- GOP Rep. Scott Tipton was defeated by primary challenger Lauren Boebert in Colorado's third congressional district.
- Boebert, a business owner and gun rights advocate, manages a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill and argued that Tipton wasn't sufficiently supportive of President Donald Trump.
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The stakes:
GOP Rep. Scott Tipton lost his re-nomination bid in Colorado's Third Congressional District in a stunning upset in the state's June 30 primaries, Decision Desk HQ projects.
Tipton was defeated in the Republican primary by first-time political candidate Lauren Boebert.
Boebert is a business owner and staunch gun rights advocate who manages a gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill aptly located in the Western Colorado city of Rifle where the servers are known for openly carrying weapons, Colorado Public Radio reported.
She is challenging Tipton from the right and arguing that he isn't conservative enough or sufficiently supportive of President Donald Trump. In December 2019, Trump endorsed Tipton for re-election to the third district, which includes most of Western Colorado and voted for Trump by a margin of 12 percentage points in 2016.
"I'm tired of compromise and I believe that the American people are tired of compromise. It's never enough for the people on the left. We compromise with them far too much, and they always want more," she told CPR, specifically attacking Tipton's votes in favor of the CARES Act and a bill that would have expanded visas for immigrant farmworkers.
Boebert is also sympathetic to the QAnon conspiracy theory, which spreads the baseless belief that a cabal of "deep state" actors in the federal government are working to undermine Trump, with CPR reporting that she said she hopes the basis of the QAnon movement "is real" on a "Q-friendly web show."
Tipton is the fifth sitting member of the House of Representatives to lose re-nomination in the 2020 cycle, following Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Illinois), Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), Rep. Eliot Engel (D-New York), and Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA), who was ousted by his party in a convention.
Tipton's upset loss also makes him the second US House candidate endorsed by Trump to lose a Republican primary in addition to Riggleman, who was defeated in a June 13 convention.
In the June 23 Republican primary runoff for North Carolina's 11th congressional district, formerly held by Trump's now chief of staff Mark Meadows, 24-year-old businessman Madison Cawthorn defeated real estate agent Lynda Bennett, Meadows' hand-picked successor who Trump also endorsed.
Boebert is also the third known supporter or sympathizer of the QAnon movement to win or advance to win a Republican congressional primary.
Jo Rae Perkins, the Republican nominee for US Senate in Oregon, has frequently posted about the QAnon movement on social media.
And Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is advancing to an August 11 Republican primary runoff in Georgia's 14th congressional district, has also supportively referred to the QAnon movement multiple times on social media, in addition to making racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic comments in old videos uncovered by Politico.
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