Residents of two Colorado counties — each at opposite ends of the political spectrum — have revived the debate and are set to decide this fall whether to add two more county decision-makers to the mix on each’s board of commissioners.

Left-leaning Boulder County and conservative Douglas County will have commission expansion questions on the November ballot. In each, a second question will ask voters how they want those commissioners to represent the electorate — by a vote of five distinct districts or a combination of district and at-large voting across three districts.

Those parameters , and they include rules for how counties can redistrict to account for the changes.

Douglas County will have a third question on the ballot asking if voters there want to grow to five districts, with the vote for any commissioner remaining an at-large vote. The county commissioners referred the measure to the ballot last month.

Robert Preuhs, who chairs the Department of Political Science at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said the dual effort in this election cycle across two very different counties tracks the wider dissatisfaction Americans are feeling with today’s political landscape — be it over inflation, the war in Iran or the potential hazards of artificial intelligence.

“These efforts reflect frustration with the establishment, and that is going to permeate the ballot from top to bottom,” Preuhs said. “It’s local concerns, but also broader national dissatisfaction with democratic systems.”

Bob Yates, who sits on the organizing committee for , says it’s less about politics, in his view, and more about improving a system of governance for a county that has grown to 330,000 people.

Big Tent Boulder County, which is driving the expansion effort, has a number of local luminaries on its organizing committee, including state Sen. Judy Amabile, former Longmont Mayor Joan Peck and Ashley Stolzmann, one of Boulder County’s three commissioners.

Yates, who served two terms on the Boulder City Council, said having two additional commissioners could allow each of the board’s members to better focus on the various needs of residents, whether they live in the mountains, in cities or in rural unincorporated areas of the county.

“Three (commissioners) is a very inefficient form of government,” he said. “With five commissioners, we would have representation that would better understand the diverse needs of the residents of Boulder County.”

In Douglas County, the expansion campaign also originated in an outside initiative, and it’s taken on a distinctly more political tone — with no shortage of last-minute drama. The county has faced two challenges to contentious changes the Republican commissioners sought to make to the process, only seeing resolution late last week.

The group behind the expansion effort in Douglas County — called Stop the Power Grab — is the same group that fought against an effort by the commissioners to adopt home rule powers for the county. The home rule campaign lost a special election last year in spectacular fashion.

The group launched the to urge a yes vote on expansion in the Nov. 3 election. It collected more than 20,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot.

“Can three people really represent 400,000 of us? Should just two people have the power to make decisions for all of us?” the website asks, referring to the fact that decisions in the county now need matching votes from just two commissioners.

Kim Turnage, a proponent of expansion, said five commissioners representing five districts would reduce the number of people each commissioner represents from the full county under today’s at-large setup to fewer than 100,000.

“I think what people want is elected leaders who represent them and who actively listen to, respond to and reflect their voices in local government,” she said.

Just 5 counties have larger commissions

State law permits boards of county commissioners to grow from three to five members once a county has reached a population of 70,000.

To date, five of Colorado’s 64 counties have opted to make that move: Arapahoe and Adams in metro Denver; El Paso, home to Colorado Springs; Weld in northern Colorado; and Pitkin, home to Aspen. Adams County was the most recent to do so, with voters authorizing expansion in 2012. Arapahoe County, the second most recent county to grow its commission, made the switch in 1997.

Attempts aren’t always successful. A campaign to buttress Jefferson County’s Board of County Commissioners fell short more than a decade ago, while an effort to get a question on the was also stymied.

This time it’s different, Yates said. Advocates of the move created an issue committee, which had raised just over $100,000 as of the end of July, according to state election data.

“The county has simply outgrown the 1861 model,” he said, referring to the . “We’re a very diverse set of people. We need diversity in our government.”

Whether that translates to a Republican getting on the long-blue commission is unknown. No Republican has been a commissioner in Boulder County . By the same token, it’s been decades since Douglas County had a Democrat on its board.

But narrowing down the county to district-based voting across more districts, Preuhs said, would allow for a better chance that like-minded voters could be grouped in a way that benefits one party over another.

“It’s about the only way a minority party can get a voice,” he said.

Douglas County drama

Douglas County Commissioner George Teal said he’s “pretty agnostic” about the measure. But he said there would be costs to growing the government.

“I just want the people of Douglas County to know that if they want five commissioners, it will come with a cost to the county budget to have those five commissioners,” he said.

A newly elected commissioner in Douglas County a year, which is set under parameters in state law.

Late last month, Teal and his two colleagues, Abe Laydon and Kevin Van Winkle, added language to the citizen-initiated measure claiming that paying for two new commissioners, along with their health and retirement benefits and potential support staff, could run from $760,000 to $1.3 million a year.

That triggered a challenge from one of the measure’s backers, who said the county’s estimated costs were speculative and not necessary as ballot language because the measure wasn’t asking for a tax hike.

That challenge was shot down by the commissioners at the end of a testy hearing on Thursday.

On Aug. 31, the board of commissioners also added a question to the ballot that, if approved by voters — and assuming the first ballot question also passes — would create five districts for five commissioners. But it would require that all members be elected at-large, rather than within their districts.

That measure was challenged by state Rep. Bob Marshall, a Highlands Ranch Democrat who has locked horns with the commissioners before. He claimed the commissioners didn’t give proper public notice for the hearing for the new ballot measure before approving it. He also said the measure didn’t comply with the options outlined by state statute for how commissioners should be elected.

The commissioners rejected his challenge at a hearing on Friday.

Teal said the extra question was added to the ballot because he saw his and his colleagues’ role as largely an executive one. Both the president and the Colorado governor represent the executive branch of government, he said, and are elected by everyone in the country or state.

In late August, a new issue committee called Public Safety Funding Over Politician Pay formed to oppose the expansion effort in Douglas County. It has yet to report any contributions or expenditures.

‘Need for representation’

In Boulder County, the board has three commissioner districts, and each commissioner must live in the district she represents. But each is elected by the entire county electorate.

There is a split on the Board of County Commissioners itself on which way to go. Two commissioners, Claire Levy and Marta Loachamin, oppose expansion.

Stolzmann is for it.

“As the size of the county has grown over time, there’s more of a need for more representation,” said Stolzmann, a former Louisville mayor. “Longmont should be able to elect their Longmont representative, Boulder should be able to elect their Boulder representative, and (the) southeast county should be able to elect their southeast representative.”

She pointed out that both her colleagues are currently taking time off. That has left the county unable to move forward with business until there’s a quorum again.

“If you have five people, that is much less likely to happen,” Stolzmann said.

More bodies in the room, she said, will reduce the likelihood of scandal or malfeasance in county business, as happened 15 years ago when Adams County was charged more than $1.8 million for road work that was never completed. That controversy directly led to voters in 2012 deciding to increase the size of the board of commissioners from three members to five.

Stolzmann also said more voices on the board means more differing views and potentially more comprehensive policy solutions than can be found among a trio of commissioners.

