Manny Rutinel, the Democratic nominee for Colorado's Eighth Congressional District, voted three years running to fund transgender medical procedures for state prisoners, approving nearly $12.3 million in taxpayer spending even as Colorado stares down a $1.5 billion budget deficit and cuts Medicaid reimbursements for ordinary providers.
The state representative's voting record, detailed by the Washington Free Beacon, places him squarely at odds with the district he wants to represent, a stretch of exurban and rural Colorado that Donald Trump carried by nearly two points in 2024.
Rutinel backed appropriations bills containing a "transgender healthcare" line item within the Colorado Department of Corrections budget in the 2024, 2025, and current legislative sessions. The allocations ran $5.3 million in 2024, $5.3 million in 2025, and $1.6 million this year. The current-year figure dropped only because the state's $1.5 billion deficit forced cuts across the board, not because lawmakers reconsidered the spending priority itself.
The money flows from a consent decree the state signed in the case known as Raven v. Polis. Under that settlement, Colorado agreed to provide medical procedures, including surgeries, to all transgender prisoners. The decree also permits biological men to be housed in female-only correctional facilities.
The state signed the consent decree just weeks before the first appropriations vote in 2024. Roughly 400 convicted biological men who identify as women brought the underlying lawsuit.
Every year, the House voted along party lines. Democrats passed the budget with only one Republican defector each session. Rutinel voted yes each time. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the Free Beacon.
The transgender healthcare spending is not an isolated data point in Rutinel's legislative record. In 2025, he voted for a program giving taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal immigrant "pregnant persons." That program was originally projected to cost less than $15 million. It ballooned to nearly $105 million.
This year's budget bill preserved that program, with benefit reductions and enrollment caps, while simultaneously instituting a two-percent cut to Medicaid healthcare providers. The math is worth sitting with: providers who treat ordinary Coloradans on Medicaid took a pay cut. Funding for illegal immigrants' healthcare and prisoners' transgender procedures survived.
Rutinel also voted for legislation ordering courts to consider whether a parent uses a child's preferred pronouns when ruling on custody disputes. An earlier version of that bill classified "deadnaming" and "misgendering" as coercive control. Those provisions were stripped before final passage, but Rutinel supported the bill through the process. The version that passed primarily addresses how Colorado handles preferred pronouns on official documents such as birth certificates.
Republicans have wasted no time framing the general election as an ideological showdown. Rutinel defeated fellow state representative Shannon Bird in the Democratic primary by roughly 25 points, as Newsmax reported, running to Bird's left. His opponent in November, Republican incumbent Rep. Gabe Evans, won the seat in 2024 by just 0.8 percent, making it one of the most competitive districts in the country.
Evans has not been subtle about the contrast he intends to draw. In a statement reacting to Rutinel's primary win, Fox News reported Evans called Rutinel "a far-left, radical socialist, Mamdani-wanna-be extremist", a reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose progressive movement swept primaries in New York the week before Colorado voted.
The NRCC piled on. Spokesperson Mike Marinella told Fox News:
"The socialist takeover of the Democrat Party is no longer confined to deep-blue strongholds. The radicals are taking over battleground districts, putting must-win seats out of reach for Democrats and sinking their chances of flipping the House."
Evans himself framed the stakes in broader terms on Newsmax, saying the Democratic Party "of John F. Kennedy, I think, is on the ropes right now. And what we're seeing instead is this absolute socialism." He added a direct appeal to the district's large Hispanic population, roughly 40 percent of the electorate, arguing that "Hispanics such as myself... We want a good economy. We want to be able to afford to live, work, and raise our kids. And what socialists stand for wrecks the economy."
Rutinel is not running as a socialist. But his past makes the label hard to shed. In 2014, he published blog posts headlined "Why a More Socialistic Society Is Superior" and "What Would Jesus Do? Socialism," as the Free Beacon previously reported.
He has since attempted a conspicuous pivot. Once described as a vegan and climate activist, Rutinel now says he supports the district's vast ranching and oil industries. At a June debate, he offered this: "it's important for me to be able to enjoy the delicious products that Colorado ranchers make."
The reinvention tracks a familiar pattern. Candidates who hold progressive positions in the legislature suddenly discover the virtues of red meat and fossil fuels when they need votes in a swing district. Whether voters in Colorado's Eighth buy the transformation is the central question of this race.
Rutinel's record lands at a moment when transgender policy has become politically toxic for Democrats nationwide. Trump aggressively targeted then-Vice President Kamala Harris over her support for taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries during the 2024 campaign. California Governor Gavin Newsom has since retracted support for transgender causes. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger avoided the issue entirely during her 2025 gubernatorial campaign, at one point fleeing in her car when a reporter asked her to clarify her position.
Colorado's progressive wing, however, is moving the other direction. In Denver's neighboring First Congressional District, Just The News reported, 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros ousted 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in the primary. Breitbart noted that Rutinel had aligned with groups hostile to U.S. immigration enforcement, including one that circulated a resource folder for illegal immigrants using an obscenity directed at ICE.
The Cook Political Report rates the Eighth District a toss-up. Evans holds the narrowest of margins from 2024. Rutinel has energy and a 25-point primary mandate from the Democratic base. The question is whether that base's priorities, transgender surgeries for prisoners, healthcare for illegal immigrants, pronoun mandates in custody courts, translate in a district where Trump won and ranchers outnumber activists.
Strip away the rhetoric and the record speaks plainly. Nearly $12.3 million for transgender procedures in prisons. A healthcare program for illegal immigrants that overran its budget by seven times. A two-percent Medicaid cut for the providers who serve everyone else. A custody bill that started by criminalizing the wrong pronoun. And a candidate who wrote admiringly about socialism a decade ago, now assuring voters he likes steak.
Rutinel's campaign chose not to explain any of it.
Voters in Colorado's Eighth will decide whether silence is an acceptable answer when $12 million of their money is on the line. In a district this close, the voting record does the talking whether the candidate wants it to or not.
