Before he was a congressional candidate, Manny Rutinel was calling animal agriculture “horrific”

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

Manny Rutinel spent the better part of six years calling animal agriculture a “horrific, exploitive industry.”

Rutinel entered the legislature through an appointment in 2023 when Rep. Dafna Michaelson Jenet resigned from the District 32 seat. Less than two years later, he was filing paperwork for Congress.

He’s the money leader in a Democratic primary that national strategists are watching closely. Federal Election Commission filings put him at $2.5 million raised—almost as much as Republican incumbent Rep. Gabe Evans. Cook Political Report has it as a toss-up. The seat flipped once already—it could flip again, and the House majority may well come down to it.

Evans runs cattle on the side. Has for years.

Back at the University of Florida, he stripped off his shirt at a PETA event and marched with a sign: “Animal liberation is human liberation.” He told a campus reporter he hoped “some people will change their lifestyle and hopefully go vegan.” One year he showed up to National Hug a Vegan Day dressed as a pig.

Yale Law came next. He enrolled in the Law, Ethics & Animals Program. In a 2021 interview published by the law school, he called animal agriculture “a horrific, exploitive industry”—his words—and described a proposal he co-authored to use carbon offsets to pay farmers to abandon livestock for plant crops. That March, he testified before the Connecticut legislature: “the globe must dramatically shift away from animal products and toward fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and nuts.”

He started Climate Refarm to push schools and hospitals toward plant-based food. The group also backed taxes on meat, dairy, and eggs. He launched a Change.org petition calling on Popeyes to pull meat off the menu. Climate Refarm has since dissolved.

From Yale he went straight to Earthjustice. He filed suit against the EPA over slaughterhouse rules. The agency lost.

Weld County, an agricultural driver in CD-8, has nearly 4,000 farms and ranches working the land. To put the economic impact of the agricultural region’s impact in perspective, they produced about $2.4 billion in commodities in 2022.

When the Colorado Sun surfaced his record last fall, Rutinel backed off. He said he’d only been going after the “bad apples.” Colorado ranchers, he said, were “the envy of the globe” and “good stewards of the land.”

The RNC has a different read.

“Manny Rutinel is so dedicated to his radical agenda that he is willing to go to jail for it,” said RNC spokesman Zach Kraft. “Eliminating oil and gas might get praise from Bernie Sanders, but it would be devastating for Colorado and cause 300,000 people to lose their jobs. If Rutinel wants to be a soy boy and live out his Green New Deal dreams, that is fine, but don’t force that nonsense on the rest of us.”

Rutinel’s campaign disputed that characterization. “Manny will not support any new taxes on hardworking Coloradans,” the spokesperson said. On his prior statements, the campaign said Rutinel “has spoken out against those bad apples that cause extreme and unnecessary animal cruelty in parts of the food industry and against the environmental cost of unsustainable food practices.” 

The spokesperson added that Rutinel “is proud to stand with Colorado’s family farmers and ranchers, who are his friends and the backbone of our economy,” and said he would fight to reverse “the disastrous and chaotic tariff policies of Donald Trump and Gabe Evans that threaten their livelihoods.”

The jail reference is real—though Rutinel disputes the characterization. His campaign says he “attended the event as a legal observer, not a protestor.” The New Haven Police Department’s own arrest list tells a different story. Number 17: Tonty Rutinel, 24, of Connecticut—charged with disorderly conduct along with 47 others. Charges were later dropped. He completed community service.

His government name is Tonty.

Rutinel has support from California Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat who championed the Green New Deal—and now calls for abolishing ICE. The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee has also flagged the race. 

Evans won the seat in 2024 by 2,800 votes and heads into the primary stretch with about $2.55 million in campaign funds.