DENVER — Democrat Eileen Laubacher declared victory Monday in her race against U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a polarizing crusader for the Make America Great Again movement whose apparent defeat in Colorado’s most conservative district is the latest fallout of the blue wave that crashed over President Donald Trump’s coalition last week.

While The Associated Press had not yet called the 4th Congressional District race Monday afternoon and Boebert has not conceded, CNN projected Laubacher would win the tight contest.

Laubacher, a retired Navy rear admiral, continued to slightly expand her lead with new vote totals Monday evening, maintaining her 48.8%-to-47.9% split with Boebert — a margin of just under 1 percentage point, but not close enough to trigger an automatic recount.

Only a smattering of ballots remained to be processed in several counties, including military and overseas votes. More than 98% of votes in the 4th District have been counted, the AP estimated.

“The way we won this race is the way I intend to continue serving the people, which is going everywhere, talking a little bit and listening a lot,” Laubacher said in an interview with The Denver Post on Monday afternoon. “It’s up to me to now deliver for people and make the changes that are going to improve their lives.”

Boebert’s campaign staff did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Post. But the incumbent shared a video on social media Monday evening in which she said “CNN and the Democrats” had called the race prematurely, with votes still left to be counted or “cured” of signature discrepancies by Friday’s deadline.

“Declaring victory now is like icing a cake before it comes out of the oven,” Boebert said in the video address to her supporters. “… Regardless of the final outcome, we will move forward to future victories together. We’ll make sure every eligible vote is counted and that every single voice is heard before we take any next steps.”

She did not repeat the vague claims of possible voting irregularities made by a campaign attorney last week.

Laubacher, a former Republican who only recently became a Democrat, moved to Highlands Ranch with her husband two years ago. She doesn’t align with the more radical wing of her new party, and did not endorse Melat Kiros, the democratic socialist who beat U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the 1st Congressional District primary and won the seat on Election Day.

“I’m a very moderate person,” Laubacher told The Post in October. “I’ve never been a straight-party ticket voter — I’ve never felt either party matched me perfectly.”

In an interview Monday, Laubacher said she would work with anyone regardless of party to pass “meaningful legislation” such as rolling back Trump’s tariffs, ending the war in Iran and “cracking down on corruption.”

“I’m encouraged by the idea that we can work across the aisle to get things done for the American people. It is what we have to do,” she said.

Laubacher was in Washington, D.C., on Monday to participate in new member orientation even as the remaining votes continue to be counted.

While the vast majority of the members in attendance will have already won their races, it isn’t uncommon for someone whose race is still in limbo to attend. In 2022, Adam Frisch, another Democratic opponent of Boebert’s, went to the Capitol for the orientation. He was more than 1,000 votes behind Boebert at the time in a race to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, and ultimately lost the election.

Boebert and Trump’s pre-election clash

Boebert had fallen out of favor with the president after she was one of four Republicans to vote last year to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. She also helped campaign in Kentucky for Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, a foe of Trump’s who ultimately lost his primary, and spoke out against the president’s veto of a bill to fund clean drinking water for Colorado.

Trump posted on Truth Social in May asking for people to run against Boebert, calling her “weak-minded” and a “carpetbagger” for switching to the 4th Congressional District. Three days before the election, though, Trump endorsed Boebert, calling her “a MAGA Warrior.”

Laubacher significantly outraised Boebert in the race. In late October, the Cook Political Report recategorized the district from “solid Republican” to “leans Republican.”

Voters in the 4th District, which is currently the most Republican-leaning of Colorado’s eight congressional districts, have put a Democrat in the seat only once in the last 53 years. And it was for just one term.

Two years ago, Boebert moved to Windsor in the 4th District after nearly losing the seat she held for two terms in the Western Slope’s 3rd Congressional District. Voters in the 4th District, which spans the state’s Eastern Plains and parts of metro Denver, leaned 27 percentage points in favor of Republicans earlier this decade, according to nonpartisan redistricting staffers.

The 4th District race was one of three close Colorado congressional contests for Republican incumbents in the fallout of the massive blue wave that swept across the country Tuesday. U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, the state’s fourth Republican incumbent member of Congress, lost his race in the 8th Congressional District to Democrat Manny Rutinel on election night.

On Thursday, The Associated Press called the Colorado Springs-based 5th Congressional District for Jessica Killin, the Democratic challenger to freshman Rep. Jeff Crank. It’s the first time that district has ever had a Democratic representative.

And the wire service on Friday declared Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd the winner of the 3rd Congressional District.

In Boebert’s race, the results show that Laubacher carried the more urban — and more populous — corners of the district, including Douglas and Arapahoe counties, while Boebert led in most rural counties, including Weld.

