The hard-line stance against abortion taken by state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, the Republican who ran for Colorado’s new congressional seat last year, is widely seen as one of the top reasons Kirkmeyer lost her race to Democrat Yadira Caraveo.
But that may not stop the new crop of Republican candidates hoping to oust Caraveo next year from staking out hard-right anti-abortion stances as they compete against each other for Republican primary voters, who are more anti-choice than the general electorate.
State Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Ft. Lupton), who announced his bid to unseat Caraveo on Sept. 6, told KNUS radio’s George Brauchler on Sept. 11 that he supports the Dobbs decision, which rescinded the constitutional right to an abortion, saying he sees no reason to “reverse course.”
Evans made the comment in response to Brauchler’s question about whether Evans would “support the nationalization of pro-life laws.” The overturn of Roe allowed individual states to decide whether to legalize abortions, and some anti-abortion activists are pushing Congress and the president to pass a law banning abortion in all states, even in Colorado where abortion is permitted.
“Do you support congressional action in this area?” asked Brauchler of Evans.
Evens didn’t commit to backing a national abortion ban, saying instead, “You know, so the pro-life movement has been working for the last 50 years to try to have this issue, you know, overturned and returned to the states. We’ve seen a lot of success there. And I don’t really see any reason to reverse course on the success that the pro-life movement is having.”
Evans’s support for the overturn of Roe v. Wade comports with an anti-choice stance he took in a Freedom Voter Guide survey. There, he indicated he opposed abortion, even for women who were raped by a family member and supported abortion only to save the life of the mother.
Evans’ Republican primary opponent, Weld County Commissioner Scott James, also supports the overturning of Roe. He apparently hasn’t talked publicly about abortion since announcing his candidacy Sept. 5, but he wrote in 2022, prior to the Dobbs decision, that if “Roe is indeed overturned, the matter will rightly (my opinion) be returned to state legislatures to be decided by the people.” He also wrote that he personally believes life begins at conception and opposes a Colorado law enshrining the right to an abortion in state law, calling the 2021 Reproductive Health Equity Act (RHEA) “horrible.”
James has not said how he’d vote on a national abortion ban.
James didn’t return an email seeking comment.
The incumbent, Caraveo, a medical doctor, disagrees with the Dobbs decision and is against banning abortion via statute. She’s promised to “fight to guarantee a woman’s right to choose at the federal level, just as we’ve done in Colorado.”
Colorado State University Political Science Prof. Kyle Saunders points out next year’s election will be substantially different than the 2022 mid-term because, among other things, it’s a presidential contest, but the candidate’s positions on abortion could make a difference in multiple ways.
“In the nationalized elections that are coming in 2024, opinion on the presidential candidates as well as the candidates and their stances will matter in vote choice *on the margins,*” Saunders wrote in an email to the Colorado Times Recorder, adding that abortion will “likely be a big issue in the Republican primary process, but so will crime, inflation, and other economic concerns.”
“In a marginally close district like this one, Republicans are in a difficult situation: they have to activate and turn out their voters while also not losing enough of the smaller portion of persuadable voters that they lose on the abortion issue,” wrote Saunders. “To be able to overcome this, the candidate that Republicans choose in their primary process must have the political skills to be able to effectively speak to both the base and to that smaller but consequential set of moderate voters, which is a pretty big lift.
“It is to Democrats’ benefit that the abortion issue remains salient nationally and in CO-8, just as there are issues that will favor Republicans. It’s hard to guarantee that a particular issue will be salient in a particular context though, and events may change a lot between now and the general election. In close elections like this one will likely be, there’s a lot of factors that can determine outcomes. In 2022, candidate quality mattered a lot in congressional elections, as did the salience of the abortion issue. 2024 is probably similar to that cycle, but it’s not exactly the same.
Elsewhere in his Sept. 11 KNUS interview with Brauchler, Evans expressed the view that the U.S. Department of Justice is corrupt.
“And that is honestly frustrating to me because as a police officer, I know that justice in this country is based on two things,” Evans told Brauchler. “You’re innocent until proven until proven guilty, and justice is supposed to be blind. And that is not what we see under the Biden administration. That is not what we see. Biden’s allies in Congress, like our congresswoman from the eighth, Yadira Caraveo. That’s not what we see them doing.
“We see [Biden’s allies] using the justice system in this country to provide cover for their political allies and to persecute their political opponents. That’s at least the only explanation that I can come up with for why, if you go to a school board meeting, you have the potential of ending up on a domestic terrorist watch list. But we have no idea how cocaine got into the White House. And so, you know, as a police officer who swore an oath to uphold and defend the concept of justice, which is innocent until proven guilty, and that justice is supposed to be blind. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of folks that are very frustrated with the current state of the Biden administration and his allies in Congress and how they’re running justice in general in this country.”
Colorado’s 8th Congressional District was formed after the 2020 Census, increasing Colorado’s representation in the U.S. House from seven seats to eight. It’s one of the most competitive of the 435 House seats in the country and is located north of Denver. It includes parts of Weld, Larimer, and Adams Counties, and unaffiliated voters make up close to 50% of registered voters.
UPDATE: This article was re-posted on 9-20-23 due to a website glitch indicating that it was originally published on 9-15-23. It was actually published on the morning of 9-20-23.
