Politico: “Charles Perko gestured past a vine-covered chain link fence toward a hulking steel facility with massive mills and squat brick office buildings. The 140-year-old complex had forged the iron that built the West, and once was Colorado’s largest employer, with some 10,000 workers. Now, much of the complex sits in disrepair. Some of its cylindrical stoves are rusted and empty – a symbol of an industry that Perko, a fourth-generation steel worker and president of a local union, says is in need of government help. Lauren Boebert, the controversial pro-gun, Covid-skeptical freshman congresswoman who represents Pueblo, has credited working-class voters for her improbable 2020 victory. But it’s not clear her version of ‘working-class’ includes the steel workers here. Perko didn’t vote for her. And, based on her opposition to President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which Perko sees as a lifeline for his struggling industry, he doesn’t think Boebert cares all that much about his union members. He has tried to schedule a meeting with her to discuss these issues, he says. But the door to her local office is often locked, and her staff doesn’t return his calls.”

“‘One of the key parts of that [infrastructure] plan is Amtrak expansion. Ours is one of only three mills in the country that makes rail,’ Perko said on a breezy afternoon in April, as he turned to face the manufacturing complex, now owned by the multinational company Evraz Group. ‘If we can get just that part of the infrastructure plan alone passed, that will be business that would keep us in jobs for many years.’ ‘From what I’ve seen on Twitter,’ he added, ‘I don’t think Boebert’s a supporter.’ Since her election this past November, in a district that sprawls across a huge swath of the mountains and ranch lands that make up the western half of Colorado, Boebert, 34, has become known as one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken acolytes in Congress. A restaurant owner who had never run for office before she declared her candidacy in late 2019, Boebert tried to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election and made a show of carrying a gun inside the Capitol in her early days in Congress. On Twitter, she frequently attacks Biden and other Democrats; during the January 6 insurrection, she tweeted out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location to her hundreds of thousands of followers.”