“As soon as two people agree, they tend to move on — and mitigating factors are not considered,” she said.

But Loachamin said there were bigger priorities for a county , which is expected to result in job cuts next year at the county level.

“Right now, we have people who don’t have food, who have no place to sleep and who live in fear of immigration authorities,” she said. “Redistricting is not a priority for me.”

Latino voters in the state have consistently said they feel the country is going in the wrong direction, and they reiterated that dissatisfaction in a poll released Tuesday by the Colorado Latino Policy Agenda. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they felt the country was on the wrong track as their frustrations about the cost of living — which ranked higher than any other issue, including immigration — had gone unaddressed and, for many, had worsened.

Against that national critique, the annual poll has repeatedly found that Latino voters still hold a positive view of their own state. But that grace appears to have been exhausted: Forty-six percent of respondents this year said the state was moving in the wrong direction, against 40% who said the opposite.

That’s a stunning 26-percentage-point swing from the same poll last year. It’s also the first time in the poll’s six-year history that it has found an overall disapproval for Colorado’s direction among Latino voters.

“The main thing is the economy,” said Gabriel Sanchez, the pollster for BSP Research who conducted the survey. “Poll after poll, Latinos are telling us loudly: ‘Address the economy. We can’t afford housing. We can’t afford groceries. We can’t afford gas.’

“We’ve seen consistently in the poll that anger and frustration was largely at the federal government. Now, what we’re seeing is that frustration pointing toward government, period. And that’s because people are saying, ‘Look, every year things are getting worse. Somebody fix it.’ ”

The poll was conducted between July 1 and Aug. 11 in partnership with the advocacy groups Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, or COLOR, and Voces Unidas. It included 1,606 registered Latino voters and has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

The respondents were also critical of who influences their government, saying that wealthy donors, corporate business groups, political consultants and outside PACs, and oil and gas companies wielded too much influence in the state. Eighty-one percent said they were concerned that campaign contributions from wealthy outside groups limited policies that could address the affordability crisis.

Asked to rank what federal and state policymakers should focus on, the top responses included the cost of living and healthcare, increasing wages, and building more affordable and attainable housing. Forty-three percent of respondents said their financial situation had worsened in the past year, compared to 22% who said their situation had improved.

More than half of voters who said their situation has worsened blamed Trump. (Ten percent also blamed billionaires and corporations, the second-highest response.)

Latino voters’ dissatisfaction with Colorado’s direction did not extend to the Democratic officials leading its government. U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jared Polis, Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Attorney General Phil Weiser all had double-digit net approval ratings, with positive appraisals exceeding negative ones significantly.

Respondents also approved of Republican U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert and Jeff Hurd and their Democratic colleagues, U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, Brittany Pettersen, Jason Crow and Joe Neguse.

Freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, whose 8th Congressional District seat is among the most hotly contested in the country this fall, was less appreciated. Only 34% of voting Latinos in his district regarded him favorably, while 42% viewed him unfavorably. Respondents in CD8 disapproved of congressional Republicans by 22 percentage points, compared to views of congressional Democrats that were net-favorable by 6 points.

That’s notable given that Latinos make up more than 38% of the CD8 electorate, .

What’s more, 61% of voters in the district disapproved of Trump. Of those who said the country was going in the wrong direction or their financial situation had worsened, a majority of Latino CD8 voters blamed Trump more than anyone else for those problems.

But Latino voters in the district also had the lowest overall opinion of the direction of the state. With an unpopular president in a blue state, Evans has focused his campaign on opposing Democrats at home. But while they’re unhappy with the state, CD8 Latino voters simultaneously have strongly favorable views of Polis and Colorado state lawmakers.

While those concerns may spell trouble for Evans, the poll’s top-line takeaway about affordability is a call to action for government officials across the political spectrum, said Alex Sánchez, the president and CEO of Voces Unidas.

“The problem is the lack of action by those in power who can do something about it,” he said. “For the first time since we began this project, more Latinos believe Colorado is moving in the wrong direction than the right direction. That is concerning. State leaders should take that seriously.”

Sánchez said the affordability concerns were “being made worse by what’s happening in our streets, in our communities.” The survey found that 40% of respondents statewide knew someone who had been deported as Trump has pushed to increase immigration arrests and deportations.

To that end, significant majorities of the poll’s respondents opposed letting immigration agents arrest people directly from jails. They backed efforts to allow Coloradans to sue federal officials and opposed allowing the governor to “voluntarily” share immigrants’ information with the federal government, a nod to Polis’ repeated attempts to cooperate with ICE subpoenas.

But the respondents were not entirely progressive. Majorities also supported conservative-backed ballot measures related to penalties for fentanyl possession; trans athletes competing in high school and college sports; and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.

Initiative 195 would create a graduated income tax for the state under which higher earners pay a greater percentage of their income than lower earners, generating significantly more tax revenue. Colorado currently uses a flat tax system, where all taxpayers, regardless of income, pay 4.4% of their income in state taxes. For the ballot, the measure will be assigned an amendment number.

The measure was the last of more than a dozen proposed questions to be certified by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office after it determined the proponents had collected enough petition signatures. Voters will decide on 14 statewide questions total, in addition to the slew of state, federal and local elections that will make up the Nov. 3 ballot.

The graduated income tax proposal is likely to be one of the marquee ballot box battles heading into the fall.

If passed, the measure would keep the current tax rate for Coloradans making between $100,000 and $500,000 per year. It would raise the marginal income tax rate to 7.4% on income over $500,000 and less than $750,000; to 7.9% on income between $750,000 and $1 million; and to 8.4% on income over $1 million.

The tax rate for Coloradans making $25,000 per year or less would drop slightly to 3.7%, and the rate for Coloradans making between $25,000 and $100,000 per year would decrease to 4.2%.

expect the proposal would bring in nearly $2 billion more in revenue every year to the state, which this year has a general fund budget of more than $17 billion. That money would be earmarked for education, healthcare, and early childcare and preschool.

Medicaid, which would be included, has been a massive driver of the state’s recent fiscal crunches.

“Every Colorado student deserves a great public school and real pathways to opportunity, with great teachers who are paid and supported the way they deserve,” Lisa Weil, the executive director of Great Education Colorado, one of the key backers of the initiative, said in a statement. “Initiative 195 qualifying for the ballot means Coloradans will have the chance to vote their values and build a tax system where everyone pays their fair share and our neighborhood schools finally get what they need to do right by our kids.”

One of the other measures proposed for the ballot, Proposition 136, explicitly seeks to undercut the graduated income tax measure by setting a cap on the state income tax rate. Earlier it was designated as Initiative 232 during the petitioning phase.

If voters pass both, it could set up a potential legal battle over which takes precedence and becomes state law. Both measures would require more than 50% support to become law. The graduated income tax proposal, while a constitutional amendment, would only remove language from the constitution, and thus does not need to clear the 55% threshold for amendments.

