Opinion

Lauren Boebert emerged on the political scene early last summer, challenging the governor’s seating rules by serving too many in her Rifle café in the northwest corner of the state. Even after a warning, she persisted, gaining more attention.

Her thumb-to-nose toward the governor was back-dropped by the café’s name, Shooters, and that she and her workforce had pistols on their hips.

It was all about freedom, she said repeatedly. (The pistol-carrying began, she says, after there was an altercation outside the café and she wanted her staff members to be able to protect themselves.)

Boebert is now traveling the 3rd Congressional District, vowing to advocate in Washington, D.C., for individual freedoms and for Second Amendment rights. In the Republican primary, her flash made easy work of five-term Congressman Scott Tipton of Cortez. While a poll showed Tipton an easy winner and he may not have taken the primary seriously, that might not have been enough.

Boebert has held no elective office, nor been a member of any city or county committee or panel. In response, she might say that raising with her husband their four boys, and going from a McDonald’s employee to small-business owner, required full-time attention and energy. She is 33 with a high school equivalency degree.

During the campaign, Boebert has said she wants the benefits of cross-state-line and industry scale and transparency in health care pricing. She supports mail-in voting in lower level elections, but not for president. Her repeated theme is to make Americans free of what she sees as government restrictions and limitations.

Boebert’s ascendancy to Congressional candidate could be an example of what makes this country so special.

But the Herald’s editorial board believes experiences build on one another, that to expect to advocate for legislation in office building hallways, to participate in Congressional hearings, to go to the microphone in the House chamber, requires some time in community and state decision-making positions, even very local ones. A term on a school board can be a significant learning experience.

Boebert has had none of that while wanting to be one of Colorado’s seven House members (likely soon to be eight).

Diane Mitsch Bush also has been a small-business owner and manager, and she has been a Routt County commissioner and served three terms in Colorado’s House of Representatives.

She has debated and shaped issues of land use and population growth, water availability now and in the future, and the support of preK-12 and higher education. She knows budgets and the mix of taxation necessary to support them.

And Mitsch Bush has not just had to negotiate within the Democratic Party to achieve the desired outcomes for her constituents, but across the aisle, often between rural and urban interests. Identifying the middle and bringing both sides together is what D.C. needs.

The 3rd Congressional District is varied in its regions and citizenry, and Mitsch Bush has the background to do the best to benefit that diversity. She deserves a vote for the 3rd Congressional seat.