“Man, I hit a wall,” Lauren Boebert said, sounding ready to pack it in.
Hovering near the back of a high school cafeteria in Otis, a tiny speck of a town in eastern Colorado, the uber-MAGA congresswoman had just wrapped up her third candidate debate/forum in three days. It was after 10 p.m., and she still had ahead of her a two-hour drive home, along with a packed weekend of campaigning for Tuesday’s primary election, which will determine her political fate. She scanned the room, clearly in no mood for more handshaking — no matter how much she needed the votes. The high-octane culture warrior, it turns out, has an off switch.
“I’m going to sneak out of here,” she told me.
The event hadn’t gone too badly, but it didn’t lend itself to the far-right trolling and bomb throwing she excels at, either. Hosted by a local farm bureau, the discussion was about agriculture and energy policy, and Ms. Boebert and the other five Republicans in the primary had been warned to keep it civil.
Not that there had been much of an audience to play to, with only five dozen or so people and a dearth of reporters on hand. Even when Ms. Boebert got in a dig at President Biden or the “weaponized federal government,” the low-energy crowd wasn’t feeling it. Her go-to zinger — “My least favorite product that’s made in China is Joe Biden” — drew barely a chuckle.
As the hour had grown late, the congresswoman repeatedly tripped over her tongue, at one point joking that it would be great if anyone had some coffee, “praise the Lord.” That phrase is like a verbal tic for her, used frequently, less as an exclamation than as a filler or a bridge, especially at awkward moments. And one of the surprises during my time with Ms. Boebert was how many awkward or uncertain moments she seemed to have — at voter events, in debates or simply standing unnoticed in a crowd.
She appeared a far cry from the outrage artist who so aggressively heckled Mr. Biden during his first State of the Union address that she embarrassed her own party’s leadership. But this election has forced Ms. Boebert out of her comfort zone, as she works to woo a set of voters on the opposite side of the state from the area she has represented the last few years.