“We’ve been prepared for this fight for months,” Michael Fields, the president of the conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado, said in a statement. “That’s why we qualified Initiative 232 — the Income Tax Cap — for the ballot. An overwhelming number of Coloradans agree that the progressive tax hike is too high, too extreme, and will take good paying jobs away from working families and out of our state.

“The Tax Cap is the better answer for anyone who believes Colorado should be more affordable for everyone,” he added.

The other questions that made the statewide ballot would:

• for the possession or sale of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.
• mandate time in prison for .
• ban not aligned with their biological sex.
• ban for people younger than 18.
• require that law enforcement when an immigrant without proper legal status is charged with a violent crime.
• establish a right for cooking and heating.
• require that sales taxes on sporting goods be earmarked for conservation efforts.
• require additional verification when voters submit mail-in ballots, such as a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number.
• ban congressional redistricting outside the typical once-a-decade census cycle.
• create a constitutional right to hunt and fish.
• require that ballot questions be written at an 8th-grade reading level.
• allow the state to keep more tax money, typically returned under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights revenue cap, to put toward education. That measure was referred by the legislature.

Another measure, which would have made it a constitutional requirement to better fund the state’s roads, was pulled days before the deadline to do so after Attorney General Phil Weiser, lawmakers and the backers of the measure reached a deal to secure more money for roads in future years. Weiser is the Democratic nominee for governor.

All of the items are being renumbered as amendments or propositions now that they’ve been approved for the ballot, with the ballot titles still to come. The secretary of state must certify the ballot by Friday. That is also the deadline for groups backing ballot initiatives to withdraw their measures.

County clerks can start mailing out general election ballots on Oct. 2, about a month before the election.

But despite the “noise,” Colorado election overseers and advocates say they are confident that this fall’s exercise in democracy won’t feature any particular hurdles for voters, or subversion of their intent. Ballots will still be mailed, voter rolls won’t face purging and workers will tally and honor the will of voters, they say — though officials in Colorado still expect a pressure campaign in the election’s fallout, especially if results don’t go President Donald Trump’s way.

“Really, it truly has been a case where we were expecting a lot of (nonsense around the election) and it has lived down to those expectations so far,” said Matt Crane, the Republican head of the , using an expletive to describe the state of things.

“We knew there would be a lot of noise from the election denier community, up to and including the president, and this network he has allowed to grow and wreak havoc and undermine confidence in our elections.”

Among the attempted changes by the Trump administration: an to procure “all records” from Colorado relating to the 2024 election and whatever was available from the 2020 election; a December 2025 lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against Colorado demanding detailed voter registration information; and that sought to restrict mail-in ballot access and create a federal voter list

The White House has also dismantled or defunded federal programs and boards that and the administration of state and local elections. The Trump administration has threatened or even arrest state election officials if they don’t remove noncitizens from voter rolls.

Those efforts have or have been outright shut down by the courts. Still, election officials see them as building on Trump’s longstanding, and baseless, claims that elections were rigged against him, even as he won the presidency twice. have glommed onto those claims, specifically rejecting the reality that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

Despite regular, mandated audits of results and repeated legal challenges, voting is safe, secure and accurate.

“The big picture is that the Constitution is clear: States run elections, not Donald Trump,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said. “He does not have the authority to change how elections are run by executive order or by threat. The bigger picture is that Trump is laying the groundwork to reject the 2026 results if they don’t go his way. That’s what this is all fundamentally about.”

Colorado, like other states, has taken steps where it can to help fill some gaps left by the federal government pulling back its support, Crane and Griswold said. That includes bringing in physical and cybersecurity assistance for county clerks, mailing ballots earlier to minimize problems from delays, and to allow the governor to declare an emergency in case of interference.

The efforts add up to confidence in Colorado’s upcoming general election, officials said. Most voters should see little, if any, difference in how they cast their ballots and how they are tallied. Election Day is Nov. 3 and ballots should start going out to registered voters on Oct. 2.

“I am confident about the ‘26 elections,” Griswold said. “But we have seen an increase in hostility, to say the least. I think something that is really striking is that, at this point, most of our contingency planning, some of our top concerns are about federal interference as opposed to foreign interference.”

Colorado Common Cause, a government watchdog and advocacy nonprofit, has also started hosting trainings on non-partisan election protections, Executive Director Aly Belknap said. The organization has formed a coalition with 70 other groups, including faith leaders, business executives, unions and other voting rights advocates. The training includes how to serve as poll monitors, report suspicious activity, including from federal agents, and work with lawyers to ensure a fair, accessible election.

State and federal law, as well as the U.S. Constitution, already establish strong protections for voting, Belknap said, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be further attempts to exert federal pressure on how elections are run and who can participate. In particular, she has concerns about indirect pressure, such as a massive push of immigration enforcement in swing districts like Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, that could suppress the vote.

“Broadly, we’re in an emergency for what the underpinnings of democracy is in this country,” Belknap said.

Her concerns also don’t end once Election Day passes. She, like Griswold and Crane, worries about post-election challenges to the results, especially if there are close races.

Belknap also points to other existential challenges to American self-governance, such as the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the rush toward partisan gerrymandering that seeks to cement one-party control in different states. That last point has put her group in a particular bind, as it supports a national ban on the practice, but worries a ban on the practice in Colorado essentially sets different rules for red and blue states. Such a ban on in Colorado has been proposed for this year’s ballot.

“The biggest emergency we need to be watching is that this is part of an overall project,” Belknap said of federal attempts to control election administration. “This really is an emergency for the Republic.”

Crane, the executive director of the county clerk’s association, likewise has existential concerns about what the affect the Trump administration and the universe of social media conspiracy theorists will have on trust in U.S. elections. The loss of trust caused by baseless claims of election fraud may be generational, he said.

He encouraged people with questions to contact their local clerks, and volunteer to serve as election judges — just don’t take viral social media posts and outlandish claims alleging fraud at face value.

“People have fought and died for this right,” Crane said. “They have marched and been beaten. To have so many dishonor the sacrifice people have made with their lies and misinformation, it is disgusting.”

Re: “Trump and Peters declare America’s democracy dead,” July 12 editorial

Your recent piece on Tina Peters read less like measured journalism and more like a coordinated effort to smear a county clerk who dared question the machinery of elections — while a 70-year-old lady spent over 600 days in jail.

It began with the April 6, 2021, Mesa County municipal election. Before official results were tallied at 7 p.m., a candidate received an eerily precise victory call from her campaign manager. Not psychic hotline stuff — just enough to raise eyebrows for the clerk responsible for certifying the results. Tina Peters started asking questions. Suspicion isn’t a crime when your job is ensuring elections are verifiably trustworthy.

She was preserving federal records per her oath (Supremacy Clause). Courts rejected full immunity, but the state-federal tension remains. In 2026, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her convictions but threw out the sentence, ruling the judge improperly punished her protected speech. A 9-0 Supreme Court precedent backs this: You can’t crank up penalties simply because someone won’t stop talking. Notably, she was never charged with breaching or destroying records. She was fulfilling preservation duties during the “Trusted Build” update.

