Democrats lead every Colorado federal race: The 8th has flipped, three more are still counting

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

Democrats spent the fall saying they could take all eight of Colorado’s U.S. House seats. By late Tuesday they led all eight, and the Senate seat with them.

One of the four Republican-held districts is gone. The Associated Press called the 8th for Democrat Manny Rutinel at 9:49 p.m., unseating Republican Rep. Gabe Evans after a single term. NBC News had called it earlier in the evening.

Evans did not concede.

The other three Republican seats were still counting, and in two of them the Republican gained ground with every batch the Secretary of State posted.

Figures below are unofficial, from the Secretary of State’s election night reporting as of 11:50 p.m. unless otherwise attributed. County-level figures are the Associated Press’s, from earlier in the evening. Statewide, 2,068,953 ballots were counted, 50.64% turnout.

The 8th is the one that’s settled

Rutinel leads Evans 120,362 to 87,566, 55.75% to 40.56%, a margin of 32,796 votes. Libertarian Dave Wood has about 4%.

“Tonight, the people of Colorado showed that in America you can be the son of a single mom who survived for many months on Medicaid and food stamps, who worked for many years at McDonald’s, and you can go on to become a member of Congress,” Rutinel said at his watch party in Commerce City, where he lives.

Evans spoke to supporters in Brighton at about 9 p.m. and told them he had been losing on election night two years ago as well, by a far smaller margin.

“We are going to fight till the very end, until every single vote is counted,” he said.

He also told the room, “We know that there’s some ground to make up.”

Evans won this district two years ago by 2,449 votes. Yadira Caraveo won it in 2022 by 1,632. It is the first time a race in the 8th has been called on election night. Barbara Kirkmeyer conceded a day late in 2022, and Caraveo took nearly a week in 2024.

Rutinel is a former state representative. A Democratic vacancy committee put him in Colorado House District 32 in October 2023, filling the seat Dafna Michaelson Jenet left for the state Senate, and he ran unopposed for it the next year. He resigned that seat on Sept. 4.

At the Capitol he prime-sponsored HB24-1134, which raised Colorado’s earned income tax credit and reworked the state’s corporate income tax, and HB25-1295, the food truck licensing bill, with Republican Sen. John Carson among its Senate sponsors.

Evans spent much of the campaign tying him to the socialist movement. Rutinel answered it twice in a single CPR interview the week before the election.

“Look, I’m not a socialist,” he said. “I was an economist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”

Evans, a Fort Lupton Republican, spent twelve years in the Army and flew UH-60 Black Hawks for the Colorado Army National Guard out of Buckley. He joined the Arvada Police Department in 2011 and retired as a lieutenant in 2022. He sits on Energy and Commerce, the oldest standing legislative committee in the House, and on Homeland Security, and belongs to the Problem Solvers Caucus.

In a 30-minute interview with RMV in September, Evans pointed to three bills. His Ratepayer Protection Act, which would have state regulators consider a standard requiring data centers to cover their own energy costs, passed the House 417-3 but has not cleared the Senate. His FIRE Act passed 220-198 in April with eight Democrats and sits in Senate committee. His Stop Pills That Kill Act cleared the House in September.

He framed the race as “common sense versus crazy.”

The 3rd has moved toward Hurd all night

Dwayne Romero leads Jeff Hurd 129,842 to 126,296, 49.19% to 47.84%. The margin is 3,546 votes.

Hurd’s share has risen in every batch the state has posted, and Romero has fallen from above 50% to below it. The raw margin has come down from 8,422 votes.

Mesa County is the reason to wait. AP’s county detail had Hurd ahead there by about 15 points with 85% counted, against Romero up about 7 in Pueblo. Mesa and Pueblo are each roughly a fifth of the district and they pull opposite directions.

Hurd won the seat in 2024 by 4.98 points. Democrats have held it for six of the last 33 years and it has not voted for a Democrat since 2008.

Douglas County is the surprise in the 4th

Eileen Laubacher leads Lauren Boebert 157,890 to 150,630, 49.66% to 47.38%, a margin of 7,260 that has also narrowed in every batch.

The number worth looking at is Douglas County. It is half the district by registration and runs 14 points Republican, and AP’s county detail had Laubacher ahead there by about 13 points with 88% counted.

Boebert carried this district by 11.6 points two years ago, and Donald Trump carried it by nearly 20.

Laubacher is a retired Navy rear admiral from the Denver suburbs who served 34 years. She beat Jenna Preston in the June Democratic primary.

El Paso County did not look like itself

Jessica Killin leads Jeff Crank 118,290 to 103,246, 51.78% to 45.19%.

That number has moved once all night. El Paso County is the entire district, and it posted a single increment and then stopped. The increment broke slightly toward Crank. It remains the largest block of uncounted votes in the state and it bears on the 4th District as well.

Crank sent his watch party home at about 9:30 p.m. while trailing by six points, the Denver Gazette reported.

The county did something else it has not done before. At about 9:30 p.m., Phil Weiser led Victor Marx there by about 8 points in the governor’s race and John Hickenlooper led Mark Baisley by about 6, which the Gazette reported appears to be the first time Democratic nominees at the top of the ticket have carried El Paso County.

The 5th has never elected a Democrat since it was created in 1972. Crank won it by 13.8 points in 2024.

Killin is a first-time candidate, an Army veteran and former corporate lobbyist who was chief of staff to Doug Emhoff.

The seats that were never close

Hickenlooper won a second Senate term, called by AP as polls closed. Baisley, the Republican state senator who switched from the governor’s race in January, raised about $138,000.

AP called the 2nd for Joe Neguse and the 6th for Jason Crow. Brittany Pettersen leads comfortably in the 7th.

The 1st District changed hands without changing parties. Diana DeGette, in the seat since 1997 and the dean of the delegation, lost the June 30 Democratic primary to Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist who is set to become the first Gen Z woman in Congress. Kiros leads by better than five to one.

What is not settled

The delegation is 4-4 now. A sweep would make it 8-0, the first time Colorado has sent a one-party House delegation since it grew to eight seats in 2023.

“When we compete anywhere, we can win anywhere,” state Democratic Party Chair Shad Murib said late Tuesday.

Results stay unofficial until county canvass boards certify them. Nov. 12 is the deadline for military and overseas ballots to arrive and for voters to cure a missing or mismatched signature.

Under state law a recount is required when the margin falls within one half of one percent of the winning candidate’s vote total. On the 3rd District’s count so far that threshold is roughly 650 votes, well below the current margin, and the Secretary of State has until Nov. 27 to order one.

The 8th went uncalled until Nov. 12 in 2024 at a 3,817-vote margin. The 3rd is inside that tonight.