Lauren Opal Boebert ( BOH-bərt; née Roberts, December 15, 1986) is an American politician, businesswoman, and gun-rights activist serving as the U.S. Representative for Colorado's 3rd congressional district since 2021. Boebert owns Shooters Grill, a restaurant in Rifle, Colorado, where staff members are encouraged to openly carry firearms. She ran as a Republican for Colorado's 3rd congressional district in 2020; Boebert defeated incumbent U.S. Representative Scott Tipton in the primary election and the Democratic nominee, former state Representative Diane Mitsch Bush, in the general election. She has close connections to militia groups such as Three Percenters. Early life Boebert was born in Altamonte Springs, Florida on December 15, 1986. When she was 12, she and her family moved to the Montbello neighborhood of Denver and later to Aurora, Colorado, before settling in Rifle, Colorado in 2003.Boebert has said that her parents voted for Democrats and that they lived in poverty in Denver, where her mother received welfare. By 2001, when Boebert was 14, her mother registered as a Republican. Boebert credits her first job at 15 years old, at a McDonald's restaurant, for changing her views about whether government assistance is necessary.Boebert dropped out of high school her senior year (she would have graduated in 2004) because she had a child, and took a job as an assistant manager at a McDonald's in Rifle. She obtained her GED in 2020, about a month before her first election primary. She later got a job filing for a natural gas drilling company and then became a pipeliner, a member of a team that builds and maintains pipelines and pumping stations. Small business ownership Boebert and her husband opened Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado, in 2013. According to Boebert, she obtained a concealed carry permit after a person was assaulted in a nearby alley and began encouraging the restaurant's servers to open carry firearms. The Boeberts also owned the since-closed Smokehouse 1776 restaurant across the street from Shooters Grill. In 2015, they opened another restaurant, Putters, on the Rifle Creek Golf Course.In 2017, 80 people who attended a Garfield County fair became ill from food poisoning after eating pork sliders from a temporary location set up by Shooters Grill and Smokehouse 1776. They did not have the required permits to operate the temporary location, and the Garfield County health department determined that the outbreak was caused by unsafe food handling at the event.According to a profile in The Guardian, "Boebert made a name for herself after loudly protesting against the Democratic state governor Jared Polis's orders to close businesses to fight the coronavirus pandemic." In mid-May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Boebert violated the state's stay-at-home order by reopening Shooters Grill for dine-in service. She received a cease and desist order from Garfield County but said she would not close her business. The next day she moved tables outside, onto the sidewalk, and in parking spaces. The following day, Garfield County suspended her food license. By late May, with the state allowing restaurants to reopen at 50% capacity, the county dropped its temporary restraining order. U.S. House of Representatives Election In September 2019, Boebert made national headlines when she confronted Beto O'Rourke, a candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, at an Aurora town hall meeting over his proposal for a buy-back program and a ban on assault-style rifles like AR-15s. Later that month, she opposed a measure banning guns in city-owned buildings at a meeting of the Aspen City Council. The ordinance passed unanimously a month later.Boebert was an organizer of the December 2019 "We Will Not Comply!" rally opposing Colorado's red flag law that allows guns to be taken from people deemed a threat. The American Patriots Three Percent militia, affiliated with the Three Percenters, provided security, and members of the Proud Boys attended the rally.In December 2019, Boebert announced her candidacy for Colorado's 3rd congressional district of the United States House of Representatives in the 2020 elections, beginning with a challenge to incumbent Scott Tipton in the Republican primary. During her campaign, Boebert criticized Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of "The Squad", positioning herself as a conservative alternative to Ocasio-Cortez. Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, suggested that Boebert wanted to motivate Republican voters to participate in the primary during a slow election cycle by stirring up their anger at Ocasio-Cortez and others.Boebert criticized Tipton's voting record, which she said did not reflect the 3rd district. Before the primary, President Donald Trump endorsed Tipton. During the campaign, Boebert characterized Tipton as unsupportive of Trump. She accused Tipton of supporting amnesty for undocumented immigrants by voting for H.R. 5038, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2019, saying that the act has a provision that leads to citizenship and also provides funding to undocumented farm workers for housing. Boebert criticized Tipton's efforts on funding for the Paycheck Protection Program, saying that he did not fight hard enough for more money for the program, which ran out of money within two weeks. In her campaign against Tipton, Boebert raised just over $150,000 through the June 30 primary.In a May 2020 interview on a QAnon-supporting web show, Boebert said she was "very familiar with" the conspiracy theory: "Everything I've heard of Q, I hope that this is real because it only means America is getting stronger and better." QAnon, which the FBI has classified as a domestic terrorism threat and which has been called a cult, is a far-right conspiracy network. On July 6, 2020, Boebert said of QAnon, "I'm not a follower. QAnon is a lot of things to different people. I was very vague in what I said before. I'm not into conspiracies. I'm into freedom and the Constitution of the United States of America. I'm not a follower".In what Politico described as a "stunning upset", Boebert won the Republican nomination on June 30, 2020, with 54.6% of the vote. She was the first primary challenger to defeat a sitting U.S. Representative in Colorado in 48 years, since Democratic Representative Wayne Aspinall lost to Alan Merson. Boebert has pledged to join the Freedom Caucus when she takes her seat in the House.Boebert faced Democratic former state representative Diane Mitsch Bush, a retired sociology professor from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, in the November general election. Boebert said that she believed Mitsch Bush's "platform is more government control" and that Mitsch Bush had a "socialist agenda". In late July, Boebert was considered the front-runner. A survey taken in September and paid for by Michael Bloomberg's Democratic-leaning House Majority PAC had Mitsch Bush ahead by one p.... Discover the Lauren Blakely popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Lauren Blakely books.