Elections thrive on verifiable trust. Questioning the process — especially when oddities appear —shouldn’t turn someone into Public Enemy #1. The Denver Post can keep its narrative, but courts and federal complaints keep revealing real tensions worth honest debate. With transparency and scrutiny, we can strengthen trust in our elections moving forward. Brighter chapters are possible.

Brad Hackman, Lakewood

So Trump declares that mail-in ballots and voting machines are rigged so Democrats can win elections. Why hasn’t anyone confronted Trump that he doesn’t declare the same thing when Republicans win, including himself?!  And do the MAGA people not see the irony in that?!  I wonder if Tina Peters can look herself in the mirror without seeing her nose grow while continuing these lies and atrocities.

Marcia Murphy, Centennial

This is in response to the lengthy, excellent editorial on the almost completely flawless way that CO runs its election. It was very well explained.

But I am still confused as to why everyone seems to ignore the fact that in Mesa County, President Trump won 68% of the vote. How is that not critical to proving that Tina Peters is nothing but a scam artist. What was she looking for? How could that percentage be nothing but nearly total victory for Trump when we now call a 15-point victory a near landslide? She wanted to be MAGA royalty and thanks to our governor, she has now achieved it.

Judith Pettibone, Denver

The editorials published by The Post, while reliably expressing an opinion left of center, can also on occasion, reflect a strategic pragmatism.

Sunday’s offering was no such occasion.

The bloated-font headline, “Trump and Peters declare America’s democracy dead,” reeks of the leering hyperbolic headlines of social media that rarely deliver on their promise but scream anyway. Using the dense and over-the-top Trump post on his Truth Social (that’s so unlike him), re: rigged elections as a jumping-off point, The Post makes an enormous leap of faith in the headline that he declared “democracy dead”, but he did no such thing.

He didn’t then, and as far as a Google search goes, he never has. What he did was chum for outrage by saying voting machines were rigged, and you bit and delivered, big time. His attempts to undermine public confidence in elections are tired and ineffective, even to supporters like myself.

Our democracy will survive, even continue to thrive, despite who occupies the White House.

If, as you asserted, you are “exhausted” with countering these stale and benign accusations, here’s a virtuous piece of advice: stop doing that. And while you’re at it, stop mimicking the trolling websites on social media with desperate headline-hype to attract clicks. It’s beneath you.

Jon Pitt, Golden

It����ap confusing. Just last month, President Trump and many of his media supporters made (unfounded) claims of fraud and predicted the imminent collapse of the electoral system as vote counting in California stretched to days after primary Election Day and his preferred candidate for Los Angeles for mayor fell short of the final ballot. This month, I haven’t heard a peep about the fallibility of vote counting as the GOP primary election stretched to nine days and the more establishment gubernatorial candidate lost her early lead to an outsider. One might infer there was an ulterior motive in claiming fraud in the first place.

Randy Livingston, Denver

Rampant fraud did plague Colorado’s primary election, just not how Trump and Tina Peters might claim. Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office failed to get its updated election instructions posted clearly on all county election office websites. Consequently, an estimated 75% of voters were not officially informed, in a timely and non-partisan way, how to obtain and vote a Unity Party ballot. Only Republican or Democratic ballots and their instructions were automatically mailed to voters in the June primary.

Additionally, news media such as KUNC, KUSA, and the Colorado Sun, excluded Unity Party candidates from forums or voter guides where “all candidates for the same office” were required to be invited. That had the “effect of favoring…a group of candidates”, namely Democrats and Republicans, in violation of IRS or FCC regulations. So, the election was not “free and fair.” Attorney General Phil Weiser is responsible for enforcing rules to ensure “fair” elections, but he and Marx benefited from an “unfair” election.

Had voters been properly informed, the “fair” election results might have favored Kirkmeyer. That speculation is unknowable. However, claims of election fraud due to misrepresentation or omission of critical acts are easily knowable and provable. They’re neither “outlandish claims” nor “isolated incidents”.

Should Weiser and Griswold be disqualified? Should the election be nullified and run again – legally and fairly? Do violating news outlets need to lose their tax-exempt status or FCC licenses? Colorado’s “gold standard” election integrity is at stake. The primary election needs an unbiased investigation and accountability.

Jeff Peckman, Englewood

Time to re-evaluate the wolf reintroduction

Re: “On the front lines,” July 12 news story

Having read many articles regarding the wolf reintroduction program in Colorado, I am wondering if this program is producing any positive results. It seems that millions of dollars are being spent on hiring 18 range riders, compensating ranchers and farmers for their loss of livestock and herding dogs, as well as the cost of obtaining and tracking wolves.

Now, after so many years since the initial reintroduction program began, have we as taxpayers and interested parties gained any real advantages from this program? It seems to me that the problems encountered have overwhelmed any potential advantages. Also, why doesn’t Colorado Parks and Wildlife conduct a study to evaluate this program? All concerned, taxpayers, supporters, opponents and government officials need to know if this program is worth all the effort that has been put into it.

James Sebben, Minturn

I read with dismay the numerous articles commenting on the hardship ranchers must endure because of the introduction of wolves to Colorado. The default position in all of these articles is that ranchers have more rights than other people, in that they must be compensated for losses due to predation.

It would be useful to augment this point of view by exploring the premise that cattle ranching is a good thing and must be protected. To me, it is the same as dog meat farming, at one time prevalent in Asian countries.  There is fundamentally no difference between farming dogs for meat and raising cattle.  The only cultural difference is that Western cultures revere dogs but consider cattle a meal in waiting.

Just as dog meat farmers are abandoning their former way of making a living and developing new livelihoods, the same can happen to cattle ranchers.  I find their practices equally abhorrent and unworthy of protection.

Claire Moulden, Thornton

No to gerrymandering, but Colorado is a long way from competitive districts

Re: “Colorado Supreme Court just saved us the shame of making a mistake the size of Texas or California,” July 12 opinion column

I agree with Krista Kafer when she says in her Sunday op-ed that Coloradans should leave the process of redistricting to the newly created Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission.

But I don’t agree that their actions thus far have been true to their mission. The wording is clear enough. “The 12-member bipartisan commission is obligated by the state Constitution to maximize the number of competitive districts and may not protect a political party or an incumbent.” But then, as Krista states, “The Commission created four Democratic-majority seats, three Republican-majority seats, and one competitive district.” That����ap right. One competitive district. How is that “maximizing the number of competitive districts?

Colorado’s congressional districts are not competitive. They generally still favor candidates from one party over another. Just look at the data from the 2024 election. While Gabe Evans, a Republican, won Congressional District 8 by just about 2,500 votes and Jeff Hurd, also a Republican, won Congressional District 3 by just about 19,800 votes, the rest of our districts clearly favored one party over another.

