Colorado’s most competitive race is headed into the homestretch.
The state’s 8th congressional district, north of Denver, is a true tossup seat. And that means campaigns and their allies saturating the airwaves, filling mailboxes and hitting the streets to find and persuade voters.
“My technique is I do a door knock and the doorbell ring at the same time,” said Democratic state Rep. Manny Rutinel as he went door to door in Commerce City on a recent day.
Rutinel was rallying support for incumbent first-term Democratic Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo, who faces a challenge from state Republican Rep. Gabe Evans. The outcome of their race could help determine the balance of power in the U.S. House.
Karisa Hunt is one of the residents who opened their doors to Rutinel. A registered Democrat, they took a pamphlet and said they plan to vote a straight ticket, up and down the ballot, for the party.
“I am encouraging everybody I know to do the same,” they assured him.
Hunt is diabetic and said healthcare costs are their top issue. Caraveo, a pediatrician, is campaigning in part on her work to lower healthcare costs, including the price of insulin. Hunt would like that to go further, to also help with the cost of supplies, like test strips and pump components.
While Caraveo’s campaign can clearly bank on Hunt for this election, other voters in the district make it clear the campaign still has plenty of persuasion work to do.
“I need to learn more,” said Liz Cardenas as she left a nearby Walmart. She’s backing Kamala Harris for president, but when it comes to the congressional race, Cardenas said she still doesn’t have enough information to make an informed decision.
“I hear so many bad things about her,” Cardenas said about Caraveo, “and I don't hear anything good. But Evans, I hear good things, less bad things, so I don't, I'm not sure.”
It’s not hard to hear negative things about both candidates, given that television ads for the race are blanketing the Denver airwaves. More than $15 million in super PAC money has also poured into the race already. For this week alone, the GOP's Congressional Leadership Fund placed about $700,000 in TV ad buys for the seat.
Evans is serving his first term in the legislature, after spending ten years as an Arvada police officer and serving in the U.S Army. He’s running on issues like border control and public safety.
Like Cardenas, Gina Strain is another Harris voter who’s still weighing her options. Her biggest issue is protecting reproductive rights.
“For women to lose our rights that we did with Roe v. Wade, that set a lot of momma bears off,” she said. “That needs to be corrected. Women’s rights, they matter.”
On that issue, she lines up more with Caraveo, who touts her support for legal abortion. In contrast, Evans opposes abortion except under certain circumstances. But for Strain, who is Cuban American, the race is also about immigration. Republicans have been hammering Democrats on the rise of border crossings during the Biden administration, but Strain sees arguments like that as just part of a long-running blame game.
“Everybody's blaming each other,” she said. “‘He had four years,’ ‘they've had three and a half.’ So we need to come to a resolution.”
The Eighth District is Colorado’s most racially diverse, with people of color making up nearly half the residents. 38 percent of the district identifies as Latino or Hispanic, and, at least at the national level, polling shows that community appears to be drifting away from its once-strong support for the Democratic Party.
Caraveo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Evans also talks about his own Hispanic heritage on the campaign trail. His maternal family is Mexican-American and his grandfather was born there and immigrated to the U.S.
Given that this race could come down to just a few thousand voters, or even fewer, some conservative groups see an opening to sway those voters still on the fence in the final days of the campaign.
“Most of our Hispanic voters, especially in this district, are registered as Unaffiliated,” explained Angel Merlos, the strategic director for Libre Initiative Action in Colorado. The conservative, Koch-backed group is trying to mobilize those voters in particular to back Evans.
On this particular day Merlos and a group of volunteers are walking door-to-door in Thornton, making a mostly economic pitch for voters to go Republican.
At one house, Merlos greeted unaffiliated voter Luis Munoz, sitting with his family on their front stoop.
Munoz is tagged in Libre’s system as a swing voter, which means that, unlike many unaffiliated voters, he doesn’t appear to lean consistently to the left or the right. He’s a naturalized citizen from Mexico and said he’s upset about the recent wave of arrivals, many from Venezuela, especially after his cousin’s Denver’s jewelry shop was recently broken into by men suspected of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang.
“They're making a mess here. It's like a lot of robbering things. We don't have the same security,” he said.
Munoz plans to support Trump for President but is still undecided on the congressional race, a position Merlos hoped to change with his visit. But Libre probably isn’t the only group he’ll hear from, as both sides do all they can to win over every last vote possible.
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story used the wrong pronouns for Karisa Hunt. The story has been corrected.
