ELIZABETH, Colo. — Standing at a ballot box in MAGA-darling Rep. Lauren Boebert’s ruby red district, Carole Taylor clutched the envelope in her hands, closed her eyes and kissed it.
Taylor, an 81-year-old former Republican, prayed for an Election Day upset as she plopped her ballot into the box to vote for Boebert’s opponent, Eileen Laubacher. She blamed hard-line politicians like Boebert for infusing her town with a toxicity that she felt made it harder to talk with her neighbors.
“It’s changed so much, and it’s dangerous,” Taylor said.
Boebert, 39, is one of a handful of figures who has come to epitomize the most aggressive politics of the MAGA-era for supporters and detractors alike.
A year ago, she was seen as a lock to keep her seat, given that voters in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District have elected only one Democrat since the 1970s. Boebert saw it that way, too, moving here ahead of the 2024 election after her old district, which she represented for two terms, had become increasingly competitive.
Now, Boebert faces a race that is once again tougher than when it started.
Laubacher, a 58-year-old Navy veteran and former Republican, raised $13.7 million to Boebert’s $1.2 million. That cash has been funneled into attack ads that resurface Boebert’s baggage, including the infamous 2023 moment when she was escorted out of a “Beetlejuice” performance after she was accused of vaping, singing and causing a disturbance. More recently, some voters here have struggled to separate her from President Donald Trump, once a close ally of hers whose popularity with Americans has plunged as the Iran war drove up prices.
Eager to capitalize on that discontent, Democrats pinned Boebert’s seat to their list of districts in play this year. After rating it as solidly Republican for months, election experts this month moved the district to just “lean” toward the GOP.
Boebert is banking on loyal Republican voters who are giving her the edge she still has in the race. She has cast herself as a perfect match for the district’s conservative values and her relocation as an earnest move to start fresh with her children after a messy, public divorce with her husband of 17 years.
“You know me,” she said into the camera during a debate this month, addressing voters directly.
Boebert’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Republicans in Colorado are making the argument that ad money and shifting voter sentiment won’t crack the good will Boebert has built with conservatives.
Patrick Neville, a former Republican state representative who lives in the district with his family, said Boebert could fare well even in a “bad year for Republicans.”
She had impressed right-leaning voters, Neville said, with what he sees as her public zeal on issues that matter to the MAGA base, including abortion and gun rights. He also pointed to her key role last year in forcing the House vote on releasing more of the Epstein files. (During the primary, her support for another GOP lawmaker who helped ensure the vote, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), drew rebuke from the president, who called Boebert a “carpetbagger” and urged Republicans to challenge her. She ultimately ran uncontested.)
Work like that, he said, would endear her to Republicans in the district, even those who had switched their party registration to unaffiliated because of frustration with the Trump administration.
“Lauren’s going to overcome it because they’ll look at her and they’re like, ‘Well, wait, she was right on this one,” Neville said.
The congresswoman is also vowing to use her high profile to stand against the left-wing ideas gaining ground in American politics.
“The fact that millions of dollars have been spent against her and she’s still going to win shows that the voters of the 4th Congressional District are not interested in empowering socialists,” Colorado GOP chairman Craig Steiner said in a statement.
Republicans across the country have homed in on the Democratic Party’s ascendant left flank, attacking its candidates and their views as unhinged and out of touch.
Laubacher is presenting herself as a moderate.
In one of her ads, she shows clips of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and tells voters she’s tired of the “corrupt and radical politicians in both parties.”
But conservatives are trying to poke holes in that message.
When asked “Who are the extremists in your Democratic Party?” during the debate, Laubacher did not name anyone specific. Boebert seized on the moment, casting it as evidence that her opponent had no clear political identity.
In Laubacher’s telling, if she had named-dropped anyone on the debate stage, it would have damaged her ability to work with them in Congress if she wins.
“I mean, how are you gonna walk that path, right?” she told The Washington Post in an interview late last week. “You can’t unsay things.”
That day, Laubacher met with volunteers across three counties who were gearing up to door-knock for her in the last stretch before Election Day. By then, they had already knocked on more than 50,000 Colorado doors with a goal to hit 15,000 more.
“There’s a reason she moved across the state, right?” Laubacher said of Boebert to a group of 15 canvassers in Castle Rock, a town south of Denver. “And that is what we’re fighting against, but I believe the winds are at our back.”
Shortly after, a clipboard and stack of door hangers in hand, Heidi Bonilla, a 37-year-old local Democratic organizer, set off to canvas in her neighborhood, which she knew to be staunchly conservative. Two years ago, hers was the only house on her street that didn’t boast a Trump yard sign, she said.
“Are you familiar with Eileen Laubacher?” she asked a woman who’d just pulled into her driveway.
Abby Gierat, 37, replied that she was not, as she helped her kindergarten son out of the car. But she said she planned to vote.
“Gotcha, do you know how you’re planning to vote in the congressional race? Are you familiar with Lauren Boebert, our current representative?” Bonilla asked.
Like many independents and Democrats here, Gierat grew up in a conservative home. As an adult, she realized her values were no longer in line with the Republican Party’s.
“You know, I voted against her when she moved to Douglas County,” Gierat said. “So yeah, I’ll continue to do so.”
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