Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., has lost her seat in the U.S. House, with the Associated Press projecting Friday afternoon that Democratic challenger Eileen Laubacher will win Colorado's 4th Congressional District.
With 99% of ballots counted, Laubacher led Boebert 48.7% to 47.9% — a margin of roughly 3,400 votes when the AP made its call, according to the network's reporting. The Denver-area race was one of the most closely watched House contests of the cycle, and it ends Boebert's six-year run in Congress.
Boebert conceded in a post on X, writing that she had called Laubacher to offer her congratulations. As for what comes next, she told her followers to "Stay tuned!"
Laubacher's résumé cuts sharply against Boebert's brand. She retired from the Navy as an admiral after 34 years of service and served as senior director for South Asia on the National Security Council during President Joe Biden's administration, according to ABC News. She is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.
The defeat lands in the middle of a brutal midterm cycle for Republicans. Democrats have flipped seats in red-leaning territory including Texas, Kansas, South Carolina and Mississippi, and now hold 256 House seats to Republicans' 169 — well past the 218 needed for a majority, per the AP's count. Boebert's loss is the latest entry on that list.
Boebert, 39, first won national attention in 2019 as a gun-rights advocate when she confronted then-Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke over his pledge to pursue gun control measures. She was elected in 2020 to represent Colorado's 3rd District, won re-election there by fewer than 600 votes in 2022, then moved to the redder 4th District in 2024 and won a third term. Before politics, she owned Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado.
Her relationship with President Trump frayed last November, when she was one of four Republicans who signed a discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Justice Department's Jeffrey Epstein files — against the president's wishes. She joined Reps. Thomas Massie, Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene in that effort. Massie lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger earlier this year, Mace left the House for a failed gubernatorial bid in South Carolina, and Greene resigned last January after Trump withdrew his support over her criticism of his administration's handling of the Epstein investigation.
After the race was called, Boebert pointed to the financial weight arrayed against her. "There was a lot of money dumped on my head," she said, according to NBC News, while also blaming the Senate for failing to pass many House-approved Republican bills.
Social media lit up as the returns tightened and the call came down. Posts circulating on Instagram as the race neared its conclusion tracked the incumbent trailing her Democratic challenger, with one widely shared post confirming that the Republican congresswoman would lose her reelection bid to the Democrat.
For Republicans, the seat is gone, and the recriminations are already starting. For Democrats, Colorado's 4th is one more entry in a midterm ledger that has them within reach of a veto-proof margin — and one more trophy taken from a Trump loyalist's column.
Our Take
Let's be clear-eyed about what happened here, Patriots. Boebert didn't lose because Coloradans suddenly fell in love with a retired Navy admiral who spent the Biden years on the National Security Council. She lost because a mountain of outside money buried her, because the Senate GOP leadership sat on House-passed bills and gave voters nothing to show for a Republican majority, and because a midterm environment that should have favored the party in power instead turned into a blue wave that flipped Texas and Kansas.
There's a lesson in Boebert's fate that the America First movement cannot afford to ignore. She was one of four Republicans who signed a discharge petition to force the Epstein files vote against President Trump's wishes — and every one of those four is now out of the House, one way or another. Massie lost his primary. Mace's statewide gamble failed. Greene resigned. Boebert just lost her seat. Voters who put Republicans in power to fight the Deep State and drain the swamp are watching who stands with the president and who breaks ranks — and they are keeping score.
The real story of this midterm is the money and the machine: a Democrat Party and its allied networks pouring cash into red districts while a Republican-controlled Senate fails to deliver. If the GOP wants to win back the 87 seats it just lost, it had better learn the difference between a conservative fighter and a conservative who picks fights with her own side.
So here's the question for every Republican still standing in Washington: was Boebert's loss a rejection of one firebrand, or a warning shot at the entire party? And what, exactly, is your plan to make sure it doesn't happen again?
