BARBWIRE BOB – 10-15-26
COLORADO’S CHANGING CONGRESSIONAL POWER After watching Colorado politics for more than six decades, I thought I had seen just about everything. This year’s congressional races have me reconsidering that conclusion. Three races, in particular, tell three very different stories abo
Bob Sweeney ·
COLORADO’S CHANGING CONGRESSIONAL POWER
After watching Colorado politics for more than six decades, I thought I had seen just about everything.
This year’s congressional races have me reconsidering that conclusion.
Three races, in particular, tell three very different stories about Colorado politics: Denver’s loss of longtime Congresswoman Diana DeGette; Lauren Boebert’s challenge from retired Navy Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher; and the fascinating contest between Republican Gabe Evans and Democrat Manny Rutinel in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District.
Start with Denver.
Diana DeGette represented Denver in Congress for 29 years and 15 terms. She had built up the kind of seniority and Washington relationships that take a lifetime to acquire. Then a 29-year-old political newcomer, Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist, defeated her in the Democratic primary.
That is a remarkable change.
Regardless of one’s politics, Denver lost a very senior member of Congress. DeGette had accumulated enormous institutional knowledge and influence in Washington. Now that seat will have a new representative for the first time in nearly 30 years.
It reminds me that in politics, nothing is permanent — not even 15 terms.
Then we come to Lauren Boebert and Eileen Laubacher.
What an unusual matchup.
Boebert came into national politics from Rifle and a restaurant business and has built herself into a nationally recognized Republican and now the senior Republican member of Colorado’s House delegation.
Her opponent is almost the exact opposite kind of political biography.
Laubacher graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, spent 34 years in the Navy, rose to rear admiral, served in intelligence, worked in Afghanistan, served as the senior U.S. defense official in India and later worked on the National Security Council.
She is an impressive woman.
She and her husband have five children, and the family has lived in Colorado since the late 1990s. She lives today in Highlands Ranch. She was a Republican, changed to unaffiliated and then registered as a Democrat in 2025.
I find that political journey fascinating.
I also find the geography fascinating.
Here is a woman who spent 34 years serving the federal government and building an extraordinary career in national security who now wants to represent a congressional district that stretches across the Eastern Plains, where farmers and ranchers have very different day-to-day concerns from the national-security world in which she spent her career.
That doesn’t make her unqualified. Far from it.
In fact, I think she is extraordinarily qualified in many ways. I could see her being an outstanding university president or leader of a major institution.
But Congress is a different job.
Congress requires more than a résumé. It requires a personal connection with the people you represent — including the farmer, rancher and small-business owner hundreds of miles from Washington.
That will be one of the most interesting things to watch in this race.
And then there is the money.
Laubacher has raised more than $10 million for the campaign. That is an astonishing amount of money for a Colorado congressional race and tells us that national Democrats see the 4th District as worth contesting.
Finally, drive north to the 8th Congressional District.
This may be the most fascinating district of the three.
Republican Gabe Evans and Democrat Manny Rutinel are both Latino. Both are well-qualified. Both have Colorado connections. But politically they represent dramatically different sides of the political spectrum.
Evans is a Republican, former Army helicopter pilot and former police officer who won the congressional seat in 2024 by fewer than 2,500 votes.
Rutinel is a Democrat, attorney, economist and state legislator whose mother immigrated from the Dominican Republic. He has been elected to the Colorado House and is now trying to move to Washington.
The district itself is a political laboratory.
About 40% of its population is Latino. It stretches from the Democratic-leaning northern Denver suburbs through Commerce City and Thornton and into the more conservative communities of Weld County and Greeley.
And here’s the remarkable part: Latinos aren’t a single political bloc.
The two candidates demonstrate that very clearly. Two Latino candidates. Two very different political philosophies.
In 2022, a Democrat won the district by about 1,600 votes. In 2024, Evans won it by fewer than 2,500. Now they are fighting over it again.
So here we have three congressional races that tell us something about Colorado.
Denver loses 29 years of congressional experience.
A retired two-star admiral with an extraordinary national-security résumé takes on Lauren Boebert in a district where local identity and rural issues will matter enormously.
And two Latino candidates, one Republican and one Democrat, face each other in the state’s true political battleground.
Three races.
Three very different stories.
And perhaps the biggest story is that Colorado politics is changing before our eyes.
After six decades of watching Colorado politics, I have learned not to predict too much.
But I sure intend to watch.
Source: villagerpublishing.com. Print edition: The Villager, Vol. 44 No. 47, Oct. 15, 2026. Issuu edition.