What Colorado’s New Congressional District Has in Store
Read Ally Henson’s article for The Washington Post, where she explores what Colorado’s new congressional district has in store for voters and candidates in the mock congressional race.
Colorado’s new 8th Congressional District, which consists of Adams County, Larimer County and Weld County, could be the most competitive U.S. House district race in the nation.
The new district was apportioned after the 2020 Census and was drawn by the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission and approved in November 2021.
Twenty-eight percent of the district’s active registered voters are Democrats, 25% are Republicans, and 44% are unaffiliated. It is one of the most competitive House districts and is often a toss-up between Democrats and Republicans. The current House seats are four Democrats and three Republicans. The 8th District has the smallest share of active registered voters of any of Colorado’s congressional districts, at 428,307. An analysis by nonpartisan redistricting staff found that the district leans 1.3 percentage points in Democrats’ favor.
Alvina Vasquez, a Democratic political consultant, said the district is filled with a lot of families who have been pushed out of Denver as the cost of living in the capital has risen. These voters are more blue-collar citizens and are focused on kitchen-table issues like jobs, the cost of housing, and education. The oil and gas industry is also a big issue for this district due to environmental impacts. The district also has the largest Latinx population in the state, 38.5% of the adult population. Non-Hispanic white residents make up 52% of the district. Colorado has never elected a Latina to Congress; this year, two Latina women are trying to make history as the first-ever.
The candidates up for election in this race are three Democratic women. These include Wendy Davis, best known for her 11-hour long filibuster; Yadira Caraveo, a Colorado native pediatrician; and Nanette Díaz Barragán, an attorney and U.S. representative from California’s 44th Congressional District.
Wendy Davis, the Fort Worth Democrat who stood for 11 hours—in pink sneakers—to filibuster a bill in the Texas Senate that would place new restrictions on abortion clinics and ban the practice after 20 weeks of pregnancy, knows about single motherhood and poverty. Davis became a single mother herself at the age of 19. She went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and eventually started her own practice for federal and local government affairs, real estate, and contract compliance. Davis has sponsored bills on a range of topics such as cancer prevention, payday lending, protecting victims of sexual assault, and government transparency. Davis will focus her campaign on protecting and expanding abortion rights, combating climate change, strengthening voting rights, and lowering rising costs for working families.
Dr. Yadira Caraveo is a Colorado native whose parents moved to Adams County from a small town in Mexico. Caraveo attended medical school at the University of Colorado and became the first physician in her family. She ran for the Colorado General Assembly in 2018 and won. While in medical school, Caraveo helped organize her fellow medical residents for better working conditions, becoming a union representative with SEIU. She has also worked with the Union of Concerned Scientists to enlist doctors across the country in the fight against climate change; President Obama recognized her as a Champion of Change for her efforts. Caraveo will focus her campaign on lowering health care costs, addressing the high costs of housing, combating climate change, and protecting women’s right to choose.
Nanette Díaz Barragán is a California native who was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2016, being California’s 44th District’s first-ever Latina representative. She is the youngest of eleven children raised by immigrant parents from Mexico. She is a first-generation college graduate, receiving her Juris Doctor from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Barragán currently serves on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Committee on Homeland Security, is the First Vice-Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Co-Chair of the Climate and Environmental Justice Congressional Task Force. Barragán will focus her campaign on environmental and health justice, immigration reform, strengthening the economy, and affordable and accessible education.
Over the next two months, we will hear from the candidates and their press teams about how they will represent the Colorado 8th if elected.