Lauren Boebert busted spending campaign cash at bar that hosts drag shows

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has long opposed the art of drag, demanding drag queens stay out of her district. But apparently, she’s not opposed to spending her campaign donors’ money at a bar in her district that hosts drag shows.

Going through her most recent campaign finance filings, Politico found that she spent $317.48 at the Hooch Craft Cocktail Bar in Aspen. Hooch is the bar owned by Quinn Gallagher, the man who Boebert went to see the musical Beetlejuice with last month. Both of them got escorted out of the theater for their disruptive behavior, which allegedly included singing, vaping, and groping each other while children and a pregnant woman were nearby.

Related:

Lauren Boebert is afraid her groping scandal cost her the 2024 election, panel suggests

“The voters are sick and tired of this embarrassment,” her Democratic challenger said. He’s beating her in the polls.

Hooch is a gay-friendly bar that hosts drag shows, including the “Winter Wonderland Burlesque & Drag Show” this past January and several events for Aspen Gay Ski Week. The bar has worked with drag performer Kendra Metric, who told TMZ that Boebert had been seeing Gallagher for several months. Boebert claims that she is no longer dating Gallagher because he’s a Democrat.

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Boebert’s campaign is not commenting on the spending, which was listed as “event catering” in the campaign filings. The filings do not say what the nature of the event was or how it related to her campaign.

Boebert is strongly opposed to drag performance.

“Take your children to CHURCH, not drag bars,” she tweeted in 2022.

Several months later, she shared a picture of a sign promoting a drag story hour and wrote: “Sending a message to all the drag queens out there: stay away from the children in Colorado’s Third District!”

News of Boebert’s questionable use of campaign funds comes as her Democratic opponent Adam Frisch’s campaign finance filings show that he raised nearly $3.4 million in the third quarter, ending the quarter with over $4.3 million in reserves. Frisch lost his challenge for Boebert’s seat in 2022 by just 546 votes, which was less than 1% of the vote in the district.

Cook Political Report described the race as a “toss-up” earlier this summer before Boebert was kicked out of Beetlejuice.