O’Rourke. 

This remark was in response to O’Rourke’s policy on mandatory buybacks on all AR-15 and AK-47 semi-automatic weapons.

Faith Miller from Colorado Newsline wrote an article that detailed Boebert’s history of minor arrests. Here, Boebert reportedly was detained for disorderly conduct. She allegedly was uncooperative and shouted that her arrest was illegal. In a report, a deputy wrote, “Lauren said multiple times that she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.”

The sheriff in the aforementioned case endorsed Boebert.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Boebert tweeted, “If you want to defund the police, start by behaving.”

Lauren Boebert, in my opinion, does not know what is or isn’t unconstitutional. She knows how to make noise politically. She is blind to her privilege and she has mislabeled radical politics with American ideals. She knows that anti-socialist rhetoric excites her base, so anything she doesn’t understand or disagrees with is socialism to her.

“I’m proud to be endorsed by my hometown sheriff, Lou Vallario, who knows the strength of my character. The summary here is a small fine, not charged, charge dismissed, charge dropped,” Boebert said, “In the meantime, Diane Mitsch Bush is intent on socializing our healthcare.”

Boebert has expressed the need to increase the access to healthcare, but there is no mention of a plan to do so on her webpage. In fact, I invite you to take a look and find which issues Boebert cares about.

Whether it’s because of a paranoid sense of rebellion or a sincere distrust in anyone outside of the immediate community, the prevailing attitude of Boebert supporters is that everyone is out to get their Constitutional Rights. Limitation is the boogeyman to Boebert supporters. So desperately do they want to live in a world of prosecution, conspiracy and corruption. The fact of the matter is that they do, but these plagues affect minority groups in disproportionate amounts instead. In the fight for equality, the disconnect between Boebert supporters and the rest of the modern world is that injustice, the very thing they fight so hard to prove to exist, has been the irremovable stain of our society and they are now just realizing it had gone undetected all this time. 

COVID-19 brought Colorado to a screeching halt. Families had no income. Businesses were forced into closure. As a community, we were being strangled. In a rare chance for people to come together as one and help each other survive new and difficult times, Boebert was throwing her arms up to cry foul.

On May 15th, the Garfield County Health Department suspended Boebert’s food license after her restaurant defied a cease and desist order for having her restaurant serving customers indoors. Boebert made the decision to defy the notice after Governor Polis extended dining restrictions statewide. She believed that restaurants in Garfield County should have been able to open at 100% capacity after the end of the initial Stay-at-Home order ended. Mesa County’s restaurants were able to reopen at 30% capacity. Garfield County restaurants were yet to be cleared to reopen at such capacity. There was an appeal by the county’s commissioner being processed but yet to be approved. Despite this fact, Boebert continued to serve food which, ironically, jeopardized the county’s ability to receive a variance on dining restrictions. Literally, all Boebert had to do was wait. Her supporters came and ate at her restaurant, taped money to her business’ doors, commented on her Facebook updates and even went so far as to eat in the streets after Boebert found the loophole that allowed her to serve food out in the parking lot of her restaurant. 

“I understand the (potential) consequences. I am willing to take a risk for my people,” she said in an interview with The Daily Sentinel. 

Her position on this COVID-19 conundrum (that one was for the fans) is that she had to pay her staff that would be without an income. This position strikes me as odd. It’s commendable that she cares so deeply for her staff. I’m sure that many other restaurant owners felt the same way about their own staff. The difference between Boebert and other owners is that the other owners were willing to adapt. Or better yet, some were willing to wait prior to acting out.

If her supporters were really this feverish about her food, then they could have ordered carry out like they were allowed to during the Stay-at-Home order. 

The Glenwood Springs Post Independent published an article where Garfield County Attorney Tari Williams weighed in on the matter.

“When her license is reinstated, she will be expected to comply with the terms of new orders, just like every other restaurant in the county,” Williams said.

Boebert’s court hearing was eventually thrown out due to the fact that Colorado eventually granted restaurants the ability to reopen at 50% capacity. 

Again, we find ourselves at the true core of the issue. This was never about Boebert’s restaurant. It was about what was deemed Constitutional and becoming a victim. 

I’m tired of using the Constitution as a scapegoat for allowing reprehensible behavior.

