Biden takes jobs message to Republican hardliner Lauren Boebert's district

[October 16, 2023]  By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden will highlight clean-energy jobs created by his climate legislation on Monday while visiting a Colorado Congressional district represented by Lauren Boebert, a right-wing Republican lawmaker and avid supporter of former President Donald Trump.

Biden will visit the largest wind tower manufacturer CS Wind in Pueblo, Colorado, to highlight jobs created by the company after passage of his climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act. He will also point out how Republicans like Boebert tried to "repeal the law and deny the impacts of climate change, said a White House official, who did not wish to be named.

Boebert's office did not respond to requests for comment.

The trip is part of a nationwide tour by Biden and his top aides to promote his economic agenda, which the White House calls "Bidenomics".

Monday's visit will also draw a contrast between Biden and Republican opposition to his climate and infrastructure legislation, which the administration says will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and is important to the Democratic president's re-election campaign in 2024.

In May, Biden made his case on the debt ceiling issue in a New York congressional district that Republicans won by a narrow margin. Vice President Kamala Harris made a similar trip to Republican Majorie Taylor Greene's district in Georgia in April.

Boebert, who introduced an impeachment resolution against Biden earlier this year, also tried to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election and made a show of carrying a gun inside the U.S. Capitol in her early days in Congress.

She was not invited to Biden's event, the White House official said.

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at a dinner hosted by the Human Rights Campaign at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, U.S., October 14, 2023. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno/File Photo

Pueblo County, located on Colorado's dusty, windswept plains two hours south of Democrat-friendly Denver, is home to more registered Democrats than Republicans but has a sizable population of swing voters - who vote across party lines or are not affiliated with a particular political party. The county is the most diverse part of Boebert's district, and home to the state's highest concentration of Latinos.

Biden won the county by 1,520 votes in November 2020, after Trump had claimed victory by 390 votes in 2016. Biden won Colorado with over 55% of the vote in 2020 against Trump.

"Since President Biden took office, companies have announced $5 billion in investments in Colorado — including hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in Rep. Boebert's district," the White House said in a statement. "But if extreme Congressional Republicans like...Boebert had their way, Colorado would lose out on billions of dollars of those investments, jobs, and opportunities," the statement said.

Boebert voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, and called it "dangerous for America" and said "it needs to be repealed."

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

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