Why Lauren Boebert will probably win her primary — and Jamaal Bowman will probably lose his

On the surface, Lauren Boebert and Jamaal Bowman could not be more different members of Congress. One is a white ultra-MAGA devotee of Donald Trump and a high school dropout who earned notoriety thanks to running a restaurant where the waitresses all carried firearms. The other is a Black former middle school principal who represents the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. While Bowman seems to care deeply about moving the Democratic Party’s policy significantly to the left, Boebert’s tenure in Congress seems devoid of any real substance, absent being Trump’s fan — although it’s clear she’d be happy to see her own party move even further to the right.

But they came to Washington in similar manners. Boebert beat a placeholder incumbent congressman in Colorado’s third district in 2020 and Bowman pulled off a stunner when he beat the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Since then, both hoped to shake up the dynamics of their party to make them adhere closer to their own ideologies. Boebert — alongside Representative Matt Gaetz — led the charge against making Kevin McCarthy speaker in January of last year, though she ultimately voted against Gaetz’s motion to vacate that removed McCarthy.

Bowman, a member of the progressive Squad, was one of only six Democrats to oppose the bipartisan infrastructure bill and is one of the most vocal supporters of a ceasefire in Gaza.

They’ve also both attracted some less-than-desirable headlines. Many roundly mocked Boebert recently after she was thrown out of a theater during a live musical performance of Beetlejuice for vaping and inappropriately touching her date. Bowman received unwanted attention when, during a vote to keep the government open, he pulled the fire