Jeff Crank, a Republican, won Congressional District 5 by 50,000 votes. Lauren Boebert, a Republican, won District 4 by 52,000 votes. Brittany Petterson, a Democrat, won District 7 by 60,000 votes. Jason Crow, a Democrat, won District 6 by 70,000 votes. Joe Neguse, a Democrat, won District 2 by 164,000 votes. And the venerable Diana DeGette, a Democrat, won District 1 by 190,000 votes!

Based on the data, the State of Colorado cannot say that it����ap done a good job of making our congressional elections more competitive because they have not. There is a lot more work to do.

Mike Dubrovich, Parker

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Colorado’s current congressional district map was drawn up by the Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission and approved by the Colorado Supreme Court in 2021. The 12-member bipartisan commission, created in 2018 by a majority (71%) of Colorado voters, is obligated by the state Constitution to maximize the number of competitive districts and may not protect a political party or an incumbent. The commission created four Democratic-majority seats, three Republican-majority seats, and one competitive district.

Responding to President Donald Trump’s putsch, I mean push, to eradicate opponents’ representation in Congress, Colorado Democrats proposed ballot initiatives for November that would circumvent the bipartisan commission, initiate mid-decade redistricting, and approve gerrymandered maps for the 2028 and 2030 elections that would eradicate all but one Republican-majority district. Republicans counterpunched by proposing initiatives to favor their party in all but three districts.

In each case, sidestepping the voter-approved commission would require multiple actions. Since the Colorado Constitution forbids piling multiple subjects into a ballot initiative, advocates broke the steps into different proposals and added language stating each must pass for all to take effect. So while they appeared to be separate single-subject initiatives, they acted as a single multi-subject proposal. The Supreme Court, however, saw through this clever ruse and ruled all five proposals violated the state constitution’s single subject rule.

Supreme courts in Utah and Virginia have done likewise by abrogating attempts by legislators to gerrymander maps to gain seats for their respective parties. But pro-democracy Republican state lawmakers in Indiana, Kansas, and South Carolina didn’t need the courts to do the right thing, they joined Democratic lawmakers and stopped efforts by Republican colleagues to eradicate the small number of Democratic congressional seats in those states.

Since then, Trump has retaliated against the Indiana senators who opposed gerrymandering by recruiting opponents to run against them in the primary. Five of these principled Republican senators lost to MAGA challengers.

Of course, gerrymandering is not new. The term “gerrymandering” goes back to 1812, but the pernicious practice has been around since representatives discovered they didn’t need good ideas and good character to win if they could manipulate district boundary lines.

Back in the 2021-2022 round of redistricting, long before Trump’s recent gerrymander push, New Mexico, Illinois, Oklahoma and other states gerrymandered their maps to eliminate districts winnable by the minority party.

Last year, the unethical practice gained steam when Republicans realized Trump’s rising unpopularity could cost them control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. Since then, eight Republican-majority states and one Democratic-majority state have succeeded in redrawing district lines in the majority’s favor.

Perhaps these politicians sleep at night by telling themselves that the ends justify the means. They didn’t start the fight; the other party did. They didn’t really disenfranchise their fellow Americans, who can still vote for a losing candidate and get an “I voted” sticker. Might makes right, doesn’t it?

To paraphrase my hero former Rep. Liz Cheney, “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

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The state’s newest district — covering a Front Range area spanning from Greeley down to the northern suburbs of Denver — has seen only two elections. The first went to a Democrat, the second to a Republican. And both victories hinged on very thin margins.

The Republican victor in 2024 was Gabe Evans, of Fort Lupton, who is hoping to turn his freshman term in Congress into at least two more years in office. His challenger, fresh off a resounding victory in the Democratic primary last Tuesday, is state Rep. Manny Rutinel of Commerce City.

And in the middle of it all are the political prognosticators and party operatives, desperate to decipher what voters’ choices this November in Colorado’s most competitive congressional race might say about future trendlines in the electorate at large.

“There’s no doubt this is a race that will attract national money,” said Erin Covey, who analyzes congressional races as U.S. House editor for the Cook Political Report.

Cook lists the 8th District among .

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 . 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.

The more Democrats can link Evans to the president, the better for his opponent, said David Boian, a Democratic political strategist.

“Gabe Evans has been right there with Donald Trump — arm in arm,” he said. “That’s a huge liability for him.”

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.

Those statements, which drew rebukes from  and even some , could be used in an attempt to taint Rutinel’s campaign if he doesn’t sufficiently disavow Kiros. She’s one of a handful of far-left candidates who have toppled Democratic members of Congress in recent primaries.

“Her anti-semitism is palpable,” Wadhams said. “Everything she says will reflect on the Democrats statewide.”

Asked for Rutinel’s thoughts on Kiros, his campaign sent The Denver Post a statement from the candidate: “I believe that no terrorist attack is inevitable, whether that is 9/11 or the attack in Boulder,” Rutinel said. “Israel has a right to exist, and the Boulder attack was an antisemitic act of terrorism, and antisemitism has no place in this country.”

Challenges on the trail

Boian’s advice to Rutinel would be that he “keeps his distance from Kiros,” given that the political composition of the 8th Congressional District — which was drawn by an independent commission to be competitive — is a far cry from that of deep-blue Denver. The candidate, he said, needs to focus on the voters in the district who have grown tired of Trump and his administration’s policies.

“The key to winning this race is unaffiliated voters,” Boian said.

Unaffiliated voters in the 8th District outnumber both Republicans and Democrats combined — by a factor of more than 2-to-1, according to state election data.

Covey, with the Cook Political Report, thinks Trump might be a bigger problem for Evans than Kiros might be for Rutinel, namely because he is the president and has a far greater impact on voters’ lives.

“Trump is going to be a real anchor on Evans,” she said.

For his part, Evans has attempted to create some daylight between himself and the president. He has , which have an outsized impact on farmers and ranchers. He also joined GOP lawmakers last year in expressing concern to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about whether it was still prioritizing the deportation of criminals.

Whether that will be enough to allay concerns among voters in the 8th — Colorado’s most heavily Latino district, with roughly 40% of voters identifying that way — is yet to be seen. But nothing will go either candidate’s way without a big megaphone and the money to keep it sounding.

While Evans has the advantage in fundraising — with $3.5 million cash on hand as of June 10, nearly four times as much as his opponent — Rutinel’s success in attracting cash is notable, Covey said. It helped him fend off primary challengers, one thing Evans lacked this time around.

But it’s the outside money that could well have the most impact on the race. It factored big in the Democratic primary — with more than $8 million poured into the race either on behalf of or against Rutinel and his opponent, former state Rep. Shannon Bird. Rutinel defeated Bird by about 30 percentage points.

Already, the pro-Republican super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund has to the Denver media market for advertising in this fall’s election cycle. On the other side, the House Majority PAC plans in Denver market ad buys on behalf of Democratic House candidates this fall.

Because Rutinel is the newer face on the national stage, his challenge will be solidifying his image before others do it for him. He’s off to a rough start, Wadhams said, after on several issues on which he used to stand farther left.

