May 01, 2025 11:22 AM UTC

Former Aides to Yadira Caraveo Paint Troubling Picture

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• by: Colorado Pols

Former Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo announced earlier this month that she would once again seek the Democratic nomination in CO-08 after narrowly losing to Republican Gabe Evans in 2024. Caraveo’s odds of winning back her seat got a bit more difficult with some new reporting today from The Colorado Sun.

We noted Caraveo’s return to the campaign trail earlier this month after she disclosed her personal struggle with depression in an interview with Caitlyn Kim of Colorado Public Radio. Caraveo revealed to Kim that she attempted suicide on two separate occasions in 2024, which was an important disclosure both for herself and for others. As we wrote at the time:

The only thing that we can do in response to that kind of bravery is honor it. Suicide ends the lives of 50,000 Americans every year, and is one of the leading causes of death among younger Americans. Anyone working to reduce that toll is doing something good in the world.

Unfortunately for Rep. Caraveo, today’s politics often fail to reward personal bravery on complicated subjects. At some point in this campaign, lurid details about the specific incidents in question are likely to surface…

Well, here we are. As Jesse Paul reports for The Colorado Sun, Caraveo’s personal struggles created a significant burden for her congressional and campaign staff…and there are different stories being told about how that played out:

Caraveo’s behavior last year while serving in Congress and running for reelection was so frightening and traumatizing to staff that aides proposed a safety plan requesting that sharp objects be removed from the Colorado Democrat’s offices. They also wanted assurances that subordinates not be responsible for talking her “through suicidal thoughts” or “keeping her company during a crisis.”

The plan, a copy of which was obtained by The Colorado Sun, was dismissed and staffers say they were told they had a choice: either commit to contending with Caraveo’s mental health challenges or resign within a day. [Pols emphasis]

Caraveo did not respond to an interview request from the Sun, but did issue a statement that said, in part:

“Suffering from depression does not disqualify anyone from doing hard things or working to make their communities better.”

We certainly don’t disagree with Caraveo here, but running (and serving) in Congress is an entirely different animal than just about any other job. Caraveo’s condition and her actions during her time in Congress definitely don’t mean that she can’t run for another term; the question is more about whether she should — for herself and for others around her. During her term in Congress (2023-25), Caraveo had the highest rate of staff turnover among all members of Colorado’s congressional delegation — and one of the highest rates in all of Congress. As Paul reports for the Sun:

The former staffers spoke to The Sun on the condition of anonymity because they said they fear retaliation. They shared contemporaneous messages and documents corroborating their stories and revealing a chaotic and hostile work environment that they say took a major toll personally and professionally.

While all four said they were highly sympathetic to Caraveo’s mental health issues, they said the way she treated them as a result was not OK.

“It’s completely fine to struggle with mental illness,” another former staffer said. “But it is one thing to struggle with mental illness and it’s another thing to weaponize it.”…

…“Everyone left the office because of the way Yadira treated people and her mental stability,” one of the former staffers said. [Pols emphasis]

One of the more troubling aspects of the Sun’s reporting is about how Caraveo’s mental health struggles and suicide attempts are portrayed very differently depending on who is telling the story. Caraveo told Colorado Public Radio that she had apologized to her staffers “many times” for her behavior.

But the former staffers who spoke with The Sun said they never received an apology. Some said they had to enter therapy to cope with what they experienced while working for Caraveo. 

The former staffers said they felt mistreated by Caraveo soon after beginning their jobs. 

The former aides reported that Caraveo would frequently snap at them or have mental health struggles that would lead her to cancel events on her calendar. When those cancellations happened, she would blame staff for the consequences, the former staffers said, including frayed relationships with community leaders and campaign fundraising interruptions. [Pols emphasis]

This quote stood out more than others:

“It was never particularly easy,” one of the former aides said. “She was always a really tough boss because she had shifting expectations and she didn’t like her job. I never saw her enjoy it, even when she was good at it. And she was frequently good at it.”

This is a comment we heard multiple times in 2024: That Caraveo really didn’t like the job of serving in Congress. After Caraveo lost to Evans in November, we assumed she would do something else. She could return to practicing medicine as a pediatrician or move on to other advocacy positions in public policy — leaving the more public aspect of her life behind. Now that she is seeking elected office again, stories like this are fair game for media outlets (Paul noted for the Sun that reporting on this story had ceased after she lost to Evans, since she was no longer a public figure).

As the Sun and others have reported, Caraveo was not encouraged by national Democrats to run again in 2026. Why Caraveo dismissed that lack of enthusiasm and chose to pursue another term in a role that clearly caused her a lot of heartache is not a question we can answer.