A gun rights advocate and restaurant owner who defied her state's COVID restrictions has defeated an incumbent five-term Colorado Congressman, winning the right to run for the seat in November.
Lauren Boebert defeated Colorado U.S. Representative Scott Tipton in Tuesday's Republican Party primary for western Colorado's Third Congressional District. The Washington Post reports Tipton was trailing Boebert by 8,700 votes when he conceded the race.
Boebert ran a campaign in which she accused Tipton of not being sufficiently supportive of U.S. President Donald Trump, even though the president had endorsed Tipton, and Tipton is the Trump campaign's co-chair for Colorado.
Trump congratulated Boebert on Twitter, saying, "Congratulations on a really great win."
She will run in November's general election against Diane Mitsch Bush, a former state lawmaker who won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday by defeating businessman James Iacino. Bush lost to Tipton in the 2018 race for the seat.
Boebert made a name for herself earlier this year after loudly protesting Democratic Governor Jared Polis's orders to close businesses to fight the coronavirus pandemic. She opened her Shooters Grill gun-themed restaurant in defiance of closure orders.
Earlier this year, Boebert said in an interview that she was "very familiar" with the QAnon far-right conspiracy theory, but she stopped short of saying she was a follower.
QAnon followers believe that Trump is fighting enemies in the "deep state" and a child sex trafficking ring run by satanic pedophiles and cannibals.
The QAnon name comes from online clues purportedly posted by a high-ranking government official known as "Q."