In an interview with a five years ago, Rutinel called animal agriculture a “horrific, exploitive industry.” He doesn’t say that anymore. Rutinel also once opposed fracking, a position he said in a May primary debate he no longer held.

Agriculture and ranching, along with oil and gas development, are major pillars of the 8th District’s economy outside its urban areas.

“To attack the very nature of the 8th District — it goes beyond just adjusting his position,” Wadhams said. “He’s gone from being a vegan to loving beef. He’s a chameleon.”

Boian, the Democratic strategist, said voters aren’t going to focus on candidate positions that may have evolved over the years.

“I think where the race is going is strictly to people’s pocketbooks,” he said. “Can they get to the store and get food for their kids?”

Evans has his own background story “to clean up,” Boian said, referencing an published last summer into multiple generations of Evans’ family, in which the publication alleged that Evans had misrepresented his family’s immigration story.

Compelling personal stories

Ultimately, Wadhams said, both candidates have “very compelling” personal stories to tell.

Rutinel is the son of a single mother who immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. The candidate often talks about having to help her fill out applications for food assistance and Medicaid benefits when he was young.

Previously an economist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rutinel, who’s also an attorney, was appointed by a vacancy committee to the Colorado House in 2023 to represent a portion of Adams County and Commerce City. He was elected to his seat the following year.

Evans is the grandson of Mexican immigrants, and his grandfather became a U.S. citizen through his military service in World War II. He served a dozen years in the U.S. Army as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, then nearly a decade as an Arvada police officer.

For Joe Petrocco, who helps run his family’s farm in Brighton and serves as president of the Colorado Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, his vote will go to Evans in November.

Petrocco, 55, likes the Republican’s support for efforts to keep farmworkers’ wages in check. Past increases in federally mandated wages for H-2A workers, who are foreign nationals working in agriculture, have made it impossible for farms like his to compete with countries like Mexico, where he says workers are paid “not $20 an hour but $20 a day.”

“He’s helping make us profitable again,” Petrocco said.

He also credits Evans for helping introduce the bipartisan last year. The bill seeks to reform the country’s asylum system and provide a path for workers who are in the country unlawfully to obtain legal status.

“He’s a Latino man and he respects his heritage,” Petrocco said.

Abby Hicks, a physical education teacher who lives in Mead, said Rutinel is the “real deal.” His rags-to-riches story appeals to her, and she appreciates his focus on bringing costs down — something he addressed as recently as Tuesday night at his election watch party in Commerce City.

Hicks, 44, said many of her students at Mead High School don’t see themselves represented by the older generations that still dominate politics in Colorado.

“He’s different from all the other politicians you meet,” she said of Rutinel. “He’s so eager to listen and learn — in today’s politics, we’re missing that.”

Bird conceded to Rutinel before 7:45 p.m., about the same time that the Associated Press called the race for Rutinel. Rutinel was leading nearly 62% to 34% over Bird, who herself formerly served in the Colorado House, as of early Wednesday afternoon.

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much,” Rutinel, 31, said to an excited crowd of around 100 people gathered at Las Dos Americas Tortilleria in Commerce City. “Together we fought, and together we will flip this seat in November.”

He immediately targeted Evans, his opponent in November, in his speech to supporters, criticizing the Republican for backing Trump administration policies that resulted in cuts to social programs.

“In Congress, I will restore funding for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act,” Rutinel said, before exchanging hugs with former U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar and former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb on a makeshift stage in the restaurant.

Evans sent out a press statement after Rutinel won, saying Democrats had chosen a “far-left, radical socialist, Mamdani-wanna-be extremist,” a reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Bird, 57, immediately threw her support to her Democratic opponent as she addressed supporters at the Legacy Ridge Grill in Westminster.

“This was never about any name on the ballot,” Bird told about 40 supporters Tuesday evening. “… We need more than anything to win this seat. Democrats must flip Congress.”

Evan Munsing, a Democratic candidate in the race who suspended his campaign in May, was garnering nearly 5% of the vote.

Colorado’s 8th District, a politically competitive swath of Weld, Adams and Larimer counties north of Denver, is listed by national election watchers, including the Cook Political Report, as among 18 congressional races in the country that .

Colorado election results for the 2026 primary

Rutinel had positioned himself to the left of Bird, a former colleague in the legislature, in an election cycle that has proven . It became an exceedingly expensive affair as outside groups poured in more than $5.3 million on behalf of Rutinel or against Bird, plus around $3 million to help Bird or hurt Rutinel, according to Federal Election Commission data posted as of Friday.

The campaigns themselves have pulled in a ton of cash. Rutinel had the lead in the money game, with $4.1 million raised as of June 10. Bird collected $2.2 million through then. Both continued reporting significant donations throughout the final month.

Evans, 39, who was unopposed in the GOP primary, has raised the most money in the field, with nearly $4.9 million collected in this election cycle as of June 10. The first-term congressman had nearly $3.5 million in cash on hand -- nearly three times what his two Democratic opponents had combined on that date -- giving him a warchest for the fall.

Taylor Martinez, a volunteer for the Rutinel campaign who lives in Adams County, said at the watch party Tuesday that he thought Rutinel would "blow (Evans) out of the water" in November.

At age 32, Martinez said it was time for someone of his generation to take a seat in Congress.

"We need fresh new faces in Congress," he said.

But a complicating factor may be that Evans, a freshman lawmaker, is still relatively new and youthful.

Rutinel had repeatedly accused Bird of having gone soft on President Trump's mass-deportation agenda when she was in the state House. Bird, meanwhile, had slammed Rutinel for voting for a state budget that included cuts to Medicaid when he was in the state House this spring.

The 8th Congressional District, when drawn by a redistricting commission at its inception a few years ago, is Colorado's most Latino district. Nearly 39% of its 722,000 or so residents identify that way, according to data from the 2021 Colorado redistricting effort. Both Evans and Rutinel are Latino.

So far, it's been a true swing district. Democrat Yadira Caraveo won it in a close race in 2022, and Evans defeated her in 2024 by just under 1 percentage point.

For now, knock Colorado out of the nationwide partisan redistricting wars kicked off by President Donald Trump as Republican- and Democratic-led states have jockeyed for an advantage by adopting new congressional maps.

The state Supreme Court concluded that the ballot measures, which would’ve temporary re-drawn maps for the 2028 and 2030 elections, violated the state’s requirement that ballot proposals encompass only a single subject. Three of the rejected ballot measures were backed by Democrats seeking to grow their congressional power in the state, while two more were backed by conservatives with similar aims for Republican candidates.

“Changing long-settled law by modifying the timing, frequency, criteria, and entity responsible for congressional redistricting represents a significant change beyond the proponents’ stated central purposes (of) … congressional redistricting by adopting a new temporary map,” Chief Justice Monica Márquez wrote in one of the opinions.

The single-subject requirement is intended to prevent voter confusion and “log-rolling,” meaning when a voter supports one part of a complex ballot initiative but not another.