COVID-19 is a primal force that challenges the economic reality that we have bought into. COVID-19 does not care about your Constitutional Rights. I will say this once, very clearly; Constitutional Rights do not exist. We created them in the image of the society we want to live in. The only reason they work is that we all buy into them. I believe in them, so do most of you reading. With that being said, natural forces like COVID-19, tsunamis and wildfires do not care about your rights. Our response to such tremendous events will always make our society and fragile transaction-based ecosystem feel violated because we either reacted too mildly or too boldly. If we act too mildly, human lives become insignificant. If we act too boldly, human lives become insignificant. It’s the proverbial, damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

Only days after her victory, Boebert managed to catch nationwide attention yet again. This time, Boebert cozied up to QAnon, a message board community that excels in spreading baseless conspiracies. She appeared on SteelTruth, a show hosted by QAnon believer Ann Vandersteel.

"Everything that I've heard of Q, I hope that this is real because it only means America is getting stronger and better, and people are returning to conservative values, and that's what I am for," she said. "And so everything that I have heard of this movement is only motivating and encouraging and bringing people together stronger, and if this is real, then it could be really great for our country,” Boebert said.

Here is where we enter the heart of the issue. Boebert mistakes degenerate rally cries based on senseless conspiracies for genuine activism. Her Republican base harbors a small subset of rot that has become the identity of the party, especially in local politics. It is no sin to be a Republican. It is a danger, however, when you enter the political arena as warriors rather than diplomats. 

“Send me to DC to take on the left-wing lunatics, drain the swamp and build the wall. The MAGA agenda works best with true conservatives like me in Congress!” Boebert wrote on her official Facebook page.

Boebert has a history of using combative rhetoric when referring to her role in congress if she were to be elected. In this same video she refers to her opposition as “the Socialists on the left” while calling for voters to join the fight in taking back the country. There are three Democratic Socialists to fight in Congress. I don’t believe Boebert’s stance to be about fighting Socialism. I think Socialism is a word to antagonize anyone that wants to work towards progressive social politics. Taken one step further, I think Socialist is a word used to describe anyone that isn’t a Republican.

Additionally, none of her points make any true sense. There are zero deliverables in her statements. It’s all vague promises. Her platforms are zero percent her own. It’s all Alt-right talking points.

Which brings me to this. Boebert is no young gun politician looking to shake up Congress, her party, or even her local political landscape. She is one of the many placeholder politicians being rushed into seats where all they need to do is nod their heads, nail the taking points and let those at the very top dominate. 

They are pawns in the bigger scheme of political chess.

Small towns like Rifle will be hurt the most moving forward. In the ideological battle that is politics, Rifle will lose if we elect the likes of Boebert. Public perception of the town will continue to deteriorate as long as we continue to affirm the cliches others associate us with. Love your guns. I’m not calling for a gun ban or a religion ban in Rifle. What I beg for is a shift in behavior. 

Rifle, you are far from diplomats. Some of you are scared of losing a way of life and that’s justified. Yet, you refuse to concede even slightly. You force any opposition out of town to never return. You’re a rotten town destined to decay further if your leaders are as bullish as Boebert.

And it’s not just Boebert. The town has a long history of racial divide.

Let’s not forget the 2001 shooting at the City Market that left four dead and three wounded. The gunman was witnessed to utter “fucking Mexicans” before he shot one of his victims. 

The most recent evidence of tension came during the protests that occurred in response to George Floyd’s unjust murder and to celebrate Juneteenth. Protestors were harassed by leagues of anti-protestors sporting their guns, flags and middle fingers. But there were no crimes committed! I know this defense. Rifle, you do a great job of staying just behind the lines that shouldn’t be crossed. You’ve mastered giving the perfect amount of hate. No. To say this is to give you too much credit. Instead, you’ve had the luxury to hide racism behind laws and cultural structures but have been too closed off to notice how every aspect of modern life has been tailored to help protect you at the expense of others.

Boebert is cementing the Western Slope as the cavity of Colorado. 

Your youth is leaving. 

The only left to carry on the torch of our community are the likes of Boebert. 

With all the media attention you’ll surely get during this election cycle, please don’t mistake attention as vindication or support.

Rifle, you are being laughed at.