Lauren Boebert asking voters to show "mercy"

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The “Beetlejuice” incident continues to haunt the once-unrepentant congresswoman from Colorado. The state’s old guard is lining up behind a primary challenger.

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The month before, Ms. Boebert, then in the midst of finalizing a divorce, was caught on a security camera vaping and groping her date shortly before being ejected from a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” at the Buell Theater in Denver for causing a disturbance. The footage contradicted her own initial claims about the incident, and the venue’s statement that Ms. Boebert had demanded preferential treatment added to the outrage.

The episode has proved surprisingly sticky for Ms. Boebert, a politician who more than almost any other has embodied the gleefully provocative, no-apologies politics of the party’s right wing in the Biden era. Several local Republican officials have since announced their endorsement of Jeff Hurd, a more conventional Republican challenging her for the nomination this year.

Mr. Hurd’s candidacy has become a vessel for Republican discontent with the perceived excesses of the party’s MAGA wing. His backers include old-guard party fixtures such as former Gov. Bill Owens and former Senator Hank Brown. Pete Coors, the brewery scion, former Senate candidate and 2016 Trump fund-raiser, announced his endorsement in a statement provided to the Times, describing Hurd as “a principled leader of character whose conduct and behavior will never make us regret our support.”

Other Hurd supporters are more narrowly concerned about extending the party’s recent run of defeats in the state, and some are one-time fans of Ms. Boebert who complain that she has been changed by her political celebrity.

“That crap she pulled in Denver pissed me off,” David Spiegel, a 53-year-old road traffic controller and Montezuma party activist, told Mr. Hurd as he mingled with guests at the dinner, near where Ms. Boebert was sitting.