A couple at last weekend’s Thorntonfest approached Manny Rutinel, a contender in the state’s most cutthroat congressional race, with one question on their minds.
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“Where do you stand in regard to ICE?” the woman asked, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Rutinel, who was pressing the flesh on a hot, sunny afternoon in Thornton’s Carpenter Park, was more than ready with an answer. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and crackdown on people living in the country illegally have provided reliable talking points for the 31-year-old state representative from Commerce City.
“They’re terrorizing Latino immigrants,” Rutinel, whose mother immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic, told the couple. “It’s personal for me.”
Nearly 24 hours earlier and about seven miles away, Shannon Bird — the other Democrat running in the 8th Congressional District — was going door to door in the Sherrelwood neighborhood in Adams County. The former state representative carried a stack of campaign flyers emblazoned with the words: “Fight Trump. Stop ICE.”
Bird, 57, and Rutinel are facing off in the Democratic primary on June 30. They’re each hoping to go to battle this November with Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans to represent the 8th District, which largely covers suburbs and farm fields across parts of three counties north of Denver.
The race revolves around the familiar issues Democrats have been bringing up since Trump regained the White House last year: immigration, the cost of living and the environment. But Bird and Rutinel, separated in age by 26 years, say they bring their own skill sets and perspectives to a district that has landed in the national spotlight.
“This is where you find out where people are at — what they’re all about,” said Bird, as a campaign aide used a smartphone to shoot footage of her walking along Douglas Drive. “I know the community — I have an authentic connection to the people in this community. To win, people have to know you care about them.”
Several people who opened their doors on that hot Friday afternoon pledged their vote to Bird, including 80-year-old Patricia Hall, who has lived in her Albert Court house since 1972.
For Hall, it comes down to Bird’s longevity in the district — a quarter-century of volunteering for Adams 12 Five Star Schools and serving on the Westminster City Council and at the state Capitol for the better part of two terms.
Rutinel has lived in Adams County for five years. Bird has lived in Westminster for 25 years.
“She’s been out talking to the people,” said Hall, who worried about Colorado’s experience deficit in the nation’s capital should U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet be elected Colorado governor this fall. “We gotta get some of the experience back in Washington.”
While the candidates are putting their feet to the ground to talk to voters, the much bigger outreach effort is happening on television and online. Between fundraising by both campaigns and a gush of spending by outside groups, the 8th Congressional District primary has turned into an expensive affair.
Bird and Rutinel together have raised more than $5 million, and outside groups have reported independent spending totaling nearly $5.8 million in the primary.
“The 8th District is still the race to watch,” said Robert Preuhs, a political science professor at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.
The district, Colorado’s newest, covers Denver’s northern suburbs and the agricultural land and oil fields stretching to Greeley. It could play a crucial role in determining control of a closely divided Congress in 2027, given its ultra-competitive political breakdown — a dynamic that has sent representatives from both major parties to Washington in less than four years.
Until recently, the Democratic primary was a three-person contest. But in late May, former Marine Evan Munsing called it quits. He did not immediately endorse anyone in the race.
With an animated — and often angry — Democratic voting base in this election cycle, Preuhs said such angst could play in favor of a relative newcomer to the district, like Rutinel, who has tried to push a more left-leaning message on the trail.
“Voters are really looking for something different,” the professor said. “They’re seeking that candidate that can push back on ICE. I think he has a natural tie and attraction to Latinos in the district.”
The Latino factor and big outside money
The 8th District is Colorado’s most heavily Latino, with , according to data from the 2021 Colorado redistricting effort. The Hispanic vote was thought to be a critical part of former U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo’s victory in 2022 over state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, according to an exit poll conducted during the election.
In late April, the Latino Victory Project pledged a “six-figure, primary election” TV blitz on behalf of Rutinel, who it said “will protect our communities from MAGA’s extremist policies,” referring to Trump’s coalition. The progressive advocacy group spends in support of Latino candidates.
Since then, the group — and its political action committee, the Latino Victory Fund — have ramped up their spending, reporting nearly $1.9 million in independent expenditures in support of Rutinel or opposing Bird, according to Federal Election Commission records. Another Latino-supporting group, SOMOS PAC, has reported spending nearly $898,000 to help Rutinel.
Those amounts are part of nearly $4.1 million spent by outside groups on ads, mailers and other activities in support of Rutinel or opposing Bird as of Friday. That sum includes $949,000 spent by You Can Push Back, a super PAC tied to California tech billionaire Chris Larsen that lauds Rutinel’s sponsorship of Colorado artificial intelligence regulations.
Less outside money — $1.7 million, according to FEC filings — has been spent to help Bird, either in support of her or opposing Rutinel. About $1.3 million of that has come from Women Vote, a super PAC associated with Emily’s List, which supports women running for office.
In direct contributions, Rutinel holds a distinct money advantage over Bird, having raised nearly twice as much as she has — around $3.5 million to about $1.8 million. Just over two weeks from the primary election, their ads — and those bought by outside groups — have become fixtures on metro Denver TV screens.
