This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at cpr.org.
The candidates in Colorado’s most competitive and expensive congressional race faced off Wednesday night in their first and only debate ahead of the midterm elections in a race that could help determine which party controls Congress.
Republican incumbent Rep. Gabe Evans and Democratic challenger former state Rep. Manny Rutinel had a lively and at times contentious debate for an hour in Berthoud Wednesday night. They discussed everything from immigration policy to cost of living to President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.
The Berthoud Weekly Surveyor, a community newspaper that covers Berthoud and parts of Larimer County, hosted the debate, sponsored by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. Ava Henrickson, editor of the Boulder Weekly, and Evan Reilly moderated it.
The candidates have declined to participate in any televised debates.
The 8th Congressional District, a true tossup seat, includes the northern Denver suburbs and parts of Greeley in Weld County. Nearly 40% of the residents identify as Latino, the largest percentage of any congressional district in Colorado.
Evans flipped the seat in 2024 by 2,449 votes, winning by less than 1 percentage point. He spent 10 years as an Arvada police officer, serving in the U.S. Army and Colorado Army National Guard, and was elected to the state legislature before heading to Congress. He’s running on issues like getting things done in Washington to create jobs and lower taxes and attacking Rutinel as too progressive for the swing seat.
Rutinel is a former state lawmaker and environmental attorney and lives in Commerce City. He defeated former state lawmaker Shannon Bird in a competitive primary race in June. Rutinel’s campaign has focused on attacking Evans for being in “lock step with Trump 100% of the time” and voting against working families.
The race has attracted about $11 million in outside spending since the June 30 primary with Republican-leaning groups spending $2 million more than Democrats, including the Trump-backed super PAC, No Going Back.
In his opening remarks, Evans said the race was “common sense versus crazy” and tried to paint Rutinel as both out of touch with the district’s values and a progressive leftist who is the most “radical candidate ever nominated.”
Rutinel in turn called Evans radical for supporting the massive Republican tax and spending package.
“You’re kicking hundreds of thousands of Coloradans off of healthcare, answer the question, ‘Do you regret backing the big beautiful bill?’” Rutinel said.
He also went after Evans for initially opposing a proposal in Congress to release the Epstein files and said Evans sides with Trump time and again.
“He only responds to one man, he only seeks the approval of one man, and that’s Donald Trump,” Rutinel said.
“We need leaders that will hold accountable to anyone who breaks the law.”
Evans responded that during his decade in law enforcement he arrested a lot of child abusers and sex offenders.
“Folks, it's pretty simple. You got to support law enforcement. You got to support public safety. You got to support the people that are going out and putting their lives on the line to keep our communities safe,” Evans said.
The debate was at times rowdy and raucous. Supporters for the candidates filled the event space and Rutinel’s supporters, especially some members of the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters union, jeered, clapped, and chanted.
One woman was escorted out of the room after she approached the stage and shouted at Evans that he should be ashamed of himself as she implored the crowd to not vote for him using an expletive.
The candidates also had barbs at the ready for each other.
Rutinel said Evans “lied through his teeth.”
Evans called Rutinel a job killer and said he wants to ban meat, dairy and eggs.
“His words, ‘You should eat legumes and tree nuts.’”
Key takeaways from the debate
Immigration
Rutinel leaned into his personal history as the son of a single mom who immigrated to the U.S from the Dominican Republic.
“We need comprehensive immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship for dreamers and those who have been there the longest,” Rutinel said.
He blasted the Trump administration’s immigration policies and said immigrants bring a lot of positivity to their communities.
“They’re using masked ICE agents without judicial warrants to separate families,” he said.
Evans said the country is “going after the bad guys” and reducing violent crime. He also talked about the maternal side of this family immigrating to the U.S. from Mexico.
“We have to secure the border. We have to get the bad guys out of our community, and we have to work to fix the broken immigration system for the people that are trying to do things right.”
He cast blame for increased crime on the Democratic control of state government.
“Under my opponent's policies as a state legislator, Colorado is somewhere between the second and the fourth worst state in the nation for crime,” Evans said.
“He's a defund-the-police, open-the-borders radical.”
Economy
Evans seized on Rutinel's previous critiques of the oil and gas industry in criticizing the Democrat on the economy.
“You have the most radical job-killing candidate that Colorado has ever produced standing here on stage with me who wants to kill oil and gas, who wants to kill agriculture, who wants to take your kids away from you, and I'm fighting back against that level of craziness,” Evans said.
Evans cited his own support for not taxing overtime pay and providing tax cuts to small businesses, and said the entire story arc of Rutinel’s adult life has been “fighting against everything that makes Colorado's 8th Congressional District what it is.”
Rutinel said he was 10 years old when he started filling out food stamps and Medicaid forms.
“Those are the same programs that Gabe Evans is destroying to give tax breaks to their billionaire donors. He is taking food out of the mouths of children. He's taking healthcare from families so that his billionaire donors can get a third or fourth yacht.”
Rutinel said Colorado needs leaders who are going to lower grocery prices, not raise them.
“And Donald Trump and Gabe Evans time and time again have been pushing these corrupt, chaotic tariff policies that are raising the price of our groceries and our housing. When I get to Congress, I'm going to put an end to these chaotic, corrupt tariff policies on day one.”
Election day is November 3.
