I’m pre-writing this because, life, so I thought I’d write a little bit about some of the Colorado primaries. First, Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, which is Cook PVI EVEN, a total toss-up, and currently inhabited by Republican Gabe Evans. Evans took that seat from Democrat Yadira Caraveo in 2024, after she had held it for one term. Caraveo imploded in spectacular fashion early last year when stories of staff mistreatment and covered-up suicide attempts surfaced, so she’s out of the race.

The CO-8 primary features a choice between bad and bad, with two Democratic state representatives, Shannon Bird and Manny Rutinel, exhibiting two different pathologies. Bird is pretty much a garden-variety centrist who has taken some sketchy pro-ICE votes and also has taken some AIPAC money. Rutinel is ambition in human form, who’s trying to moderate his previous liberal/progressive positions to fit into the dead even district. In the words of one of the Colorado politics people I follow, “Shannon Bird and Manny Rutinel are the same person with one key difference: Shannon will tell you exactly how she’ll fuck you over before she does it & Manny will tell you he agrees with you then sell out at the first opportunity he gets.” (That’s @palmonablanca on TikTok if you’re interested.)

Anyway, the funny part of this is just how poorly Rutinel is doing at trying to moderate himself. He’s a former vegan who has at times called the meat industry “exploitative”, but his explanation for changing is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard a candidate say in a while:

You can smell the focus group wafting off of that question. Rutinel has also completely changed his position on fracking. I don’t have any deep knowledge of Rutinel, but he’s a Yale Law grad, and those people all think they’re smarter than everyone else and that everyone will buy their bullshit since they’re so fucking smart. I’m just glad I don’t have to vote in CO-8.

I’ve written about the CO-1 race before, where Melat Kiros is challenging Diana DeGette, who’s been occupying the seat since before Kiros was born, and also has done fuck-all in the past decade. DeGette is running scared. Some outside spending group dumped $350K into the race for ads attacking Kiros. DeGette herself has paid for ads promoting a dirty little story from a shitty CO political blog, headlined Melat Kiros Rationalizes Killing Jews. You can read it, but it basically twists her words saying that a genocide in reaction the Hamas attacks of 10/7 isn’t justified into, well, that headline.

I watch Kiros’ videos on TikTok and listen to interviews with her, and the more I hear, the more I like. She got into politics after being fired from a corporate law job for writing about the genocide in Israel, so there was always the danger that she’d talk like a lawyer.(Not a well-spoken lawyer like Kay, a boring DC lawyer, of course.) But you can see her evolution as a candidate, honing her ability to speak frankly and directly. It also looks like her campaign is putting in the work, walking neighborhoods and knocking on doors.

DeGette’s strategy is that of a weak candidate: calling in the outside spending and resorting to shitty attacks, while basically hiding from the media (she hasn’t appeared on any of the Colorado politics shows I follow, unlike Kiros, and she didn’t attend last weekend’s Democratic event where other candidates showed). Her name recognition might lead to a win in the primary, especially since there’s a weak third candidate, Wanda James, who will get a few votes. But if she wins, she’ll have won ugly, and I think people remember that.

For Coloradans reading, I’ll be voting tonight for Senadora Julie Gonzales for Senate, David Seligman for AG, Amanda Gonzalez for SoS, and Phil Weiser for Governor. There’s no primary in CO-7, so that’s pretty much all of the interesting races. The rest of you, watch out for shape-shifting Yale Law grads and lazy incumbents. Colorado hasn’t cornered the market on either of those.