As of Monday evening, the 3,352-vote margin was well outside the threshold for an automatic recount, currently 931 votes (0.5% of the race leader’s vote total).

Scott Gessler, an attorney for Boebert’s campaign, said in a statement to media last week that the campaign was “fighting for every vote.” He said, without citing specifics, that the campaign was “investigating some very unusual voting patterns and expect this election to head to a recount, one way or another.”

In Colorado, candidates can choose to pay for recounts regardless of the margin of their loss.

Officials will continue counting the remaining ballots, which include votes from military members and people overseas, until Friday. Voters whose ballots were rejected because of signature discrepancies can also “cure” their ballots by that time.

“This is standard practice in every election,” said Jack Todd, a spokesman for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

From Shooters Grill to Congress

In 2019, Boebert, then in her early 30s, seemed to come out of nowhere to take on the herculean task of unseating longtime Republican incumbent Scott Tipton in the 3rd District, which covers most of western Colorado and wraps around Pueblo to the south.

A one-time owner of the now-defunct restaurant Shooters Grill in Rifle, where staff carried guns, Boebert drove across the state to attend a Beto O’Rourke presidential rally in Aurora. Openly carrying a gun and standing in a sea of Democrats, she challenged the candidate’s position on gun safety.

She not only beat Tipton in the GOP primary the following year, but she also went on to win the general election, becoming the first woman to hold the seat.

In her time in Congress, Boebert has been known for bombastic statements that frequently drew national attention. She largely remained defiant in the face of criticism, but was unable to ride out the controversy she created in September 2023 when she was booted from a performance of “Beetlejuice” at Denver’s Buell Theatre after fellow patrons complained about her openly vaping, making out with her date and filming the show against house rules.

After that story went global, she apologized for her behavior but quickly came to realize her standing had fallen so far with her 3rd District constituents that she decamped for friendlier environs — and a more conservative — district on the Eastern Plains.

Her move turned out to be prescient. After battling it out against five GOP challengers in the June 2024 primary for the 4th District, Boebert cruised to victory that November.

While Boebert often made headlines for the wrong reasons, she also delivered for her constituents. Over her two terms in the 3rd District, she helped shepherd the bipartisan Upper Colorado and San Juan River Basins Endangered Fish Recovery Programs Reauthorization Act into law, extending protection for four threatened and endangered native fish species.

Then-President Joe Biden also signed the CONVEY Act, a Boebert-led bill that directs the Bureau of Land Management to sell to Mesa County a 31-acre parcel in Clifton for economic development.

After Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025, Boebert became a reliable ally for the president. She largely supported his agenda, but cracks soon appeared in the relationship — most notably in her push to have the Epstein files released, something Trump initially resisted.

She also gave a biting assessment of the president’s decision in the waning days of 2025 to veto a bipartisan rural water bill that would have funded a pipeline to bring clean water to 50,000 residents in southeast Colorado.

She told 9News at the time that she hoped the president’s “veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability. Americans deserve leadership that puts people over politics.”

The libertarian candidate

Then there’s the candidate in the 4th District race that no one is talking about.

Doug Mangeris is a 39-year-old commercial construction superintendent from Loveland who ran as a Libertarian. He garnered more than 12,600 votes, a number well above the 3,352 votes currently separating Boebert and Laubacher.

Mangeris’ vote total brings back echoes of 2022, when in the eyes of many political watchers in Colorado, a Libertarian candidate in the ultra-competitive 8th Congressional District contest cost the race for Republican state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer.

With 9,280 votes, a tattooed, punk-music-loving electrician named Richard Ward drew enough support that, had those votes gone largely to Kirkmeyer, they would have cost Democrat Yadira Caraveo the close election.

Like Ward four years ago, Mangeris said he put few resources into his campaign for the 4th.

“I didn’t send any mailers, I didn’t knock on any doors, I didn’t stand on any street corners,” he said. “I didn’t have the money that would have allowed me not to work and instead run a campaign.”

He prefers Boebert to Laubacher, but said neither major party is doing much good for the country.

“It’s foreign interests; it’s not the interests of the constituents,” Mangeris said. “Our country is headed in a bad way, especially with all the socialists that just got elected.”

Lori Korman was Mangeris’ campaign treasurer. She also happens to be his mother. A mail carrier in Loveland for the past decade, she said what struck her in the weeks leading up to Election Day was the utter absence of any mailings or flyers from Boebert’s campaign.

“I never saw any campaigning from her,” Korman said. That extended to campaign yard signs on her route. “If she had tried harder, she would have gotten more votes.”

Boebert, Mangeris said, took it for granted that she wouldn’t lose such a reliably Republican district.

“I ran just as much, if not more, of a race as Boebert did,” he said.

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