Manny Rutinel, the Democratic nominee in one of the country's most competitive House races, coauthored a 2022 paper calling for livestock farms to transition to plant-based agriculture, a record now colliding with his campaign pitch as a friend to Colorado ranchers.
Rutinel is running to unseat Republican Rep. Gabe Evans in Colorado's Eighth Congressional District, a swing seat Evans flipped in 2024 by fewer than 3,000 votes. The district is home to roughly 2,000 farms, and 80 percent of their sales come from livestock and poultry. Rutinel now wears cowboy boots on the trail and says he "will always fight to support farmers and ranchers."
But a 2022 policy article Rutinel coauthored while working as an attorney for Earthjustice, a climate-focused legal organization, tells a different story. The paper, titled "Reducing Animal Agriculture Emissions: The Viability of a Farm Transition Carbon Offset Protocol" and published through The Brooks Institute, proposed paying meat producers to convert their operations into plant-based farms, funded by carbon offsets and government grants. It called animal agriculture "one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions" and pushed for "aggressive policies" to overhaul what Rutinel described as a broken food system.
The article went further. It proposed a federal moratorium on the expansion or creation of large-scale livestock farms once the transition program took effect, a measure designed to prevent ranchers who declined to switch from filling the gap left by those who did. Rutinel pointed to Denmark as a model, citing a Danish agricultural bill that pledged "more than $90 million in bonuses for farmers who grow plant-based crops for human consumption." He also referenced a 2021 California bill that would have provided grants to animal farms wanting to make the same switch.
Travis Grant, CEO of the Colorado Livestock Association, told the Washington Free Beacon he cannot believe Rutinel genuinely supports the ranching industry. Grant did not hold back about the candidate's shifting presentation.
"He's so willing to put on a dime-store cowboy hat... and wear the boots and talk about he's a friend of ag or he's not a friend of ag whenever it's convenient."
Grant added that Rutinel's record makes it impossible to trust his current positioning.
"I'm inclined to believe he's going to do what he needs to do to get elected and then he's going to push for an agenda that he's got a long history of pushing for."
On the question of consistency, Grant was blunt: "It's going to be hard to know what the flavor of the day is. Under one administration, he may be a friend of ag, and the next, he may not be."
The 2022 paper is not an isolated data point. Rutinel's public record stretches back years and paints a consistent picture of a committed environmental activist, one that clashes sharply with his current campaign messaging.
As a student at the University of Florida, Rutinel staged protests urging his peers to "change their lifestyle" and "go vegan." He wore a sign reading "Animal liberation is human liberation." At age 22, he called for giving animals the same legal rights as people, a position reported by the Colorado Sun. He also authored blog posts with titles advocating socialism and veganism.
At Yale Law School, Rutinel was arrested in 2019 for storming the field during the Yale-Harvard football game. He and fellow protesters delayed the game by nearly an hour, chanting "hey hey, ho ho, fossil fuels have got to go" and accusing both schools of being "complicit in climate injustice." They demanded the universities divest from fossil fuels.
That pattern of environmental activism continued into his political career. As recently as July 2023, Rutinel referred to part of the Eighth District as "one of the country's most polluted regions." During his 2024 state house campaign, his ActBlue fundraising page pledged to reject donations from "polluting industries." He has not tweeted the word "pollute" since 2024, a notable silence for a candidate who once built his brand around the issue.
Rutinel now says he supports an "all-of-the-above energy solution" that "protects good-paying jobs in our communities." He also says he eats meat and that "it's important... to be able to enjoy the delicious products that Colorado ranchers make." His campaign did not respond to the Free Beacon's request for comment.
Rutinel won the Democratic primary in a rout, defeating former state Rep. Shannon Bird by roughly 25 points, according to the Washington Examiner. The race was called with 82 percent of the vote tabulated, and Rutinel was boosted in the final weeks by tech and crypto spending.
His victory landed on the same primary night that 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros ousted 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado's neighboring First District, a result that sent shockwaves through the Democratic establishment. Kiros's win drew fierce conservative backlash and deepened concerns that the party's left flank is seizing control in competitive territory, not just safe blue seats.
Rep. Evans has seized on the pattern. In an interview with Newsmax, Evans framed the race as a national bellwether, arguing that the Democratic Party has been captured by its socialist wing. "The party of John F. Kennedy, I think, is on the ropes right now," Evans said. "And what we're seeing instead is this absolute socialism."
Evans pointed to the district's large Hispanic population, roughly 40 percent, and argued those voters reject the far-left agenda. "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," he said.
National Republicans have worked to tie Rutinel to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, framing both as part of the same socialist wave. Fox News reported that the NRCC and Congressional Leadership Fund are actively drawing that comparison. NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said the "socialist takeover of the Democrat Party is no longer confined to deep-blue strongholds."
That framing has some basis in Rutinel's own words. He told Just The News that "a more left-wing agenda will energize voters and fare well in the general election", a claim he now appears to be walking back as he courts rural and agricultural voters in a district Donald Trump narrowly carried in 2024.
The broader socialist insurgency in Colorado's primaries has raised questions about whether the Democratic Party can hold competitive seats while running candidates whose records place them well to the left of their districts. Breitbart reported that Rutinel had aligned with groups hostile to U.S. immigration enforcement and had been endorsed by BOLD PAC, even as polling showed him consolidating Democratic primary support.
Nationally, polling has found a significant appetite among Democratic voters for candidates who embrace the democratic socialist label. But a primary electorate and a general electorate are two different animals, especially in a district where livestock is the economic backbone.
The gap between Rutinel's activist past and his current campaign persona is not a matter of interpretation. It is documented in his own published writing, his protest record, his fundraising pledges, and his social media history. He coauthored a paper proposing to pay ranchers to stop ranching. He called for a federal ban on expanding livestock operations. He protested for veganism. He demanded fossil fuel divestment loudly enough to get arrested for it.
Now he wears the boots, eats the steak, and promises to protect the very industry his 2022 paper targeted for managed decline. Even other far-left primary winners in Colorado have not attempted this kind of wholesale reinvention.
Grant, the livestock industry leader, put it plainly: "That sort of flexibility is just not something that I'm looking for as somebody who's going to represent the farmers and ranchers that I represent."
Colorado's ranchers deserve a representative whose convictions survive past the primary. Rutinel's paper trail suggests his did not.
