Colorado Democrat Manny Rutinel, the congressional nominee running in the state's competitive Eighth Congressional District who has sought to distance himself from his climate activist past, has taken nearly $11,000 in political contributions from his former colleagues with the far-left environmental group Earthjustice, campaign finance filings show.
The donations include $7,000—the maximum allowed—from Peter Lehner, the head of Earthjustice's Sustainable Food & Farming Program and Rutinel's former boss. While working for Earthjustice from May 2022 to July 2023, under Lehner's direction, Rutinel helped win a lawsuit against the EPA that forced the agency to enforce stricter regulations on slaughterhouses.
Another $1,000 came from senior attorney Alexandra Schluntz, who lives down the road from Rutinel in Denver and is a fellow Yale Law School graduate. Her work includes seeking to reduce emissions from the oil and gas sectors and fighting "unjust levels of toxic pollution emitted." Rutinel advocated for similar policies during his time at Yale, where he was arrested for storming the field during a November 2019 Yale-Harvard football game to demand the schools divest from oil and gas.
Rutinel has gone to great lengths to recast himself as a moderate since launching his bid to unseat Republican congressman Gabe Evans in a district where ranching and oil are crucial to the economy. Though he spent years as an environmentalist and animal rights activist, beginning well before and lasting long after his tenure with Earthjustice, Rutinel now calls himself a "friend" to ranchers and says he's started eating meat after spending some 15 years as a vegan.
Rutinel also stripped references to his Earthjustice gig off his campaign website and excluded it from his biography at a debate earlier this month. Just months before beginning his congressional campaign, however, he boasted that his "entire" job working as an Earthjustice attorney was to "take on large meat corporations and sue them for all they're worth."
Evans repeatedly condemned Rutinel for his work for Earthjustice during the untelevised Oct. 7 debate, which the Washington Free Beacon attended. The environmental group threw its support behind the County of Boulder, which borders the eighth district, in its lawsuit accusing multinational oil companies of deceiving the public about the climate-related harms of the fossil fuel products. A lawyer representing Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil told the Supreme Court this month that there are theoretically no limits on Boulder's claims and the case, if successful, could lay the groundwork for tens of thousands of additional cases against both the industry and fuel retailers, automakers, and companies or individuals who emit so-called greenhouse gases.
Rutinel's rebranding attempts stretch beyond the issues of climate and animal rights.
He spent years authoring blog posts with headlines like "What Would Jesus Do? Socialism," and "Why a More Socialistic Society Is Superior," then denied being a socialist when the Free Beacon revealed them. And while serving as a state representative, Rutinel voted to defund several police programs, helped kill a bill that would have toughened penalties against child sex predators, and limited law enforcement's ability to cooperate with ICE. In a document he released last month, however, he billed himself as a safety advocate "with a particular focus on funding the police" and "protecting children."
