After voting for rival candidates for House speaker 13 times over four days, Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert helped hand the gavel to GOP leader Kevin McCarthy by voting “present” late Friday night.

The procedural move by Boebert and a pair of fellow McCarthy critics allowed the California Republican to finally win the chamber’s top spot in a historic 15th roll call vote after dramatic twists and turns stretched the proceedings past midnight in Washington, D.C.

Another Colorado Republican, Ken Buck, provided McCarthy with a crucial vote after returning to the Capitol from Colorado midway through the night’s first vote, though that tally finished with McCarthy still a single vote short of the required majority.

Following the deadlocked vote, Republicans at first attempted to adjourn but then reversed course after reportedly being able to twist the arm of another McCarthy critic, and then held the final vote, which McCarthy won.

Without a speaker, the House was prevented from swearing in members for the new Congress and couldn’t begin conducting business.

Boebert, a Silt Republican who won reelection to a second term by a narrow margin in November, was among McCarthy’s most prominent detractors this week, including nominating two other Republicans for speaker.

By voting “present” in the final two roll calls instead of voting for another Republican, Boebert – and eventually five other Republicans – lowered the threshold McCarthy had to clear in order to claim victory.

Buck, a consistent McCarthy backer earlier in the week, returned to his home state on Thursday for a scheduled medical appointment, his office said.

Doug Lamborn, the third Republican member of Colorado’s House delegation, supported McCarthy through the week.

The state’s five House Democrats voted for their party’s leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, in every roll call vote, along with all of the chamber’s other Democrats.

As the drama unfolded near midnight, Centennial Democrat Jason Crow, who was elected to a third term in November, slammed the GOP.

“What I can tell you and what I know for certain is, in now my own little over four years in Congress, every time the Republicans are put in charge of something, chaos ensues,” he told MSNBC.

Members of Colorado’s delegation, notably Boebert, had played a role in the drama that unfolded over several days.

Boebert and U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, for example, briefly took center stage on Thursday, when the Colorado lawmakers nominated candidates for House speaker as Republicans failed for a third day to agree on a leader for the GOP-controlled chamber.

Boebert and Lafayette Democrat Neguse were among the House members-elect who took turns at the microphone during a series of votes that day amid the standoff between Republicans who backed McCarthy and 20 of their conservative colleagues, who had voted on ballot after ballot to hand the gavel to someone other than the California Republican.

“The last several days have been difficult for the country and for the American people as they have watched what has unfolded in this chamber, as they have seen the dysfunction laid bare on the other side of the aisle,” said Neguse, who ranks No. 5 in House Democratic leadership, in a speech nominating his party’s leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Boebert denied hours earlier that there was anything wrong with the GOP’s inability to settle on a speaker right away.

“I want to get to work, too. Americans are tired of rhetoric and they want results,” she said in a speech nominating Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, the third speaker candidate she had backed in as many days.

McCarthy’s detractors had demanded an array of concessions from the longtime GOP leader, including allowing a single member to compel a vote to remove the speaker and ironclad guarantees that the House will schedule floor votes on specific legislation, including setting congressional term limits and increasing security at the southern border.

Some of the Republicans aligned against McCarthy said they want a requirement that earmarked spending needs a two-thirds majority vote to pass, and others have insisted that party committees refrain from putting their thumb on the scale in House primaries for safely Republican open seats.

The House had not taken more than 11 votes to choose a speaker since before the Civil War.