Lauren Boebert

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Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, a right-wing firebrand who has been in and out of favor with President Donald Trump, was fighting for her seat in an unexpectedly tight race. She trailed her Democratic opponent by a few thousand votes as of Friday morning.

Election analysts had favored Boebert over her challenger, Eileen Laubacher, a retired rear admiral in the Navy, in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, long considered one of the state’s safest Republican seats.

That the race has yet to be called three days after the election offered yet another sign of how dissatisfaction with Trump’s policies has hurt Republicans in the midterms.

The district encompasses a mix of rural farming and ranching communities on the Great Plains and in suburban hubs east of Denver.

Laubacher, who served on the National Security Council in the Biden administration, was leading in the district’s more populous, suburban counties. She campaigned on ending Trump’s tariffs, enacting tax cuts for the middle class, strengthening rural hospitals and fighting corruption.

Boebert initially gained political fame in 2020 as a hard-right gun activist, unseating a more moderate five-term Republican, Scott Tipton, in Colorado’s 3rd District, which is speckled with progressive upscale ski towns but dominated by conservative ranching and working-class communities. She joined the conservative Freedom Caucus that year and later helped lead the Second Amendment Caucus.

Before being elected to Congress, she had owned a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill in Colorado’s ranch country, where she encouraged her wait staff to carry loaded firearms while serving customers.

In Washington, she boasted about carrying her Glock handgun and clashed with Democrats from time to time, drawing attention for her fiery statements. Shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, she triggered an alarm while passing through a newly installed metal detector and refusing to allow guards to search her handbag.

After she won a close reelection in the 3rd District in 2022, she switched to the state’s more reliably conservative 4th District for her 2024 campaign and won by about 12 points that year.

Boebert had been an ardent Trump supporter, but she fell out of his favor last year over her support for the release of the Epstein files. This year, Trump had criticized her as “weak,” but then he endorsed her just before the election, calling her a ”MAGA warrior.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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