Yazmin Torres, who owns the Neveria La Unica food truck, says she connects with Rutinel, a fluent Spanish speaker raised by a single mother. The candidate paid her a visit at Thorntonfest last weekend and she thanked him for his work on a 2025 bill that cuts red tape for food truck operators.
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As a single mom herself, Torres said she felt a kinship with Rutinel. She also wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer. Rutinel earned his law degree from Yale University.
“My dream is to go to law school, so he’s an inspiration to do that,” she said. “It’s nice to have someone to represent us.”
But securing the Latino vote in the district is no guarantee of victory. In 2024, the showed a strong preference among Latino voters for Caraveo over Evans — by more than 20% — but Evans, who is also Latino, prevailed in that contest.
Bird, an attorney before getting into politics, has her own story of growing up with a single mother. She often recounts that her family stayed afloat by relying on tips from her grandmother’s casino dealer job in Reno, Nevada. Those are the kinds of economic struggles she hears from potential constituents while knocking on doors.
“The high cost of living — and now with the Iran war — the cost of gas,” Bird said. “And those energy costs spread throughout the economy.”
Her opponent’s decision to support a state budget this year that included cuts to Medicaid has become one of Bird’s campaign attack lines. At a late May candidate forum in Greeley, she told Rutinel and the audience that she would “absolutely not have voted to cut Medicaid.”
“He should have fought to use the rainy day fund to hold off the worst of these cuts,” Bird said in an interview with The Denver Post. “Both Gabe Evans and Manny Rutinel believe that cutting Medicaid is a way to pass a budget.”
Rutinel dismisses Bird’s allegations, saying he tried to save Medicaid funds in the Colorado budget but was unable to marshal the support amongst his colleagues to do so.
“I did the work to bring amendments to dip into the reserves further,” he said.
Rutinel said he grew up on Medicaid, so he knows its importance firsthand.
“Saving Medicaid is personal for me,” he said.
In turn, Rutinel regularly critiques Bird’s vote against a 2025 bill in the state House that aimed to further curtail federal immigration authorities’ access to public spaces in Colorado, from government buildings to libraries to public schools. He said he is “severely disappointed that Shannon Bird was the only House Democrat to vote against it.”
“She’s trying to pull a fast one,” Rutinel told folks hiding from the sun at the covered Brighton Writers Group booth at Thorntonfest. “We need to be fighting for the people who are struggling.”
Voters in the 8th District, he said, may have wanted more oversight at the southern border than what former President Joe Biden provided, but they don’t want the chaotic — and sometimes violent — mass deportation agenda of this president.
“People tell me Donald Trump and Gabe Evans were going to go after the criminals — and they’re going after the grandmas,” he said. “People are telling me they feel lied to.”
Plenty of agreement
Bird calls Rutinel’s accusation on the ICE bill apocryphal. She said her “no” vote on Senate Bill 276 happened during a committee hearing on the bill, which she said needed improvement before going to a floor vote in the House.
Bird said she regrets being absent the day the bill came up for a floor vote in the House a few weeks later — a missed vote she blames on a family medical emergency.
“It was one of the few votes I missed, and I regret that,” Bird told The Post earlier this year.
Rutinel, she said, has been using that bill to mischaracterize her position on ICE and Trump’s immigration policy. She says she has the only comprehensive plan to overhaul ICE, with requirements for body-worn cameras and officers who are better vetted and trained.
“I think Manny has a record he can’t defend,” she said.
Immigration will prove an important issue in the 8th Congressional District, said Preuhs, the political science professor. Though ICE’s footprint in Colorado has been lighter than in other American cities, the issue is never far from a district with so many Latinos.
“You have a Democratic voting constituency that is adamantly against Trump and they’re looking for a strong advocate for their position,” Preuhs said.
But if the forum in Greeley last month showed anything, it’s that the two Democrats running for the nomination agree on much — including opposition to a federal ban on hydraulic fracturing to extract oil, support for a ban on oil and gas leases on federal land, and support for a boost in the federal minimum wage.
In recent weeks, Rutinel has been on the defensive after the Colorado Sun reported that he had reversed or softened past positions in support of a fracking ban, cancellation of student debt and a single-payer healthcare system. His campaign pushed back on some of the outlet’s characterizations.
The 8th Congressional District partially lies in Weld County, which is Colorado’s most prolific producer of oil and gas. Agriculture is also a big presence in the district, and both Bird and Rutinel have slammed Trump’s tariffs, many of which were overturned in February by the Supreme Court, as unfriendly to farmers.
“Congress needs to pass legislation to make it clear who has the power to tariff,” Bird told The Post.
Rutinel, who was an economist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before getting into politics, was equally tough on the body he is vying to join when it comes to preserving its power of the purse.
“If we had a willingness from Congress to pull back these corrupt and chaotic tariff policies, we could bring down prices,” he said. “It’s putting so many of the family farms and ranchers at risk.”
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