The final battle phase is now set in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, where over the next 120 days, two men of the same generation will fight for a seat that could well determine control of Congress.
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The state’s newest district — covering a Front Range area spanning from Greeley down to the northern suburbs of Denver — has seen only two elections. The first went to a Democrat, the second to a Republican. And both victories hinged on very thin margins.
The Republican victor in 2024 was Gabe Evans, of Fort Lupton, who is hoping to turn his freshman term in Congress into at least two more years in office. His challenger, fresh off a resounding victory in the Democratic primary last Tuesday, is state Rep. Manny Rutinel of Commerce City.
And in the middle of it all are the political prognosticators and party operatives, desperate to decipher what voters’ choices this November in Colorado’s most competitive congressional race might say about future trendlines in the electorate at large.
“There’s no doubt this is a race that will attract national money,” said Erin Covey, who analyzes congressional races as U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report.
Cook lists the 8th District among just 18 in the country that it considers toss-ups.
While the typical campaign issues will likely be prominent in the race — immigration, healthcare and economic well-being among them — there are additional complications for the candidates to navigate this fall.
For Evans, 39, it’s President Donald Trump, a Republican whose popularity nationally is hitting new lows. The president is particularly disliked in Colorado.
Cost of living continues to be a pressing issue, despite the fact the president campaigned on bringing down prices that spiked under his predecessor. And both Trump’s foreign policy — especially the war in Iran — and his immigration enforcement tactics have alienated voters across the political spectrum.
The more Democrats can link Evans to the president, the better for his opponent, said David Boian, a Democratic political strategist.
“Gabe Evans has been right there with Donald Trump — arm in arm,” he said. “That’s a huge liability for him.”
Rutinel, 31, can expect attempts to place him within the surging left corner of the Democratic Party, exemplified by the stunning primary victory Tuesday of democratic socialist Melat Kiros over 15-term U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the congressional district that covers Denver.
There is no doubt, said former Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams, that campaign ads will highlight comments Kiros has recently made about 9/11, Israel’s legitimacy as a nation, and the deadly firebombing attack on Jews and others demonstrating in Boulder last year — an act she refused to call antisemitic.
Those statements, which drew rebukes from and even some fellow progressives, could be used in an attempt to taint Rutinel’s campaign if he doesn’t sufficiently disavow Kiros. She’s one of a handful of far-left candidates who have toppled Democratic members of Congress in recent primaries.
“Her anti-semitism is palpable,” Wadhams said. “Everything she says will reflect on the Democrats statewide.”
Asked for Rutinel’s thoughts on Kiros, his campaign sent The Denver Post a statement from the candidate: “I believe that no terrorist attack is inevitable, whether that is 9/11 or the attack in Boulder,” Rutinel said. “Israel has a right to exist, and the Boulder attack was an antisemitic act of terrorism, and antisemitism has no place in this country.”
Challenges on the trail
Boian’s advice to Rutinel would be that he “keeps his distance from Kiros,” given that the political composition of the 8th Congressional District — which was drawn by an independent commission to be competitive — is a far cry from that of deep-blue Denver. The candidate, he said, needs to focus on the voters in the district who have grown tired of Trump and his administration’s policies.
“The key to winning this race is unaffiliated voters,” Boian said.
Unaffiliated voters in the 8th District outnumber both Republicans and Democrats combined — by a factor of more than 2-to-1, according to state election data.
Covey, with the Cook Political Report, thinks Trump might be a bigger problem for Evans than Kiros might be for Rutinel, namely because he is the president and has a far greater impact on voters’ lives.
“Trump is going to be a real anchor on Evans,” she said.
For his part, Evans has attempted to create some daylight between himself and the president. He has , which have an outsized impact on farmers and ranchers. He also joined GOP lawmakers last year in expressing concern to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about whether it was still prioritizing the deportation of criminals.
