Lauren Boebert will lose her seat in Congress to Democrat Laubacher, AP projects
The Republican firebrand won't return for a fourth term.
Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert will lose to Democratic challenger Eileen Laubacher in Colorado's 4th Congressional District, The Associated Press projected Friday.
With 99% of the expected vote reported, Laubacher led with 48.8% of the vote, followed by Boebert's 47.9%. Laubacher led by around 3,400 votes when the AP made its projection.
In a post on X, Boebert said she had called Laubacher and offered her congratulations. As for her future, she told her followers to "Stay tuned!"
Laubacher retired from the Navy as an admiral after 34 years of service and was senior director for South Asia on the National Security Council during President Joe Biden’s administration. She is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Boebert, 39, first gained national attention in 2019 as a gun rights advocate when she challenged then-Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke over his pledge to pursue gun control measures.
She was first elected in 2020 to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District and won re-election by less than 600 votes in 2022. Two years later, she opted to run in the 4th District and won a third term.
Her time on Capitol Hill was highlighted by two attempts to impeach President Joe Biden, as she had been one of President Donald Trump's fiercest defenders in Congress before breaking with his administration last year over a discharge petition to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. She was one of four Republicans who signed it, joining Reps. Thomas Massie, who co-sponsored the petition with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Massie lost his re-election bid to a Trump-backed challenger earlier this year in the primaries; Mace didn't run for re-election to the House to launch a failed bid for governor in South Carolina; and Greene resigned from the House last January after Trump withdrew his support for her after she criticized him and his administration for their handling of the Epstein investigation, along with other matters.
Boebert also drew the ire of Hillary Clinton for leaking photos of the former Secretary of State when she sat for a closed-door transcribed interview in the House Oversight Committee’s Epstein inquiry.