January 31, 2025 01:25 PM UTC

Manny Rutinel Pulls in Big Bucks for CO-08 Campaign

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• by: Colorado Pols

Earlier this week, State Rep. Manny Rutinel (D-Commerce City) became the first Democrat to formally enter the race for Congress in CO-08 against Republican incumbent Rep. Gabe Evans.

As Ernest Luning reports for the publication formerly known as the Colorado Statesman, Rutinel was well-prepared to start off with a bang:

Democratic congressional candidate Manny Rutinel raised more than $500,000 in the 48 hours after he launched his bid to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans in Colorado’s battleground 8th Congressional District, the state lawmaker’s campaign said.

The total includes roughly $400,000 the 30-year-old Commerce City Democrat raised from more than 4,000 unique donors within the first 24 hours of announcing his run on Monday. [Pols emphasis]

Evans, an Army veteran, retired police officer and former state legislator from Fort Lupton, unseated first-term U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo by just under 2,500 votes, making for the second consecutive election the closely divided seat was decided by a margin of less than 1 percentage point…

…The sums reported by Ritual’s campaign dwarf early fundraising totals posted by previous newly minted congressional candidates in Colorado. By comparison, it took Evans more than six months to bring in $500,000 in contributions after he declared his candidacy.

Caraveo and Evans each raised just over $100,000 in the first quarter after launching their campaigns for the seat in late 2021 and 2023, respectively.

This is definitely an impressive fundraising haul — especially in such a short period of time — that establishes Rutinel as a serious contender in CO-08. Rutinel is almost certainly not going to be the only Democrat in this race, but his fundraising numbers should speed up the decision-making process for other potential candidates (including former Rep. Yadira Caraveo).

We already knew that Evans was going to be a top target nationally; CO-08 is an obvious choice for Democrats to target in 2026 as they look to win back majority control of the House in a cycle in which control of the U.S. Senate is likely out of reach. The fact that Rutinel could raise so much money so quickly despite being relatively unknown — he only won his first election to the State House in 2024 — shows that Evans has a very large target on his back.

At some point very soon, Evans might want to stop drinking from President Trump’s propaganda fountain and worry about voters in a General Election.