Lauren Boebert vs Eileen Laubacher: The 4th District Race, and Why Douglas County Decides How Close It Gets

*Updated September 22, 2026, with ratings, campaign finance and the general-election frame. Our July primary-night version is folded in below.*

Colorado's 4th Congressional District runs from the Wyoming line to the Kansas line and covers most of the eastern plains, but its population center is here: Castle Rock, Parker, Highlands Ranch and nearly all of Douglas County. That makes this county the swing part of a district that, taken whole, is not a swing district at all.

Two different races

The handicappers call this Solid Republican (Cook) or Likely Republican (Sabato, Decision Desk), and they are probably right about the seat. The 4th is drawn nine points more Republican than the country. Boebert won it 54 to 42 in 2024, and the plains counties that make up most of its map do not swing.

Douglas County is a different race. Boebert's 2024 result here was 48.2 percent to Trisha Calvarese's 47.7, a margin of 0.57 points, in a year Donald Trump carried the same county by about 7. She ran more than six points behind the top of her own ticket, against a Democrat with a fraction of the money Laubacher has. Five months earlier, in the June 2024 special election, Greg Lopez had beaten the same Calvarese here by 11.8 points. Douglas County voters did not swing against Republicans that year. They swung against one Republican.

So the honest framing is: Boebert is favored to keep the seat but not safe, and Douglas County is a genuine toss-up that she starts about half a point ahead in. The precedent worth holding in mind is 2022, when Adam Frisch outraised her in a district drawn about as red as this one, was dismissed by every rating, and lost by 546 votes. Laubacher has more money than Frisch had at this point, a stronger local biography, and a midterm under a Republican president instead of a Democratic one.

Lauren Boebert

Boebert, 39, represented the Western Slope's 3rd District for two terms, surviving 2022 by 546 votes after a recount, and moved to the 4th in December 2023 when Ken Buck's retirement opened it. She won the 2024 general by 12 points. In the House she sits on Natural Resources and Oversight. Her 2026 record includes co-sponsoring a surveillance-accountability bill with Rep. Thomas Massie and opposing an extension of FISA Section 702 without a warrant requirement, a libertarian streak that plays better in this county than her national profile does.

Her problem is not the district. It is that the part of the district with the most voters keeps telling her something, and the fundraising suggests she is not spending to answer it: $1.01 million raised for the whole cycle through June 30, per the FEC, against a challenger who has raised $10.35 million.

Eileen Laubacher

Laubacher is a 1990 Naval Academy graduate, the daughter of a vice admiral, who spent 34 years in the Navy and Navy Reserve, deployed to Afghanistan in 2009, made rear admiral in 2018, served as the senior U.S. defense official in India from 2019 to 2022, and then ran South Asia policy on the National Security Council until she retired in 2024. She and her husband, Chris, have lived in Highlands Ranch since her Reserve years; they have five children, whom the campaign says they homeschooled, and three grandchildren.

She was a registered Republican for most of her adult life, went unaffiliated in 2024, and has been a registered Democrat since March 27, 2025. She announced in May 2025, raised $1.9 million in her first 54 days, a record for a Colorado House candidate, and by June 30 had raised $10.35 million for the cycle with $3.61 million in the bank, per the FEC. The money buys her the thing Boebert most needs to prevent: enough television and mail to introduce a two-star admiral from Highlands Ranch to voters who have never heard of her.

The environment, and the complaint

Two things since our September 22 update push the seat further into play.

The national climate is the worst for a president's party in a midterm in living memory. Reuters/Ipsos had President Trump at 32 percent approval on September 21, a career low; Pew's August analysis put him second-lowest at this point of any presidency since polling began, behind only Nixon in his final days. Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by about eight points in the averages and by 11 in a late-September Emerson poll. The party's House committee says it is contesting 58 Republican-held seats, including districts Trump carried by 15 to 20 points, and GV Wire reported that a Trump-aligned super PAC has started spending to defend a Kentucky seat he won by 15. A district drawn R+9 with a ten-to-one money gap is squarely inside that target zone.

Then the complaint. In mid-September, David Wheeler of American Muckrakers, a Democratic-aligned opposition group, filed a sworn complaint with the House Ethics Committee alleging that Boebert had sexual relationships with three House employees under her supervision, including a years-long relationship with her former district director, Clarice Navarro, and that she arranged a $200,000 payment to keep a former staffer from filing her own complaint. Boebert's office called the allegations "utterly false"; she called them "a scam" in a video. Navarro said they are "entirely false and defamatory." Axios, which covered the filing on September 23, noted that no news organization has confirmed the allegations, and neither have we. It is an accusation from a partisan source and should be weighed as one. On September 24 a Weld County judge granted Boebert a temporary protection order against Wheeler, requiring him to stay at least 100 yards from her and her residence and to contact her only through his attorney, with a hearing October 1 on whether to make it permanent. Wheeler called the order "a political stunt" on X, said he has not been in the same state as Boebert since 2022, and told Fox31 he intends to file a defamation suit against Boebert in Weld County the same day. What the complaint does, regardless of merit, is give a challenger with $3.6 million in the bank a story to run against an incumbent with $247,000 to answer it.

What would have to happen for Douglas County to flip

Not much, on paper. Boebert's 2024 margin here was about half a point. A midterm under a Republican president historically costs the president's party a few points. A challenger who is a former Republican, a veteran and a local removes the usual reasons a Douglas County independent would refuse to vote for a Democrat. And Laubacher can outspend Boebert here by an order of magnitude.

Against that: 2024 was a high-turnout presidential year in which Democrats were motivated; a midterm electorate here skews older and more Republican. Boebert's 2024 underperformance may have priced in everything voters dislike about her already, leaving less to lose. And no public poll of this race exists that we can find, so anyone who tells you the county number is guessing.

What would have to happen for the seat to flip

More than the county, less than the ratings imply. Laubacher would need to win Douglas County by a real margin, not half a point, and then hold Boebert's plains-county margins to something below her 2024 numbers. Every rating calls that unlikely. We would put it at roughly one chance in three, and rising, because it has already nearly happened once: Frisch in 2022 did almost exactly this against the same candidate with less money and no local base. The likelier outcome is a district that gets much closer than 12 points because of Douglas County, and a Douglas County that votes for the Democrat for Congress, which its current Republican board and sheriff would find hard to explain away.

*Updated September 29: money from FEC filings through June 30 (next reports October 15), the national environment, the mid-September ethics complaint and the September 24 protection order.* We will update this page with polling.

More: every race on your ballot, the full ballot guide, and whether Douglas County could actually vote blue. We do not endorse candidates. Campaigns can send corrections to hello@discoverdougco.com.