Laubacher flips district Republicans carried by more than 18 points in 2024
Rep. Lauren Boebert pointed to voters as she assessed her party’s midterm losses on a return to the Capitol this week. “We collectively failed,” she said. “It’s very clear,” she added. “The American people let us know we have failed in this governing experience for this Congress.”
In the same week, Democrat Eileen Laubacher, a former Navy rear admiral, defeated Boebert on Friday for the U.S. House seat in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, ending a three-term run for a Republican the Associated Press described as a staple of conservative media. In the AP’s account, Laubacher’s win is just one of several surprising Republican losses in what’s shaping up to be the most lopsided election in half a century.
The seat had not been remotely competitive for Boebert two years ago. Republicans carried the 4th District by more than 18 percentage points in 2024. But even that wasn’t safe for her in this year’s midterm elections, the AP reported.
The Associated Press wrote that Boebert embodied this decade’s version of Republican politics. She owns a gun-themed restaurant named “Shooters Grill” in the western Colorado town of Rifle, and she rose to prominence alongside President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
Once in Congress, Boebert refused to pass through metal detectors at the U.S. Capitol and referred to Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar as part of the “jihad squad,” the AP reported. After barely surviving her first reelection campaign, Boebert moved across Colorado to a more Republican district.