Courtesy Caraveo for Congress
Newly elected U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D-CO)
In Colorado’s tightest race, the newly created Eighth Congressional District, state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer has conceded to Dr. Yadira Caraveo. With 93 percent of the votes in, Caraveo led Kirkmeyer by less than a percentage point, at time of press. The majority of the outstanding votes will come from Adams County, Caraveo’s home in the suburbs north of Denver, which is also home to the largely working-class Latino neighborhood Old Thornton.
Earlier this year, I visited the district, which has a Latino population of 40 percent. Aside from the competitive nature of this race, Republicans saw this seat as a crucial pickup that could have solidified their narrative about a changing Latino electorate. The day after I arrived, the Colorado GOP had opened a Hispanic Outreach Center geared toward turning out voters in Adams County. Both Republican and Democratic operatives in Colorado said that the majority of voters in the district considered themselves unaffiliated with either party, thus heightening the stakes for persuading potential voters.
According to a Roll Call analysis from last year using presidential election results from 2016 and 2020, Trump would have won the district by two points against Hillary Clinton, while Biden would have won it by four points.
Caraveo, a pediatrician and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, painted her opponent as an extremist for her views on abortion (which Kirkmeyer stepped back from) and previous comments about Medicaid cuts. In a debate earlier this year, Caraveo said, “I should point out that thousands of my kids rely on [Medicaid].”
Before officially entering politics, Caraveo merged her medical background with organizing as a union delegate at SEIU while completing her medical residency at the University of New Mexico. As a union delegate, she combined organizing for improved working conditions with patient advocacy. “We would talk to hospital administrators about [upgrading] the technology we needed in order to more adequately take care of [patients],” she told me. During the debates over the Affordable Care Act, “I got to speak to senators and do interviews about why it was important to have safety net hospitals like the one that I worked at.”
That experience would lay the groundwork for the issues she would campaign on when she ran for state representative in 2018 and now in her race for Congress. “You quickly realize that insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, and all the things that we have around us as we live and grow, get in the way of taking care of patients every single day,” Caraveo said.
Elsewhere in the state, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) beat his opponent Joe O’Dea, a former union carpenter and small-business owner, who ran a campaign focused on stopping the flow of fentanyl from the southern border, while painting Bennet as an out-of-touch coastal elite. Despite claims that it would be a close race, at time of press, Bennet led by almost 12 points. Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) earned a second term easily, with over 59 percent of the vote.
On the state’s Western Slope, in the Third Congressional District, centrist Democrat Adam Frisch surprisingly leads far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) by less than 100 votes. Chances are likely that the race will finish within half a percentage point, making the race eligible for a recount.
In Pueblo, a small city located in the otherwise rural Third District with a near 50 percent Latino population, most voters expressed apathy to me over voting for Democrats. But local Latino-led groups in the county set up voter registration drives geared toward ousting Boebert. The more despondent sentiment seems to partially track. Even as the county flipped blue in 2020, and expanded its margins for these midterms, voter turnout countywide is down, about 4,000 votes fewer from the 2018 results, with more than 95 percent of results counted, at time of press.