In two opinions, the justices wrote that the various measures raised log-rolling concerns because they generally would’ve changed how maps are drawn while also instituting new maps in 2028 and 2030, in ways favorable to either Democrats or Republicans. The justices argued that a voter might want to change how districts are drawn overall but may not support the partisan map proposals in the upcoming elections, or vice versa.

In her opinion rejecting two of the ballot measures, Márquez wrote that each proposal “represents a seismic shift to Colorado’s longstanding redistricting process enshrined in the state constitution.” The other opinion was authored by Justice Richard L. Gabriel.

The rulings were welcomed by conservative groups, while the campaign that filed the Democratic ballot measures called the outcome “a legal setback over a technicality.”

Democrats here had initially sought to redraw the state’s maps ahead of the 2028 election — the soonest new boundaries could take effect here — which prompted retaliatory proposals from Republicans. But given Colorado’s distinctly Democratic voter base, the liberal push was likely to find more fertile ground, had one of the Democrats’ measures reached the ballot box.

Democrats and Republicans currently have a 4-4 split in representation in Colorado’s U.S. House districts, with one of those considered a swing district. Colorado’s congressional and state legislative districts are drawn by independent redistricting commissions, which were created through separate ballot measures and first produced maps in 2022, after the 2020 census.

The rulings bring, at least for now, a sputtering end to one front in the broader redistricting wars, which started with a GOP-friendly rewrite in Texas and has led several other states to overhaul their congressional maps in the past year.

Colorado’s role in that conflict was always more subordinate: Under the proposals rejected Monday, new maps would’ve been temporary and would not have played a part in the coming November election.

Still, had it succeeded, the redistricting push in Colorado would’ve allowed Democrats to pick up as many as three seats and expand national Democrats’ ability to respond to GOP gerrymandering elsewhere.

Instead, in the absence of new ballot measures, the current congressional boundaries will be in effect until the commission undertakes the next regular round of redistricting, after the 2030 census.

The court’s decisions, then, represent a win for conservatives in Colorado, who had sought to protect both the state’s independent redistricting process and the Republican-leaning congressional seats that would’ve been imperiled by Democrat-friendly revisions.

In a statement, the campaign backing the Democratic proposals, Coloradans for a Level Playing Field, said the justices “thwarted” Colorado’s effort to push back against President Donald Trump.

“The success of this partisan attempt to sideline Coloradans from responding to Donald Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting scheme is disappointing,” said Curtis Hubbard, a spokesman for the campaign. “While Trump and his MAGA allies regularly sidestep the law and ignore voters, efforts to respond have once again been dealt a legal setback over a technicality.”

Shad Murib, spokesman for the Colorado Democratic Party, said in a statement that the ruling was “a loss for America but a win for Republicans backing Donald Trump’s efforts to rig congressional elections.” He said the court had “denied voters the chance to have their say” and had “emboldened MAGA politicians in other states.”

Republicans, meanwhile, declared victory.

Michael Fields, the president of the conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado, said the court had “accurately decided that political games cannot be played with Colorado’s Congressional maps.”

“The court����ap decision is a win for fairness and a blow to the Democrats’ national attempts to take away the voice of citizens who want to choose their own representation,” Fields wrote.

Advance Colorado still has an out for signature collection that would block 2028 redistricting. If passed in November, the proposed constitutional amendment would need to be repealed if Democrats in the future wanted to create new maps early, Fields said. He said Advance was still “likely” to run that proposal.

Scott Gessler, a former secretary of state whose law firm filed the Republican measures, wrote that the court “soundly rejected the Democratic efforts to manipulate the ballot process to overturn Colorado’s nonpartisan redistricting process.”

Three of at issue in Monday’s rulings were tangled together. Two of them, Initiatives 241 and 242, would’ve replaced the existing redistricting process and implemented new, temporary maps for 2028 and 2030, respectively.

Each would have taken effect only if the other passed. Republicans, in response, filed Initiative 328. It, too, would’ve passed only had Initiative 241 been approved. The measure would’ve also implemented new maps, albeit not the Democratic-friendly ones proposed by 242.

Coloradans for a Level Playing Field had already raised $2.3 million and had spent more than $2 million of it, in large part to gather signatures for the ballot. Much of that money came from the Fairness Project, which has backed liberal ballot measures elsewhere, and American Opportunity Action, a relatively new, Democrat-aligned dark-money outfit.

The campaign also received $150,000 from a political action committee tied to the Democratic caucus in the U.S. House.

“Where do you stand in regard to ICE?” the woman asked, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Rutinel, who was pressing the flesh on a hot, sunny afternoon in Thornton’s Carpenter Park, was more than ready with an answer. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and crackdown on people living in the country illegally have provided reliable talking points for the 31-year-old state representative from Commerce City.

“They’re terrorizing Latino immigrants,” Rutinel, whose mother immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic, told the couple. “It’s personal for me.”

Nearly 24 hours earlier and about seven miles away, Shannon Bird — the other Democrat running in the 8th Congressional District — was going door to door in the Sherrelwood neighborhood in Adams County. The former state representative carried a stack of campaign flyers emblazoned with the words: “Fight Trump. Stop ICE.”

Bird, 57, and Rutinel are facing off in the Democratic primary on June 30. They’re each hoping to go to battle this November with Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans to represent the 8th District, which largely covers suburbs and farm fields across parts of three counties north of Denver.

The race revolves around the familiar issues Democrats have been bringing up since Trump regained the White House last year: immigration, the cost of living and the environment. But Bird and Rutinel, separated in age by 26 years, say they bring their own skill sets and perspectives to a district that has landed in the national spotlight.

“This is where you find out where people are at — what they’re all about,” said Bird, as a campaign aide used a smartphone to shoot footage of her walking along Douglas Drive. “I know the community — I have an authentic connection to the people in this community. To win, people have to know you care about them.”

Several people who opened their doors on that hot Friday afternoon pledged their vote to Bird, including 80-year-old Patricia Hall, who has lived in her Albert Court house since 1972.

For Hall, it comes down to Bird’s longevity in the district — a quarter-century of volunteering for Adams 12 Five Star Schools and serving on the Westminster City Council and at the state Capitol for the better part of two terms.

Rutinel has lived in Commerce City for four years, though he spent several additional months in the city in 2020, according to his campaign. Bird has lived in Westminster for 25 years.

“She’s been out talking to the people,” said Hall, who worried about Colorado’s experience deficit in the nation’s capital should U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet be elected Colorado governor this fall. “We gotta get some of the experience back in Washington.”

While the candidates are putting their feet to the ground to talk to voters, the much bigger outreach effort is happening on television and online. Between fundraising by both campaigns and a gush of spending by outside groups, the 8th Congressional District primary has turned into an expensive affair.

Bird and Rutinel together have raised more than $5 million, and outside groups have reported independent spending totaling nearly $5.8 million in the primary.

