The national Republican Party’s path to maintaining its majority in the House of Representatives this November runs straight through Colorado’s 8th Congressional District (CD-8). It’s a new district, created by the 2021 redistricting process, and this year’s contest will mark only the second time it has appeared on local ballots. Despite currently being represented by Democrat Yadira Caraveo, CD-8 also has the unique distinction of being one of the most evenly balanced districts in the country: of 435 seats in the House, Cook Political Report ranks Colorado’s 8th as the 221st most conservative.
CD-8 also has another unique distinction: despite its even balance of voters and a current Democratic congresswoman, it is one of 53 seats nationwide that House Republicans believe they must win.
Enter Gabe Evans, and a trolley full of baggage.
Evans was not the chaotic Colorado GOP’s preferred pick in the district’s June Republican primary – having been passed over for Janak Joshi, a former legislator who was once forced to surrender his medical license – but he has touted support from national Republicans since the beginning. While Joshi campaigned with the support of state party Chair Dave Williams, Evans came with the GOP’s two biggest names: Donald Trump and U.S. Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. When the votes were counted, the national party got its guy.
Now, Evans has the task of defeating Yadira Caraveo, a pediatrician and a centrist, in one of the most moderate congressional districts in the nation. Or rather, some version of Evans has that task. Some facsimile of him created in the National Republican Congressional Committee’s labs. A version of Evans who, unlike the real thing, is a folksy moderate with governing experience. A sensible former cop and veteran. A moderate candidate for a moderate district.
If you look at Evans’ campaign website, that’s the version you will see: law enforcement credentials front and center, ample mention of his time in the National Guard, and an issues page that includes such platitudes as “American prosperity,” “American security,” “American education,” and “American values.” The site is replete with friendly, relatable images of Evans with his wife and children, and enough occasional mentions of his current role in the Colorado statehouse to give him an air of experience and respectability. There are no screeching bald eagles or clipart American flags. There are no exclamation points or screeds about the military being “woke” now. There is no mention of disbelieving in climate change or wanting to abolish the health insurance marketplace. And there is no mention of supporting Trump’s plan for mass deportations, or of wanting to make abortion illegal.
But that’s not Gabe Evans at all. Because, in reality, Gabe Evans does believe the military is “woke” now – whatever that means. And, in reality, Gabe Evans does want to abolish the health insurance marketplace, and does not believe in climate change. And, in reality, Gabe Evans has openly supported Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations and the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. In reality, Gabe Evans is not the NRCC’s lab-grown moderate candidate for a moderate district: he’s just the extremist they’re stuck with.
To review the highlights:
At a June campaign stop, Evans lamented that the U.S. military is having a “hard time recruiting the next generation of warfighters” because it is “too busy pushing a political agenda.” It’s a hackneyed line which has been pushed by groups like the Heritage Foundation and Sen. Ted Cruz in recent years. Experts say that the attack is not only baseless, it actively threatens national security. Though perhaps the least damaging of Evans’ bizarre positions, one must nevertheless marvel at the choice by an aspiring politician to imitate Ted Cruz – a man of whom fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham once said, “If you killed him on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
But Evans’ positions get more extreme from there. In both January and June, Evans made clear that he does not support the health insurance marketplace system established by the Affordable Care Act – the system by which more than 45 million people currently access life-saving coverage. Since the system was implemented, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have seen substantial reductions in the number of uninsured citizens. And Gabe Evans opposes that system.
Evans is also unbothered by the single greatest existential threat humanity has faced in its history: climate change. During his primary against Joshi, the now-anodyne issues page on Evans’ website featured diatribes against “climate alarmism” and “draconian Leftist [sic] climate regulations.” Some time after the Colorado Times Recorder first reported these statements, Evans’ issue page was redesigned – indicating, if nothing else, that Evans understands his climate denialism is a risk to the moderate reputation he needs in order to win the moderate district.
Similarly, the NRCC’s lab-grown Evans is at risk from the actual Evans’ positions on immigration, which threaten to land with a thud in the moderate district. Evans has spoken out in support of Trump’s plan for massive, forced deportations at least three times in the last six months. The plan, which would entail deporting more than 15 million people, is not just cruel: it would be an economic disaster. Yet, both Trump and Evans are seemingly willing to inflict those human and economic tolls for the in-group back-slaps and cable news slots the mass deportations are sure to earn. The choice to take the hardest possible line on immigration is bizarre calculus from Evans: not only are 39% of voters in the district Hispanic or Latino, but Evans’ opponent, incumbent Democrat Yadira Caraveo, already sports a very moderate record on immigration.
None of those positions highlight the extent of Evans’ extremism quite like his opposition to abortion, though. Last year, Evans came out in support of the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade, ending half a century of safe, legal abortion access for American women. “I don’t really see any reason to reverse course on the success the pro-life movement is having,” Evans said, regarding Dobbs. In a now-deleted survey by Freedom Voter Guides, previously reported by the Colorado Times Recorder, Evans also indicated that he opposed abortion “even for women who were raped by a family member.” It’s a position which puts Evans far outside of the mainstream: only 36% of Americans support abortion restrictions. It also creates yet another potentially unfavorable distinction between Evans and Caraveo, the latter being a woman, a medical doctor, and a supporter of abortion access.
If his positions and pronouncements were not enough to deem Evans an extremist, his roster of supporters pushes the marginal case into full-blown territory. Though his support from national GOP figures like Speaker Mike Johnson was instrumental in Evans’ primary victory over Joshi, that support also saddled him with additional baggage for the General Election. Johnson, for instance, though the third highest-ranking official in the U.S. government, has a lifetime’s worth of strong connections to the most radical elements of the Christian nationalist movement (and, incidentally, will be campaigning for Evans in Larimer County on Friday). Evans’ website also touts the endorsement of Jack Bergman, a Republican congressman from Michigan who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In 2022, Bergman voted to oppose the codification of not only same-sex marriage, but interracial marriage. But hey, he supports Gabe Evans.
Evans’ website also lists an endorsement from Indiana congressman Jim Banks who, like Bergman, voted against codifying a right to same-sex and interracial marriage, has advocated for a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, and has 100% ratings from a constellation of anti-abortion organizations. Aside from Speaker Johnson, Evans’ highest-profile endorser is U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, who has defended slavery as “necessary,” and, like Evans, opposes both the health insurance marketplace system and safe, legal abortion access.
If Evans were actually a sensible moderate, like he and the NRCC are so desperate to portray him, wouldn’t he have endorsements from other moderates? Instead, his list of endorsers reads like a “Who’s Who” of people who voted against interracial marriage in 2022.
As Colorado State University political science Professor Kyle Saunders told the Colorado Times Recorder last year, well before Gabe Evans and Janak Joshi duked it out in this year’s contentious primary, Republicans hoping to win CD-8 this November need a good candidate to make that happen. “In a marginally close district like this one, Republicans are in a difficult situation,” Saunders wrote in an email, saying that “the candidate that Republicans choose in their [CD-8] 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.”
They needed a good candidate, one who could activate the Republican base while also appealing to moderate swing voters. They needed a candidate who could make that lift. But they didn’t get that candidate. They got Gabe Evans instead.
