Republicans in Colorado’s sprawling 4th Congressional District on Thursday night chose former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez as their nominee to appear on the June 25 special election ballot to fill out the rest of former Rep. Ken Buck’s term.
Lopez, a conservative who ran unsuccessfully for Colorado governor in 2018 and 2022, has said publicly he won’t run in the district’s Republican primary election, which will be held on the same day. So that leaves a field of nine GOP candidates, including Rep. Lauren Boebert, vying to win that contest with the hopes of going on to the general election in November.
Lopez received 51 votes from the district’s GOP vacancy committee while Logan County Commissioner Jerry Sonnenberg got 46 votes in the sixth and final round of voting Thursday. The process had started with nine men — including state Rep. Richard Holtorf, state Rep. Mike Lynch, businessman Peter Yu and former state lawmaker Ted Harvey — trying to get the nomination.
“Greg knows a lot of people from when he ran for office,” Tom Wiens, leader of the 4th District’s central committee, said Thursday night after several hours of voting. “He garnered a lot of goodwill from around the state. People knew him and trusted him.”
The 4th Congressional District vacancy committee met at the Lincoln County Event Center in Hugo. Democrats will hold their own nomination process for the special election Monday, although in such a heavily Republican-leaning district the winner of that contest will have an uphill battle to defeat Lopez in June.
Thursday’s selection by a vacancy committee was necessitated by former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck’s decision to leave Congress last week — nine months before his term was to end.
Boebert, who opted against running in the special election, will nonetheless be on the ballot seeking to win the 4th District GOP primary election. Gov. Jared Polis set the special election in the district on the same day as the primary, and there will be only one ballot to mark, with the special election appearing below the primary.
Boebert collected enough signatures to petition her way on to the June 25 primary ballot, as did conservative radio host Deborah Flora. This month Boebert blasted Buck for leaving Congress early, saying that “forcing an unnecessary Special Election on the same day as the Primary Election will confuse voters, result in a lame duck Congressman on Day One, and leave the 4th District with no representation for more than three months.”
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The 4th Congressional District, which covers the mostly rural eastern third of Colorado and takes in a portion of Denver’s southern suburbs in Douglas County, has become a focus of political watchers across the electoral landscape. That’s largely because of Buck’s decision in November not to run for a sixth term, a move that was jumbled even further when he announced this month that he wouldn’t finish out his term.
He stepped down March 22.
In December, Buck’s retirement announcement prompted Boebert to switch from running for reelection in her district on the western side of the state, where she faced a tough race against her Democratic opponent, to make a stab for the 4th.