“Speaking after Lauren Boebert was like the band that played after the Beatles – no-one remembered them,” said Republican state representative Matt Soper, now Colorado’s most senior Republican legislator.

He first met Boebert and her then-husband, Jayson, when she was gathering signatures for a state-voting initiative.

She arrived in jeans with a Glock on her hip, her husband “looking like a classic oilman” in blue jeans, boots, cowboy hat and belt buckle, Soper told the BBC.

It played well with her Western Colorado constituency – a mix of ranches, farms and tough terrain with a smattering of ski towns – which Trump won with 53% of the vote in 2016.

Those same voters embraced Boebert in the lead-up to the 2020 election, helping her unseat the five-term Republican incumbent in the party’s primary.

Boebert earned her high school equivalency diploma right before that victory, then won the seat in November, just before her 34th birthday.

It was the start of a political career Soper did not anticipate after that first meeting with her and her spouse.

“If I had been told, you know, they’re going to make not just national headlines, but international headlines, for years, and Lauren will be a member of Congress for six years, I mean, I would have put no money on that bet,” he said.

Once in Congress, Boebert garnered constant airtime with her aggressive pro-Trump rhetoric. Along with fellow political provocateurs like Marjorie Taylor Greene, she established herself as one of the most outspoken MAGA cheerleaders.

Perhaps most notably, she joined Greene in heckling President Joe Biden during his 2022 State of the Union address.

But that knack for the limelight began to work against Boebert at home.