“The 8th District is still the race to watch,” said Robert Preuhs, a political science professor at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

The district, Colorado’s newest, covers Denver’s northern suburbs and the agricultural land and oil fields stretching to Greeley. It could play a crucial role in determining control of a closely divided Congress in 2027, given its — a dynamic that has sent representatives from both major parties to Washington in less than four years.

Until recently, the Democratic primary was a three-person contest. But in late May, former Marine Evan Munsing called it quits. He did not immediately endorse anyone in the race.

With an animated — and often angry — Democratic voting base in this election cycle, Preuhs said such angst could play in favor of a relative newcomer to the district, like Rutinel, who has tried to push a more left-leaning message on the trail.

“Voters are really looking for something different,” the professor said. “They’re seeking that candidate that can push back on ICE. I think he has a natural tie and attraction to Latinos in the district.”

The Latino factor and big outside money

The 8th District is Colorado’s most heavily Latino, with , according to data from the 2021 Colorado redistricting effort. The Hispanic vote was thought to be a critical part of former U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo’s victory in 2022 over state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, according to an exit poll conducted during the election.

In late April, the Latino Victory Project pledged a on behalf of Rutinel, who it said “will protect our communities from MAGA’s extremist policies,” referring to Trump’s coalition. The progressive advocacy group spends in support of Latino candidates.

Since then, the group — and its political action committee, the Latino Victory Fund — have ramped up their spending, reporting nearly $1.9 million in independent expenditures in support of Rutinel or opposing Bird, . Another Latino-supporting group, SOMOS PAC, has reported spending nearly $898,000 to help Rutinel.

Those amounts are part of nearly $4.1 million spent by outside groups on ads, mailers and other activities in support of Rutinel or opposing Bird as of Friday. That sum includes $949,000 spent by You Can Push Back, a super PAC that lauds Rutinel’s sponsorship of Colorado artificial intelligence regulations.

Less outside money — $1.7 million, according to FEC filings — has been spent to help Bird, either in support of her or opposing Rutinel. About $1.3 million of that has come from Women Vote, a super PAC associated with Emily’s List, which supports women running for office.

In direct contributions, Rutinel holds a distinct money advantage over Bird, having raised nearly twice as much as she has — Just over two weeks from the primary election, their ads — and those bought by outside groups — have become fixtures on metro Denver TV screens.

Yazmin Torres, who owns the Neveria La Unica food truck, says she connects with Rutinel, a fluent Spanish speaker raised by a single mother. The candidate paid her a visit at Thorntonfest last weekend and she thanked him for his work on a 2025 bill that .

As a single mom herself, Torres said she felt a kinship with Rutinel. She also wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer. Rutinel earned his law degree from Yale University.

“My dream is to go to law school, so he’s an inspiration to do that,” she said. “It’s nice to have someone to represent us.”

But securing the Latino vote in the district is no guarantee of victory. In 2024, the showed a strong preference among Latino voters for Caraveo over Evans — by more than 20% — but Evans, who is also Latino, prevailed in that contest.

Bird, an attorney before getting into politics, has her own story of growing up with a single mother. She often recounts that her family stayed afloat by relying on tips from her grandmother’s casino dealer job in Reno, Nevada. Those are the kinds of economic struggles she hears from potential constituents while knocking on doors.

“The high cost of living — and now with the Iran war — the cost of gas,” Bird said. “And those energy costs spread throughout the economy.”

Her opponent’s decision to support a state budget this year that included cuts to Medicaid has become one of Bird’s campaign attack lines. At a late May candidate forum in Greeley, she told Rutinel and the audience that she would “absolutely not have voted to cut Medicaid.”

“He should have fought to use the rainy day fund to hold off the worst of these cuts,” Bird said in an interview with The Denver Post. “Both Gabe Evans and Manny Rutinel believe that cutting Medicaid is a way to pass a budget.”

Rutinel dismisses Bird’s allegations, saying he tried to save Medicaid funds in the Colorado budget but was unable to marshal the support amongst his colleagues to do so.

“I did the work to bring amendments to dip into the reserves further,” he said.

Rutinel said he grew up on Medicaid, so he knows its importance firsthand.

“Saving Medicaid is personal for me,” he said.

In turn, Rutinel regularly critiques Bird’s vote against a 2025 bill in the state House that aimed to further curtail federal immigration authorities’ access to public spaces in Colorado, from government buildings to libraries to public schools. He said he is “severely disappointed that Shannon Bird was the only House Democrat to vote against it.”

“She’s trying to pull a fast one,” Rutinel told folks hiding from the sun at the covered Brighton Writers Group booth at Thorntonfest. “We need to be fighting for the people who are struggling.”

Voters in the 8th District, he said, may have wanted more oversight at the southern border than what former President Joe Biden provided, but they don’t want the chaotic — and sometimes violent — mass deportation agenda of this president.

“People tell me Donald Trump and Gabe Evans were going to go after the criminals — and they’re going after the grandmas,” he said. “People are telling me they feel lied to.”

Plenty of agreement

Bird calls Rutinel’s accusation on the ICE bill apocryphal. She said her “no” vote on Senate Bill 276 happened during a committee hearing on the bill, which she said needed improvement before going to a floor vote in the House.

Bird said she regrets being absent the day the bill came up for a floor vote in the House a few weeks later — a missed vote she blames on a family medical emergency.

“It was one of the few votes I missed, and I regret that,” Bird told The Post earlier this year.

Rutinel, she said, has been using that bill to mischaracterize her position on ICE and Trump’s immigration policy. She says she has the only , with requirements for body-worn cameras and officers who are better vetted and trained.

“I think Manny has a record he can’t defend,” she said.

Immigration will prove an important issue in the 8th Congressional District, said Preuhs, the political science professor. Though ICE’s footprint in Colorado has been lighter than in other American cities, the issue is never far from a district with so many Latinos.

“You have a Democratic voting constituency that is adamantly against Trump and they’re looking for a strong advocate for their position,” Preuhs said.

But if the forum in Greeley last month showed anything, it’s that the two Democrats running for the nomination agree on much — including opposition to a federal ban on hydraulic fracturing to extract oil, support for a ban on oil and gas leases on federal land, and support for a boost in the federal minimum wage.

In recent weeks, Rutinel has been on the defensive after  that he had reversed or softened past positions in support of a fracking ban, cancellation of student debt and a single-payer healthcare system. His campaign pushed back on some of the outlet’s characterizations.

The 8th Congressional District partially lies in Weld County, which is Colorado’s most prolific producer of oil and gas. Agriculture is also a big presence in the district, and both Bird and Rutinel have slammed Trump’s tariffs, many of which were overturned in February by the Supreme Court, as unfriendly to farmers.

“Congress needs to pass legislation to make it clear who has the power to tariff,” Bird told The Post.

Rutinel, who was an economist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before getting into politics, was equally tough on the body he is vying to join when it comes to preserving its power of the purse.

“If we had a willingness from Congress to pull back these corrupt and chaotic tariff policies, we could bring down prices,” he said. “It’s putting so many of the family farms and ranchers at risk.”