Whether that will be enough to allay concerns among voters in the 8th — Colorado’s most heavily Latino district, with roughly 40% of voters identifying that way — is yet to be seen. But nothing will go either candidate’s way without a big megaphone and the money to keep it sounding.
While Evans has the advantage in fundraising — with $3.5 million cash on hand as of June 10, nearly four times as much as his opponent — Rutinel’s success in attracting cash is notable, Covey said. It helped him fend off primary challengers, one thing Evans lacked this time around.
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But it’s the outside money that could well have the most impact on the race. It factored big in the Democratic primary — with more than $8 million poured into the race either on behalf of or against Rutinel and his opponent, former state Rep. Shannon Bird. Rutinel defeated Bird by about 30 percentage points.
Already, the pro-Republican super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund has allocated $5.5 million to the Denver media market for advertising in this fall’s election cycle. On the other side, the House Majority PAC plans more than $7.6 million in Denver market ad buys on behalf of Democratic House candidates this fall.
Because Rutinel is the newer face on the national stage, his challenge will be solidifying his image before others do it for him. He’s off to a rough start, Wadhams said, after changing his position on several issues on which he used to stand farther left.
In an interview with a Yale Law School publication five years ago, Rutinel called animal agriculture a “horrific, exploitive industry.” He doesn’t say that anymore. Rutinel also once opposed fracking, a position he said in a May primary debate he no longer held.
Agriculture and ranching, along with oil and gas development, are major pillars of the 8th District’s economy outside its urban areas.
“To attack the very nature of the 8th District — it goes beyond just adjusting his position,” Wadhams said. “He’s gone from being a vegan to loving beef. He’s a chameleon.”
Boian, the Democratic strategist, said voters aren’t going to focus on candidate positions that may have evolved over the years.
“I think where the race is going is strictly to people’s pocketbooks,” he said. “Can they get to the store and get food for their kids?”
Evans has his own background story “to clean up,” Boian said, referencing an extensive investigation Colorado Newsline published last summer into multiple generations of Evans’ family, in which the publication alleged that Evans had misrepresented his family’s immigration story.
Compelling personal stories
Ultimately, Wadhams said, both candidates have “very compelling” personal stories to tell.
Rutinel is the son of a single mother who immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. The candidate often talks about having to help her fill out applications for food assistance and Medicaid benefits when he was young.
Previously an economist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rutinel, who’s also an attorney, was appointed by a vacancy committee to the Colorado House in 2023 to represent a portion of Adams County and Commerce City. He was elected to his seat the following year.
Evans is the grandson of Mexican immigrants, and his grandfather became a U.S. citizen through his military service in World War II. He served a dozen years in the U.S. Army as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, then nearly a decade as an Arvada police officer.
For Joe Petrocco, who helps run his family’s farm in Brighton and serves as president of the Colorado Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, his vote will go to Evans in November.
Petrocco, 55, likes the Republican’s support for efforts to keep farmworkers’ wages in check. Past increases in federally mandated wages for H-2A workers, who are foreign nationals working in agriculture, have made it impossible for farms like his to compete with countries like Mexico, where he says workers are paid “not $20 an hour but $20 a day.”
“He’s helping make us profitable again,” Petrocco said.
He also credits Evans for helping introduce the bipartisan Dignity Act last year. The bill seeks to reform the country’s asylum system and provide a path for workers who are in the country unlawfully to obtain legal status.
“He’s a Latino man and he respects his heritage,” Petrocco said.
Abby Hicks, a physical education teacher who lives in Mead, said Rutinel is the “real deal.” His rags-to-riches story appeals to her, and she appreciates his focus on bringing costs down — something he addressed as recently as Tuesday night at his election watch party in Commerce City.
Hicks, 44, said many of her students at Mead High School don’t see themselves represented by the older generations that still dominate politics in Colorado.
“He’s different from all the other politicians you meet,” she said of Rutinel. “He’s so eager to listen and learn — in today’s politics, we’re missing that.”
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