"When I first looked at Lauren after she was born and as she got older, I used to think: 'You're going to be Miss America one day,'" Bentz told Westword during Boebert's election party on June 25, after her daughter defeated her Republican rivals in the District 4 GOP primary race.
"Those were, like, the first words I said to her," Bentz remembers. "I didn't know it was going to be this Miss America."
Across the country, people have wondered how Boebert manages to win over voters despite moving to a new district with a past full of controversies. Boebert, who is the current rep for District 3, beat her opponents in the GOP primary race by roughly 36,000 votes or more — amassing nearly 44 percent of the total vote, according to the July 11 election numbers. State Representative Jerry Sonnenberg came in second with just over 14 percent of the vote.
Boebert's Republican rivals managed to reel in over 69,000 votes combined, while Boebert — who switched districts late last year — brought in 53,804. The Associated Press declared victory for her after the first round of election results were released.
The congresswoman has been consistently called out since she took office in 2021 for far-right views, ties to Christian nationalism and pushing false political narratives. Boebert has also had run-ins with the law, and for thrusting her personal life and family into the media spotlight.
In her 2022 book, My American Life, for example, she discusses her husband's 2004 arrest for indecent exposure and subsequent plea deal, which saw him admitting to the charge "instead of fighting for his innocence in court." Boebert herself has received a summons or been arrested at least four times in the past decade, according to court records.
A 2016 careless driving incident resulted in her being tossed in jail for approximately 100 minutes for failing to appear in court, per the Denver Post. A plea deal later led to the careless driving charge being dropped and only the unsafe-vehicle charge sticking. Boebert's criminal record also includes a charge of disorderly conduct for verbal altercations and dog-code violations related to the alleged harassment of a neighbor and her pooches.
Earlier this year, the congresswoman was caught on Vail Pass going 84 miles per hour in a 65 mile-per-hour zone by the Colorado State Patrol, leading to a $174.50 speeding ticket and a scheduled court appearance for July 26 after she failed to pay the fine on time. Boebert didn't contact Eagle County District Court until July 3 to finally pay off the May 12 ticket, according to the Clerk of the Court's office, after finding out she had a court date scheduled this month because she failed to pay.
Last year, Boebert revealed that her eldest son, Tyler — who is currently facing felony charges in Garfield County for a series of car break-ins and thefts — had gotten an underage girl pregnant while he was seventeen, nearly the same age Boebert was when she had him.
"It's hereditary," she recalled jokingly telling Tyler.
More recently, Boebert has found herself becoming the butt of online jokes and political jabs related to her infamous Beetlejuice incident from last year, in which she and a male suitor were booted from Denver's Buell Theatre during a performance of Beetlejuice the musical for behavior that included vaping near a pregnant woman and groping each other.
Over the past few months, folks in CD4 had been telling Boebert's GOP adversaries that they'd never support her because of all her troubles.
State Representative Richard Holtorf, a CD4 candidate who finished fourth in the primary, told the Colorado Sun that was the case with district residents he spoke to personally on the campaign trail in early 2024. But an endorsement Boebert received from Donald Trump in March "carried a lot more weight" than Holtorf and other CD4 candidates had anticipated.
Boebert's mom, however, believes a more hallowed endorsement was at play.
"God protects her," Bentz proclaimed proudly. "She surrounds herself with God, and no matter what's thrown at her, she just keeps moving forward."
Just like Boebert did with her son Tyler, Bentz gave birth to the congresswoman when she was just eighteen, and there are more things the two have in common, according to Bentz, including the way they both like to speak their minds.
And as many people have pointed out on social media and in recent articles, they both have criminal pasts, too.
Bentz used to work at Boebert's restaurant, Shooters Grill, in Rifle before it closed in 2022.
Shawn Bentz/Facebook
"Maybe that's where Lauren gets it," Bentz says about Boebert being a spitfire.
"I speak my mind," Boebert's mother admits. "Whatever is here [points to head] comes out here [points to mouth]. I have never hidden who I am."
Court records first released by the watchdog group American Muckrakers and later obtained by Westword show Bentz was once arrested for felony trespassing in 2016, but the charge was dismissed on June 4 by prosecutors in the 9th Judicial District.
