Lauren Boebert loses House seat to Democratic challenger in Colorado
Lauren Boebert loses House seat to Democratic challenger in Colorado
The congresswoman had switched districts in the 2024 election to one that favored Republicans, but it wasn’t enough to insulate her from widespread Democratic gains this year.
In what had been considered Colorado’s most Republican-leaning congressional district, incumbent Rep. Lauren Boebert has been defeated by Democrat Eileen Laubacher.
The Associated Press called the race on Friday afternoon.
Laubacher received 48.8% of the vote (187,488 votes) to Boebert’s 47.9% (184,047 votes), with 99% of the vote counted. Douglas Mangeris, a libertarian, received 3.3%, or 12,720 votes, per AP.
Boebert, an outspoken gun rights activist, has served in Congress since 2021 and is considered one of President Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill.
Laubacher is a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral who was deployed in Afghanistan. She also served on the National Security Council under President Joe Biden.
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Laubacher’s victory adds Colorado’s 4th District to the more than 40 Republican-held districts that have flipped to Democrats this midterm cycle, including two others in Colorado.
In an interview with NewsNation on Thursday, Boebert blamed her impending loss on “so many different variables” that plagued Republicans across the country, including gas prices, the war in Iran and Congress’s failure to address corruption in the U.S. political system.
She also argued that she and other members of the right wing House Freedom Caucus “weren’t heard” when they called for Congress to take action on a variety of issues that voters care about, including government surveillance and “fair elections.”
The result is indicative of the remarkable swing toward Democrats that took place in historically safe Republican districts across the country. Boebert, who relocated from Colorado’s more-purple 3rd District in 2023, won by more than 11 percentage points the last time she was on the ballot.
Who is Eileen Laubacher?
Laubacher served 34 years in the U.S. Navy, working in a variety of intelligence and command positions, before retiring in 2024. Her father also spent his career in the Navy, reaching the rank of vice admiral. Her grandfather served as a Navy combat diver during World War II. Laubacher spent significant periods of her Navy career abroad, including a deployment to Afghanistan in 2009 and service in a senior role at the U.S. Embassy in India.
Though she said she had frequently told people in her life that she would “never run for office,” Laubacher opted to enter the race for Boebert’s seat because she believed residents of Colorado’s 4th District deserved “serious and honest representation” in Congress.
Laubacher had reportedly been a Republican throughout much of her life before registering as a Democrat in late 2025. Her decision to switch parties, she said, was driven by her view that the Republican Party had become “nearly unrecognizable” to her.
Laubacher’s recent party swap became the subject of a lawsuit during the Democratic primary, with one of the other Democrats in the race attempting to prevent her from qualifying for the ballot. That effort failed, and Laubacher later secured the Democratic nomination.
In terms of policy, Laubacher is firmly within the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. She supports strong immigration enforcement, tax cuts for the middle class and reducing the national debt. She placed a heavy emphasis on affordability throughout her campaign, including calling on President Trump to repeal tariffs that raise consumer prices and end the war with Iran.
Boebert’s tenure
First elected to represent Colorado’s 3rd District in 2020, Boebert quickly became one of the more vocal and recognizable members of the House Republican caucus. She has been a persistent critic of the “deep state” and was a staunch supporter of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
During her first year in the House, she introduced separate resolutions to impeach then-President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over their handling of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. In 2023, she was one of the key voices behind a leadership battle among House Republicans that was only settled when Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker after 15 roll call votes. Later that year, she mounted a second unsuccessful effort to impeach Biden.
Boebert’s personal life drew scrutiny in September 2023 after she and a male companion were escorted out of a stage production of Beetlejuice for allegedly “vaping, singing, [and] causing a disturbance.” Though she initially denied acting inappropriately, she later apologized for her behavior, saying that her actions “fell short of my values.”
Though Boebert won her first House race by a comfortable margin, she narrowly avoided defeat in her bid for reelection in 2022, defeating her Democratic challenger by just 546 votes. Prior to the 2024 election, Boebert switched her reelection bid to Colorado’s 4th District, a region of the state considered “far more favorable to Republicans.”
The move proved effective in helping Boebert secure a comfortable victory in 2024. But the redder district was not enough to insulate her from the widespread Democratic gains across the country this year.
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