June 04, 2025 11:12 AM UTC

Everybody in the Pool! CO-08 Field of Democrats Getting Crowded

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Nick Coltrain reports for The Denver Post, the field of Democratic candidates hoping to get a shot at incumbent Republican Rep. Gabe Evans in 2026 continues to grow:

Colorado Treasurer Dave Young is joining the increasingly crowded Democratic primary for the 8th Congressional District.

Young, a Greeley Democrat, is a former member of the state legislature and its powerful Joint Budget Committee. He points to his deep roots in the district and five successful races — three specifically in the 8th District and two statewide — as evidence he’ll be able to flip the highly competitive seat blue once again in next year’s election.

U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, a Republican, won the seat in 2024 after defeating freshman Democrat Yadira Caraveo. She was the first to represent the new seat, which was created after the 2020 census and stretches from Thornton to Greeley. Fewer than 2,500 votes have decided the victor in both elections for the seat…

…Young, who has served as state treasurer since 2019 and is term-limited in 2026, said in an interview ahead of his Wednesday morning announcement that he was motivated to seek office once more by Evans’ recent yes vote on the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the sweeping Republican spending and tax cut package supported by President Donald Trump.

In particular, Young is worried about proposed cuts to Medicaid in the bill. Evans, for his part, has argued that the bill has been the subject of “blatant fearmongering.”

Dave Young will be a formidable candidate in CO-08 because of his name ID from two terms as Colorado State Treasurer and a family history of service in the state legislature. Young served four terms in the State House before running for Treasurer in 2018; his wife, Mary Young, served three terms in the State House before narrowly losing her bid for a fourth term in 2024.

Young is technically the fourth Democrat to enter the race — joining former Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo, State Rep. Manny Rutinel, and State Rep. Shannon Bird. Former CEA President Amie Baca-Oehlert has not yet formally announced her intentions to run, but she already has a campaign website online that includes a number of endorsements.

It’s hard to say just how many voters these five Democrats will be hoping to court in next June’s Democratic Primary Election (assuming all five are able to get their names onto the ballot). We’ve only seen two CO-08 contests in that district’s history — the eighth congressional district was added after the 2020 census — and neither 2022 or 2024 featured a contested Democratic Primary Election. Caraveo earned 38,837 votes in the 2022 Democratic Primary, and 35,409 in 2024. The 2022 Republican Primary in CO-08 drew 58,222 votes; in 2024, that number dropped to 45,687.

With a total 2026 vote count in the range of 50,000-60,000, one of these five Democrats could advance to the General Election with somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 votes. To put that in perspective, that’s about the same number of votes cast in total when Caraveo was the unchallenged Democratic nominee for the State House of Representatives in June 2020 (HD-31).

In short, the Democratic Primary for CO-08 in 2026 could turn into a bare-knuckle brawl where every single vote might well prove critical. Incumbent Republican Rep. Gabe Evans can hope that the eventual winner emerges from the Democratic Primary battered and bruised, but there’s a flip side here: There will be at least five different Democrats talking every day for the next year about how Evans is trying to take away your health insurance.