November 12, 2024 02:22 PM UTC

Gabe Evans Is The New Cory Gardner, And That's Not A Compliment

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• by: Colorado Pols

Republican Rep.-elect Gabe Evans, basking in the glow of his exceedingly narrow win over incumbent Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo in Colorado’s ultra-swing CO-08, held his first press conference since Caraveo’s concession yesterday to carefully word his way around the thornier aspects of returning President Donald Trump’s agenda–starting with Trump’s vow to initiate the largest deportation of noncitizens in the history of the country, dubbed Operation Aurora after the fictitious story of the “takeover” of Aurora that Evans embraced along with Trump on the campaign trail. As the Denver Post’s John Aguilar reports:

[Evans’] victory, cemented Sunday when Caraveo conceded defeat to the Army vet and former Arvada police officer, brings Colorado’s congressional delegation to an even 4-4 partisan split for the next two years. That’s despite Democrats having strong majorities in the General Assembly and holding all statewide offices.

“In many ways, this was a tremendous victory for Colorado Republicans, and for balance and for dialogue in the state,” Evans said. “This is probably one of the — if not the — biggest race in Colorado since 2014, when (Republican) Cory Gardner flipped a U.S. Senate race,” unseating Democratic Sen. Mark Udall.

Evans’ quick ascent from freshman in the state legislature to the halls of Congress follows a similar trajectory to that of ex-Sen. Cory Gardner, but there are key differences between the two. Gardner was elected in 2010 to represent a much safer Republican seat than the almost perfectly-divided district Evans will represent in Congress. That gave Gardner a longer runway to gain experience before running in a competitive race for the U.S. Senate in 2014–and also gave Gardner much wider latitude to push the Republican agenda than Evans is going to enjoy.

Evans, by contrast, could find himself on a collision course with Trump’s harsh anti-immigrant agenda if he stands by what he said yesterday:

On Monday, Evans made it clear that his focus on immigration, especially the controversial call by Trump to carry out mass deportations of people in the country illegally when he takes office in January, is more tempered than the president-elect’s. [Pols emphasis] His first moves, he said, will be to secure the border and deport migrants convicted of crimes.

“After we’ve got those priorities done, then we can absolutely continue to have that conversation about what do we do with the millions of folks who are present illegally in the United States but who aren’t committing crimes — and who aren’t really causing massive problems in our society,” Evans said.

The problem, of course, is that Evans has no way of guaranteeing that this is the course the Trump administration will follow. If Trump’s border crackdown precipitates a major humanitarian crisis well beyond the scope of deporting migrants convicted of crimes, which is entirely likely based on statements made by Trump and his new border czar Tom Homan, Evans will face the difficult choice of turning on his new boss or standing by a policy with major downside political risks.

Yesterday’s presser focused mostly on immigration, but that’s certainly not the only issue Evans may find himself uncomfortably exposed on after serving two years on Team Trump. Much like the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, the inevitable failure of Trump to make good on his grandiose promises to working-class voters combined with two years to rebuild the nation’s “Trump fatigue” could seriously endanger Republicans in close races going into 2026. The same is true for Evans’ Gardneresque vagueness on abortion rights, which breaks down when the time comes to vote on specifics.

Evans’ narrow win over Rep. Caraveo in an election with solid Republican tailwinds sets him up for a tough fight to hold this seat in two years. Evans’ hard religious right ideologue background slipped through largely unnoticed by the media in 2024, but his higher profile in Congress is going to raise awareness about aspects of his background that were never a good fit for this swing seat. Over the next few months before the rest of the busy 2026 election field in Colorado starts to take shape, Democrats have an opportunity to focus on holding Evans accountable with the same single-minded intensity they had in dogging Gardner’s every move on the way to his defeat in 2020.

And unlike the grueling six-year campaign to undo the mistake of Cory Gardner, Gabe Evans is up for another vote in two.