Colorado is the tale of two conflicting cultures. Standing between the Western Slope and the Californicated Front Range is U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert — a woman with a gun on her hip who started a restaurant called Shooters in the town of Rifle. In the urban world, that all seems pretty creepy. Progressives in Denver, Boulder and a few upscale resorts in Boebert’s 3rd Congressional District don’t understand her.

Masses of working-class farmers, ranchers and small-business owners know exactly who she is. Boebert is their pit bull at the divide. She protects their lifestyles from urbanites who quite literally unleashed wolves on them.

Front Range residents see “Dances with Wolves” and romanticize watching these creatures while driving to Grand Junction. To ranchers, they are livestock-killing predators that jeopardize their livelihoods. Boebert cares more about the people and less about the wolves, which aligns with her doctrine.

Most of Colorado’s executive and legislative leadership hail from Boulder, a beautiful city so gated from Western and working-class traditions the locals call it “25 miles surrounded by reality.”

Electric cars and sidewalk scooters work for urbanites but have little use to those Coloradans who travel 50 miles of mountainous dirt roads to reach the nearest village. Yet, Colorado’s disproportionately high urban population favors electric cars, charging stations, mass transit and energy policies that kill rural mining and rigging jobs. Pressure to further regulate guns makes little sense to rural crime victims who dial 911 for help from cops an hour away. Whether it is firearms regulation or obstacles to oil, gas and beef production, typical residents of District 3 feel stomped on.

Front Range and coastal pundits far outnumber their Western Slope peers and don’t understand the likes of Boebert and her barely filtered defensive style. As such, they deceptively brand her as an extremist who threatens their worldview. If she makes a secular quip to Jews on an elevator, she must be anti-semitic despite unwavering support for Israel.

Boebert and legions of her rural constituents of various denominations proudly believe in God — a right protected by the First Amendment. For that reason and nothing more, a reporter called Boebert a “dangerous” Christian nationalist aligned with “white evangelical racism” who jeopardizes “the country’s democratic process.” More sophisticated attacks of deception have likewise blemished Boebert’s national image.

The woman who reportedly endangers democracy successfully defeated President Joe Biden’s plan for an information czar who would have quelled free speech — the most fundamental aspect of the country’s democratic process. She schooled veteran politicians in how to win against such threats.

The freshman Boebert wrote a letter, signed by 26 other members of Congress, that helped stop $22.4 billion in federal spending deceptively cloaked as COVID relief just days after Biden said the pandemic is over. That’s $22.4 billion that won’t exacerbate our inflation crisis.

Boebert leads an effort to stop urban progressives from imposing a Western Slope land grab that would federalize hundreds of thousands of acres at the cost of jobs, private water rights, energy production, mineral exploration and effective forest management that mitigates wildfires. She was the first among Colorado’s delegation to fight then-president Donald Trump’s vengeful decision to move Space Command out of Colorado.

In just two years, Boebert has done more than any Colorado freshman in memory to preserve our state’s Western values and assets. Boebert’s Democratic opponent, former New York financier Adam Frisch, lives in Aspen — an enclave of extraordinary wealth and out-of-state celebrities who know little about typical Western Slope lifestyles.

As a former Aspen City Council member with a $9 million chalet, Frisch cast a vote that stripped $11 million from affordable housing. Frisch might be a fine man, but he cannot possibly relate to the interests of farmers, ranchers, minors, ski instructors, hunting and river guides and working-class Hispanic families who make the Western Slope an essential socioeconomic contrast to the urban Front Range — a region that increasingly threatens rural lifestyles.

District 3 should reelect Boebert to preserve the Western Slope, which buffers Colorado from Californication.