Five months after narrowly losing a battleground House seat in Colorado, Democrat Yadira Caraveo is running again.
Caraveo, who served a single term representing Colorado’s 8th District, is seeking a rematch against Rep. Gabe Evans, the Republican who unseated her in November by fewer than 2,500 votes.
“The 8th District deserves a representative who’s looking out for them,” Caraveo said Tuesday in a social media post announcing her candidacy.
But the former congresswoman likely won’t have the Democratic primary to herself. State Rep. Manny Rutinel entered the race in January and announced last week that he had raised more than $1.1 million through the end of the first fundraising quarter on March 31. Rutinel has collected endorsements from a number of state and local officials, as well as former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart.
The 8th District is the state’s most competitive and has a large population of Latino voters. Created following the 2020 census, the district reaches from the northern fringe of the Denver metro area to Fort Lupton and Greeley.
Caraveo, a physician, narrowly won the seat in 2022, defeating Republican state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer. With her election, the daughter of Mexican immigrants became the first Latina to represent Colorado in Congress. She previously also served two terms in the Colorado House.
Her loss to Evans last fall was among a handful of House Republican flips that helped the party maintain their razor-thin control of the chamber. In an interview with The Denver Post ahead of her announcement, Caraveo saw a silver lining in the narrowness of her defeat.
“I think that that very narrow margin of loss is a testament to the fact that people saw that I was taking a moderate and middle-of-the-road path, really keeping in mind what the district wanted me to do,” she said.
She told the newspaper that potential Medicaid cuts would be a focus of her campaign as Democrats accuse Republicans of targeting the program to help finance their legislative agenda. Her campaign announcement also cited health care as a reason for her entering the race.
“I can’t stand by while Gabe Evans tries to rip away health care from tens of thousands of Coloradans, including the very families I served as a pediatrician, and make life harder for working families,” she said on social media.
Evans’ campaign responded to Caraveo’s candidacy by framing her intraparty contest against Rutinel as an “all-out primary battle to the left.”
“Meanwhile, Congressman Gabe Evans hit the ground running as he’s working to fix Colorado’s crime, immigration, and energy crises that Manny, Yadira, and their liberal friends created,” Evans spokeswoman Delanie Bomar said in a statement.
The 8th District is one of 35 GOP-held seats on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s target list for 2026. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates the race a Toss-up.
The post Former Rep. Yadira Caraveo announces House comeback bid in Colorado appeared first on Roll Call.
