DENVER – The primary for Colorado’s 8th Congressional District has turned ugly as a pair of Democrats try to set themselves apart from one another in hopes of taking on Republican incumbent Gabe Evans in November.
Comprised of portions of Adams, Larimer, and Weld counties, the seat is considered to be among the most competitive in the country.
While one of the candidates leans heavily the narrative that he was raised by an immigrant mother to make him stand out from his opponent, the other uses her record in the legislature, but runs from her moderate votes to appear more appealing to progressives.
In a recent debate on 9News, anchor Kyle Clark exposed many of those deficiencies in both Manny Rutinel and Shannon Bird.
Clark started off pointing out that both representatives who have held newly-formed 8th have been Latinos (Democrat Yadira Careaveo had the seat prior to Evans), something Rutinel used to prop himself up extensively throughout the night, continuously reminding viewers that he was the son of a single, Mexican immigrant who was poor.
When asked if it mattered, Bird – a white, middle-aged woman – danced around the question and never answered it directly, saying only that she was the only candidate who had ever won a contested election. She is also the only one who abandoned her office to run for another, something Clark pointed out.
The two tried hard to differentiate themselves, with Rutinel falling into place with the extreme progressive wing of the party and Bird showing her just-left-of-center ideals.
Energy
Both used an “all of the above” answer when it comes to energy policy. When pressed to expand on what that meant to them, they both said it meant using all resources available to lower energy costs.
“Natural gas plays a key role in making sure people’s utility bills are affordable,” Bird said. “That along with renewables. Natural gas becomes of particular importance as we’re working to scale up renewables…we need options.”
However, after being reminded that the 8th Congressional District economy depends heavily on oil and gas production, Rutinel – as he’s become known to do – flipped his opinion on oil and gas.
“I think it’s important to be able to do that,” he said in reference to using both oil and gas and renewables, “to keep prices low and to keep good paying jobs here.”
Rutinel has said multiple times in the past that he would ban fracking, and was arrested at a protest over the issue in college.
They were also polar opposites over nuclear power.
While Bird walked around the idea of having a nuclear reactor in the 8th, passing the decision off to voters and not giving an answer on whether she agreed with it or not, Rutinel said he would support one, again in direct conflict with a previous answer where he said he would work with the “squad” to advance the Green New Deal.
The squad is an informal sector of the progressive Democrat caucus in Congress that is considered to be the farthest left of the party. The group is aimed at advancing Medicare for all, the Green New Deal and tuition-free college.
Medicaid
Perhaps the biggest difference between the two, however, was whether Rutinel voted to cut Medicaid as a state representative, and how Bird would have voted had she not abandoned her statehouse seat with questionable timing to run for Congress.
Bird said she would have voted no on the budget bill she claims cut Medicaid. Rutinel said that a successful no vote on the bill would have defunded Medicaid, K-12 education, home health care and a slew of other programs that the budget needed to fund in the moment.
“We needed fighters in this moment,” he said. “And when the time came to fight back, Shannon Bird quit the legislature to focus on her personal ambitions.”
Bird said they should have reduced the state’s reserve requirement from 15 to 10 percent to forgo the cuts. The legislature did reduce it to 13 percent, but only temporarily. It goes back to 15 percent in fiscal year 2027-28
But, Republican state senator and gubernatorial candidate Barb Kirkmeyer, who served with Bird on the powerful Joint Budget Committee before she abandoned her seat, said they are both wrong in their assessment of changes made to Medicaid funding.
Kirkmeyer said the main point everyone keeps missing is they did not cut Medicaid.
“It actually increased by 3.6 percent over last year,” she said.
What they trimmed were various “codes” under Medicaid to save other services such as maternal health care.
“We took a scalpel to cutting some services we could cut and then some other services didn’t get cut at all and some services just stayed,” she said. “The only person that has ever cut Medicaid is Polis and (Bird) agreed with him.”
Kirkmeyer explained that during the special session while Bird was still in the legislature, Polis removed a planned 6 percent increase to Medicaid. Bird kept quiet about it, according to Kirkmeyer.
“She didn’t say no,” Kirkmeyer said. “She didn’t fight. She gave up, and then she didn’t come back.”
Kirkmeyer also said the idea the reserve could be cut to 10 percent to make up the difference is not realistic.
“Yeah, we could have cut it,” she said. “But 15 percent is 45 days. If we had another COVID we would have enough money for 45 days. And the last forecast I think was a 40-50 percent chance of a recession. So no, we can’t just cut it. That money is there for when we have a recession.”
An ugly primary
The race between the two Democrats has turned ugly, with Rutinel throwing claims of Bird siding with Trump and Republicans to allow immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials into schools and hospitals, and Bird claiming Rutinel can’t be trusted because of repeated lies to his constituents. She also claims Rutinel is taking donations from ICE contractors.
During the debate, Clark highlighted the numerous times Rutinel has flipped his stance on everything from health care options to student loan debt, while calling out Bird for creating the Opportunity Caucus while in the state legislature, only to have it funded by dark money.
“Was this really about bi-partisan consensus or was this just pay-to-play politics that was dressed up as consensus?” Clark asked Bird.
One thing is clear: while incumbent Gabe Evans has no primary opponent and can stockpile his fundraising until after June 30th, Rutinel and Bird are spending money faster than it can come in.
To date, according to Colorado Public Radio, Rutinel has spent more than $1.5 million with nearly a million left in the bank, while Bird has spent about $1.2 million and has just $300,000 left on hand.
Evans, on the other hand, has nearly $3.5 million resting in the bank just waiting to spend on whomever primary voters pick to challenge him.
