Bizarre cult loses grasp on Congress with Lauren Boebert's flameout

Lauren Boebert, the last surviving member of a cohort of QAnon-linked Republicans elected to the U.S. House in 2020, lost her seat in Colorado’s 4^th Congressional District Monday in the aftermath of the blue midterm tsunami that swept the country.

The QAnon movement emerged during President Donald Trump’s first term as his supporters sought to deflect questions over Russia’s influence on the 2016 election by spinning a narrative that Trump was secretly battling an elitist cabal of pedophiles. Other Republican candidates aligned with QAnon who were elected in 2020 included Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina.

Boebert lost to Democrat Eileen Laubacher, a retired two-star United States Navy rear admiral who served on the National Security Council under President Joe Biden. With an estimated 98% of votes counted, Laubacher led 48.8% to 47.9%, a margin of 3,237 votes, according to CNN, which called the race on Monday. Libertarian Douglas Mangeris took 3.3%.

Boebert’s loss reflects voters’ rejection of conspiracy theories that warped American politics in the long shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Mike Rothschild, author of Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories and an expert on QAnon.

“We saw [Tuesday] that Americans rejected the conservative Republican movement,” Rothschild told Raw Story. “We saw election deniers losing. We saw extremists losing. I think this is the American people rejecting conspiracism and paranoia in favor of a Congress that will work for them.”

Boebert spoke positively about QAnon during her campaign, saying in a May 2020 interview with Ann Vandersteel, a host who promoted the movement, “Everything that I’ve heard of Q, I hope that this is real because it only means that America is getting stronger and better and people are returning to conservative values.”

The Colorado Times Recorder also reported that she followed multiple QAnon channels on YouTube before winning the nomination.

After the campaign, she denied being a follower of QAnon, though she welcomed investigations into “deep state activities.”

Cawthorn lost his reelection bid in 2022 after being deluged by sexual assault allegations and bizarrely accusing his fellow Republicans of using cocaine and participating in orgies. Greene broke with Trump last year over the president’s failed effort to bury the controversy over the late financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Greene’s decision not to seek reelection and to reposition herself outside the MAGA movement, similar to Boebert’s embattled candidacy, represents a collapse of a movement built around aggrandizing Trump as a defender of vulnerable women and children against the predations of a rapacious global elite.

At the time of their election to Congress in 2020, Boebert, Greene and Cawthorn’s willingness to entertain the fringe conspiracy theories pushed by the QAnon movement aligned with a bombastic loyalty to Trump that helped set the mold for Republican lawmakers. Greene, the most prominent member of the trio, reportedly privately urged Trump to declare martial law to overturn the 2020 election. Cawthorn spoke at Trump’s rally at the Ellipse before his supporters marched on the Capitol. Boebert denied giving a tour of the Capitol to rioters the day before the Jan. 6 attack, but offered them a tour after they were pardoned in 2025.

While the trio ardently pressed Trump’s case during his time out of office when Biden was the president, the three lawmakers never worked closely together or functioned as a caucus united by QAnon. After voters in his North Carolina district rejected Cawthorn, Greene and Boebert’s rivalry escalated into verbal combat when Greene reportedly called Boebert a “little b----” for allegedly copying articles of impeachment that she filed against Biden, a claim Boebert denied.

Over the same period, the QAnon movement went into decline while its core tenets were mainstreamed into the Republican Party, Rothschild said.

“I think the QAnon movement as we knew it during the Biden years is dead,” Rothschild said. “The ideas and tenets have been embraced by the conservative Republican movement; they’re just not couched in riddles, obscure symbols and Q drops.”

During her colorful career in Congress, Boebert made headlines for a public mutual groping incident with a man at a Denver theater, showing up in support of Trump at his criminal trial in Manhattan, and calling for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to be jailed or deported.

Boebert's loss is not the first time she’s been buffeted by shifting political winds. Seeking to avoid a tough challenge from a Democratic opponent, she moved to the largely rural and more conservative 4^th Congressional District in 2023.

“I think what voters rejected is 2020 election denialism,” Rothschild said. “They rejected the idea that Jeffrey Epstein can skate by with no accountability. They rejected the conspiracy theories that Donald Trump made his name on. A lot of the most conspiratorial members of the Republican Party are being rejected. Voters don’t want conspiracy theories and re-warmed Q drops; they want gas and food to be cheaper.”