July 06, 2026 01:15 PM UTC

The Battle for CO-08 is Underway

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• by: Colorado Pols

With Colorado’s Primary Election now (mostly) in the rearview, what is sure to be the single most competitive race in the state can now get underway.

In the eighth congressional district, Democrat Manny Rutinel will face Republican Rep. Gabe Evans, the latter of whom may be the most vulnerable incumbent Republican in the country. As John Aguilar reports for The Denver Post, both sides in CO-08 will try to forge a narrative that is about who the respective candidates are not:

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…

…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.

It’s no surprise that Republicans are trying to link Rutinel to CO-01 Democratic nominee Melat Kiros, even though there is very little evidence to align them. That lift is going to be much tougher than lashing Evans to the incredibly-unpopular President Trump given the mutual embrace between the two Republicans. Evans has dutifully followed Trump’s demands at every step in his first term in Congress, while the President is making no secret of his support for Gabe. As Trump posted on Truth Social last Tuesday:

Trump and Evans are also aligned on their General Election messaging. The President spent much of his time over the July 4th holiday weekend warning about scary communists in our midst. From The New Republic:

Donald Trump has a new favorite word. He’s been calling Democrats “Communists” ever since a few democratic socialists won some House primaries. “These are hardcore, godless Communists,” he told the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference last month. “This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence.” GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, the ever-loyal shih tzu on his emperor’s lap, has picked it up, as well. The midterms, he said recently, will pit “common sense versus communism.”

The problem here, of course, is that Rutinel has actually moved toward the center while Evans has run further to the right.

It’s crystal clear in a factual sense which party is more radical today. The Democrats could elect two dozen socialists and they still wouldn’t be anywhere near as far left as the GOP has gone far right. Oh, and by the way: For all the media attention socialist candidates get when they win, it’s still a fact that on balance, mainstream and even centrist Democrats are winning more primaries this year. The Cook Political Report revealed over the weekend that in the 22 GOP-controlled congressional districts where Democrats have held primaries so far, 14 have been won by candidates with mainstream and centrist backing. Only four have been won by candidates backed by the Progressive Caucus. So in swing districts, Democratic voters are still mainly choosing the nominees they calculate have a better shot at winning such a district. [Pols emphasis]

Evans hasn’t yet followed Trump’s lead in calling Democrats “communists,” but he is trying REALLY hard to label Rutinel a “socialist”:

It’s worth noting that the father of the Republican nominee for Governor is literally named Karl Marx.

This is all part of the plan for Republicans nationally, as The Washington Post explains:

Right-wing influencers and Republicans are talking about communism more than they were a year ago, according to a Washington Post analysis of public statements from high-profile figures on the political right, including social media posts and podcasts using data provided by the National Conference on Citizenship, a nonpartisan group that aims to strengthen civic life.

From January to June, they used the words “communism” or “communist” in an average of about 626 posts per week, up from around 439 per week during the same stretch last year — a 43 percent increase.

Communism has also been mentioned in those statements more often than socialism in most weeks this year. In the last week of June, mentions of communism and socialism hit a yearly high, with socialism being mentioned slightly more often.

Calling Democrats “communists’ says more about the overall weakness of the Republican brand in 2026 than it does about their opponents. For Evans, it’s about trying to distract from his truly awful record in Congress, which includes multiple votes to decimate Medicaid and healthcare coverage for the residents of his district. Voters are also struggling to make ends meet in an economic downturn, which is a narrative that Evans is desperate to avoid.

We have a long way to go in this campaign, but we know in which position we’d rather be sitting. If we had to choose between being called a “socialist” and being tagged for a brutal economy and widespread losses in healthcare coverage…we’d take “socialist” every time.