Trump endorsed Lauren Boebert in a heavily MAGA district. It still might not be enough

Rep. Lauren Boebert walked into a fairgrounds event hall  on the eastern Colorado plains on Sunday, her heels sky-high, her sons in tow and a newly-minted endorsement from the 45th president in her campaign arsenal.

Then she took a seat behind a misspelt name card – “Lauren Boebart” – and limped to a third-place finish in a straw poll against eight other people vying for the Republican nomination in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District.

Even the endorsement of Trump in heavy MAGA territory may not be enough to save the embattled Boebert a seat in Congress, it seems.

The fiery Republican, like some of her opponents, had driven hundreds of miles to the candidate forum in Holyoke, a farming town with a population under 2,400 just 15 minutes from the Nebraska border.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, who represents Colorado’s Third congressional district, is now vying for a seat across the state in CD4 — where she attended a candidate forum over the weekend and sat behind a misspelt name card at the dais

The event, hosted jointly by the Phillips, Sedgwick and Yuma County Republicans, was held at the Phillips County Event Center, adjacent to the fairgrounds and overlooking a massive grain elevator that loomed against the sky across a pickup-laden parking lot.

Nine of the 11 candidates vying for the seat in heavily conservative CD4 turned up for the forum, which drew just upwards of 200 people. (One candidate, Peter Yu, sent his apologies while caring for his sick elderly mother; another, veteran and activist Justin Schreiber, was a no-show.)

Attendees who purchased $10 tickets online picked them up at the centre from volunteers distributing handwritten, alphabetized white envelopes. Most voters were over 50, many clad in Republican