April 02, 2026 09:51 AM UTC

Blame Game at the Pump: Gabe Evans Thinks You're Stupid

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• by: ProgressNow Colorado

Gutless Gabe Watch for the week of March 29, 2026

Every time you pull up to a gas station and wince at the price at the pump, Rep. Gabe Evans wants you to believe it’s Colorado Democrats’ fault.

Not the war on Iran. Not the president who launched it. Not the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that’s been dominating the news for weeks. No — according to Rep. Gabe Evans, the real culprit for your pain at the pump is the Colorado state legislature.

This is, to put it simply, an insult to your intelligence.

Everyone in Colorado — everyone in America — knows why gas prices have spiked. It’s been over a month since the United States and Israel began bombing Iran, resulting in a severe crimp in the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. That’s not a Democratic talking point. That’s not spin. That’s the headline on every newspaper in the country. Even Energy Secretary Chris Wright, when he flew out to Colorado to do damage control alongside Evans, acknowledged that Colorado gas prices had surged — the average cost of regular gas in the Denver metro area was up by more than 50 cents in a week, according to AAA — and explicitly tied it to the Iran war.

But Gabe Evans had a different explanation ready.

What Evans Has Been Saying — And Why It Doesn’t Add Up

Here are the receipts from the past few weeks of Evans’ public statements on energy prices:

• FOX31 (KDVR), March 31, 2026: Evans brought together a coalition of Republican lawmakers, including Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, for a roundtable meeting in Denver with members of the business and oil and gas community. Evans tells FOX31 that cutting America’s dependence on outsourced fuel is crucial and “just another valid reason for the campaign in Iran.” He says too much government regulation stands in the way of producing more fuel. So to be clear: Evans is using the price spike caused by the Iran war as justification for the Iran war, while simultaneously blaming state regulations. The circular logic here is breathtaking.
• CBS News Colorado / Colorado Pols, March 10, 2026: When asked whether Weld County’s status as a major energy exporter could help bring down gas prices for local residents, Evans sidestepped the issue entirely, saying: “The issue in Colorado is the state of Colorado has declared war on oil, gas and coal. The biggest barrier to bringing prices down and actually being able to generate affordable, available, reliable electricity and other forms of power is all of the different mandates that is coming from the state of Colorado.” A reporter asked him about the Iran-driven price spike, and he answered with a speech about state Democrats.
• Colorado Pols / Denver Post recap, March 30, 2026: A spokeswoman for Evans’ campaign — who declined to give her name — called the Democrats’ stance on gas prices “hypocritical” in a statement. The irony is staggering, given that just weeks ago, Evans was bragging that House Republicans deserved credit for low gas prices. By his own logic, Republicans own the prices now.
• Evans’ own press release (official House website): Evans declared that “for years Colorado’s ruling Democrats have pushed out-of-touch policies and burdensome regulations that have led to skyrocketing energy bills and increased financial strain.” This is a talking point Evans deploys regardless of what is actually causing prices to rise at any given moment.

The Madness of Blaming Colorado Democrats

Let’s set aside the Iran war for a moment and take Evans’ core argument on its own terms: that Colorado Democrats have waged a “war on oil and gas” that is strangling energy production.

Here’s the problem. Colorado is the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the nation — tied with Alaska. If Colorado Democrats have been fighting a war on oil and gas, they are losing it spectacularly. The state is pumping more oil than almost anywhere else in America. Blaming Colorado’s regulatory environment for a global commodities shock caused by military conflict in the Middle East is like blaming your kitchen faucet for a drought.

Trying to tie rising gas prices to energy policies in Colorado only makes sense if you believe that Coloradans aren’t aware of the daily headlines about the Iran War. Evans is counting on voters to either be uninformed or to have very short memories — neither of which is a flattering assumption about the constituents whose vote he wants in November.

The Silence That Roars

What Evans won’t do is just as revealing as what he says. With Evans and his fellow Republicans in Washington unwilling to push back on President Trump’s complete lack of a plan for the war in Iran, gas prices are likely to get worse. Evans enthusiastically supported the war in Iran when Trump launched it. Literally one day after Evans published an op-ed boasting that gas prices had “fallen to their lowest point since 2021,” President Donald Trump announced that the country was now in a “regime change” war against Iran, the world’s fifth-largest producer of oil — and Evans threw his support behind it the same day.

Evans cheered on the war. The war spiked gas prices. Now he’s blaming the people who opposed the war. It’s absurd.

The Bottom Line

Rep. Evans wants to have it every way at once: credit when prices fall, someone else to blame when they rise, and a free pass on the foreign policy decision that caused the crisis in the first place. The failure of the Trump administration to meaningfully bring down rising consumer costs — despite affordability being the number one issue that voters elected him to solve — was already hurting Republicans down the ticket before Trump launched a war practically guaranteed to roil global oil markets and spike prices for American consumers.

Colorado families filling up their tanks right now deserve a representative who will tell them the truth — even when the truth is uncomfortable for his party. Instead, they have Gabe Evans pointing fingers at state Democrats while the real culprit is the war he voted to support.

The sticker on the pump used to say “I did that!” with Biden’s face on it. We suggest a new one.