Millions in early fundraising flows into Colorado’s 8th District race
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Money is already pouring in to Colorado’s 8th Congressional District race as a crowded field of Democrats battle for the chance to flip the state’s most competitive House seat.
Incumbent U.S. Representative Gabe Evans, a Fort Lupton Republican, is maintaining a narrow fundraising lead over his nearest Democratic rival with over $1.7 million raised in the first half of 2025, as he looks to defy expectations in the 2026 midterms and hold on to a seat he won by fewer than 2,500 votes last year.
United States Representative Gabe Evans (R) Colorado - public domain
Nearly three-quarters of Evans’ total haul came from political action committees or so-called joint fundraising committees, an increasingly popular campaign finance tool that allows wealthy donors to write large checks that are then split between many different candidates pursuant to individual contribution limits.
Top donors to Grow Our Majority and Defend Our Majority, joint committees that have transferred a total of over $238,000 to Evans’ campaign, include conservative billionaires like Peter Thiel, Steve Wynn, Charles Schwab and Ross Perot Jr., according to Federal Election Commission disclosures. Evans’ direct campaign haul also includes over $500,000 in receipts from roughly 200 political and corporate PACs, including the National Association of Realtors, the American Hospital Association and more than a dozen oil and gas companies.
Evans raised roughly $400,000 in individual contributions through June 30, FEC records show, with about half of that total coming from donors who gave the $3,500 maximum. Just 3 percent of his overall fundraising came from direct individual donors giving less than $200.
Candidates seeking the Democratic nomination in the 8th District include former Representative Yadira Caraveo, who was unseated by Evans in 2024; state Representatives Manny Rutinel of Commerce City and Shannon Bird of Northglenn; state Treasurer Dave Young; and Amie Baca-Oehlert, former head of the Colorado Education Association.
Since an early entry into the race in January, Rutinel has raked in contributions from small-dollar donors, including many out-of-state contributors, through the digital fundraising platform ActBlue, FEC disclosures show. He has nearly equaled Evans’ fundraising haul with over $1.6 million in contributions, just over half of which came from donors giving less than $200. That’s the highest percentage of small-dollar donations of any candidate in the race.
Bird, by contrast, collected 9 percent of her haul from small donors after announcing her campaign in May. Disclosures show the vast majority of her $400,000 in itemized individual contributions came from Colorado donors — in large part from a long list of influential donors and political insiders, including philanthropists Rutt Bridges and Merle Chambers, and lobbyists Doug Friednash, Josh Hanfling and R.D. Sewald.
Caraveo announced a bid to win back her 8th District seat in April, but she trailed both Rutinel and Bird in second-quarter fundraising, bringing in just $164,000 in individual contributions.
Young and Baca-Oehlert joined the race on back-to-back days last month, a few weeks ahead of the FEC’s June 30 reporting deadline. Young, a former state lawmaker serving in his second term as state treasurer, reported raising just under $75,000 in that period. Baca-Oehlert, a former teachers union president endorsed by the Colorado Working Families Party, raised $57,646, including a $5,000 contribution from a National Education Association PAC.
The 8th District is a top target for Democrats in the 2026 midterms as they aim to flip control of the House, where the GOP holds a narrow majority. Direct spending by campaign committees will likely make up only a small portion of expenditures in the 2026 campaign cycle. So-called super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money from wealthy donors and corporations, reported a total of $17.7 million in independent expenditures on the 8th District race in 2022 and another $29.5 million in 2024.
Youth Save Democracy, a Democratic-aligned group, is the only PAC to report any independent expenditures in the 8th District so far this cycle, a $4,749 payment to a voter analytics firm in April.