The dismissal was questioned after American Muckrakers made a post about it on June 12, however. The group had alerted the Garfield County Sheriff's Office to Bentz's trespassing charge in 2023 after discovering that she had a warrant out for her arrest.
Asked what she thought about people bringing up the charge online and coming after her daughter, Bentz said she wasn't paying it any mind.
ANOTHER BREAKING BOEBERT CRIME FAMILY UPDATE: The DA in CO has dismissed a felony trespassing charge from 2016 against Shawna Bentz. She is @Laurenboebert's alleged mother and evaded arrest on this charge until 2023 after we brought the warrant to the attention of… pic.twitter.com/Ia6VeJK4Px
— American Muckrakers (@AmericanMuck) June 12, 2024
"I mean, honestly, I don't study the haters," she told Westword. "If I did, I wouldn't sleep, I wouldn't be smiling all the time."
Bentz confesses, though, that it can be hard just sitting back and staying quiet, especially regarding her daughter and politics.
On Bentz's Facebook page, the 56-year-old has posted conspiracy theories and memes directly from QAnon, the far-right political group behind conspiracy hits like "Pizzagate" and Hollywood's adrenochrome obsession, aka all that Satanic blood-harvesting nonsense.
In January 2023, Bentz — who also goes by "Shawna" — made multiple posts insinuating that Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin had been cloned or replaced by a body double following his on-the-field health scare against the Cincinnati Bengals.
“Can this be done with broken ribs?” Bentz asked in one post, which included a "#whereisdamar" hashtag and video of Hamlin waving to fans from a stadium suite several weeks after his collapse.
One user commented, “I’ve got a thousand bucks that says he’s been dead for weeks."
Bentz replied, "Yes, and the NFL made all those players get the JAB they are freaking.” As her time in the public eye continues, Bentz says she has tried her best to keep comments and opinions closer to her chest on social media. Internet users "attack" Boebert "because it's something good that she's doing," Bentz said, allowing Boebert's mom "to walk on and go forward because I am proud of her. I'm so proud of her."
"I'm learning," she said. "In the beginning, I ignored it."
Over the years, Boebert and Bentz went through tumultuous times together, moving from Florida to Colorado — and then back to the Sunshine State again before returning and settling in the Denver metro area — as different men came and went in Bentz's life. They both have claimed to not know the identity of Boebert's father.
“My mom could be, in a word, ‘flighty,’” Boebert wrote in her 2022 memoir, My American Life. “Perhaps that is where my need for adventure originates from.”
Bentz has spoken openly about her life and Boebert's hectic childhood in the past, telling the Washington Post in a March 2024 article about how she "basically never had a leash on her." This also extended to Boebert's hobbies and talents, which included being "really good" at rapping to Eminem songs.
"I begged her to [rap at the CD4 election party]," Bentz told Westword before bringing up a story about Boebert wanting to try out for the MTV show FANatic, where fans audition to meet their celebrity idols.
"She was probably in sixth or seventh grade," Bentz recalled. "She had to make up a rap."
While she may not have become the next Lil' Kim or Miss America, Bentz still talks about Boebert like a typical pageant mom or celebrity parent.
"She has all kinds of talents and things people don't know about her," Bentz said. "For example, Lauren has the biggest heart. When she had her restaurant [Shooters Grill] in Rifle, she hired people from the jail. ... She was constantly helping people. And that's what she excelled in, is service. And that's what she is still doing."
Looking ahead to the future and Boebert's political horizon, Bentz says she isn't sure what's in store for the congresswoman or what she wants to do after her time in Washington, D.C., comes to an end.
"Honestly, I don't go into the future, because she always surprises me," Bentz concludes.
"I don't want to say what I want for her, because I know whatever she chooses, it's going to be good. And she's going to exceed tremendously in it, because she's a go-getter. People might not like that about her, but it's like I always say: 'If you don't like Lauren Boebert, you don't know Lauren Boebert.'"
In a survey of U.S. adults conducted by Statista last June, just 8 percent of American respondents had a very favorable opinion of Boebert, while 30 percent had a very unfavorable opinion. But in Colorado's CD4, a Republican stronghold, Boebert is a strong favorite against Democrat Trisha Calvarese in the November election.
