Who Is Eileen Laubacher? The Highlands Ranch Rear Admiral Running Against Lauren Boebert

Democrats have run candidates against Douglas County's congressional seat every two years for as long as anyone can remember, and the county has not noticed. Eileen Laubacher is the first one built to be noticed: a two-star admiral, a former Republican, and a Highlands Ranch resident who broke the fundraising record for a Colorado House challenger in her first 54 days.

A Navy life

Laubacher was born Eileen Haskins around 1968 into a Navy family: her father, Vice Admiral Michael Haskins, served 37 years, and her grandfather was a World War II combat diver. She graduated from the Naval Academy in 1990 with a degree in political science; her father administered her oath as a midshipman.

Her first years were operational and intelligence assignments, in Bermuda, at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and at the Joint Analysis Center in Molesworth, England. In 1998 she moved to the Navy Reserve, which is when she and her husband relocated to Colorado, and spent the next quarter century in intelligence and command roles supporting Space Command, Strategic Command and Pacific Command. She deployed to Afghanistan in 2009.

She was promoted to rear admiral in 2018. From 2019 to 2022 she was the senior U.S. defense official and defense attache at the embassy in New Delhi, the top American military representative in India. From 2022 until her retirement in 2024 she was a special assistant to the president and the National Security Council's senior director for South Asia. Her decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal and the Legion of Merit.

A homeschooling military mother in Highlands Ranch, a Republican until 2024, running as the Democrat. That biography is the campaign.

Family and the Highlands Ranch part

The Laubachers have lived in Highlands Ranch since her Reserve years. They have five children, whom the campaign says she and Chris homeschooled at their kitchen table, and three grandchildren. That biography, a homeschooling military mother in Highlands Ranch, is a Republican biography by the standards of this county, which is the point. She was a registered Republican for most of her adult life, went unaffiliated in 2024, and registered as a Democrat on March 27, 2025.

Highlands Ranch is inside the 4th District, so she is running for the seat she votes in. Her opponent is not from here: Boebert moved from the Western Slope to Windsor, in Weld County, to run in the 4th in 2024.

What she is running on

Her platform, published at eileenforcolorado.com, is written for the district she is trying to win, not the one she lives in: it reads like a rural-hospital and farm-bill agenda with a Highlands Ranch cost-of-living section attached. The five planks, in her order:

• Affordability. End the tariffs raising the price of fuel, fertilizer, equipment and groceries; middle-class tax cuts; make data centers pay their own energy and infrastructure costs; crack down on price gouging. On health care: a $35 monthly insulin cap for everyone, letting Medicaid negotiate more drug prices, breaking up hospital and insurer monopolies, and "keep the government out of your personal healthcare decisions."
• Rural Colorado. Reverse the Medicaid cuts she says threaten rural hospitals, protect the 340B drug program, fund EMS as an essential service, pass a long-term Farm Bill, and build long-term water infrastructure.
• Corruption and spending. No corporate PAC money (she says her average donation is $21), term limits and age limits for Congress, a ban on congressional stock trading, an end to dark money, and cutting tax breaks for data centers, corporations and billionaires. "No more expensive and unnecessary wars."
• Safety. "Secure our border, preventing uncontrolled illegal immigration," deport people here illegally who commit serious crimes, and pass bipartisan reform that includes "a pathway to citizenship for hardworking people who want to contribute to our economy." Equipment, cancer prevention and mental health funding for first responders. For veterans: stop VA privatization, expand mobile clinics and telehealth, full care for burn-pit exposure, raise servicemember pay.
• Water and growth. Bar foreign ownership of Colorado water and farmland, a 50-year water infrastructure plan, protect Colorado's interstate compact position, and an "all-of-the-above" energy approach.

Read as a whole it is a platform a moderate Republican could have run on in 2016: border security, fiscal restraint, veterans, water, plus the insulin cap and the Medicaid defense that mark it as a Democratic campaign in 2026. That is the design. The thing to press her on at a forum is where she breaks with her own party's leadership, because the platform is written to avoid saying.

The platform does not say why she left the Republican Party, but she has, on the record. At a September 2025 question-and-answer session in Haxtun, reported by the Haxtun-Fleming Herald, she said she had been a Republican and an admirer of John McCain around the time he ran against Barack Obama, and that what changed her affiliation was the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which she watched from her post in India: "That was really hard to watch. That wasn't me. I knew I couldn't be a part of that." On why she is running as a Democrat, she told CPR News in September 2026: "I just felt called to try to make a difference. I wanted my kids and my grandkids to know that in this time I was willing to do something uncomfortable and difficult and scary to try to make this country a better place."

The money

She announced in May 2025 and raised $1.9 million in her first 54 days, beating the Colorado House-challenger record Adam Frisch set in 2023. FEC filings through June 30 show $10.35 million raised for the cycle, $6.74 million spent and $3.61 million on hand, against $1.01 million raised and $247,202 on hand for Boebert. Whatever the exact figure, she can outspend the incumbent here by a wide margin.

Her path, honestly

It runs through this county and probably ends here. Douglas County's 2024 numbers (Boebert 48.2, the Democrat 47.7, Trump winning the county by 7) say a Democrat who removes the usual objections can win the county's congressional vote outright. Laubacher removes most of them: she is local, she is a veteran, she was a Republican, and she has the money to say so on television. Carrying Douglas County would be a result nobody in either party predicted two years ago.

Carrying the district is another matter. The 4th is drawn nine points more Republican than the country, most of its map is plains counties that do not swing, Cook rates it Solid Republican, and Sabato and Decision Desk rate it Likely Republican. A realistic good night for Laubacher is winning Douglas County clearly and losing the seat by single digits. A great night is something nobody has polled.

Her opponent: Lauren Boebert. The race: Boebert vs Laubacher.

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.