Colorado Democrat Manny Rutinel, the congressional nominee running in the state's competitive Eighth Congressional District, boasted that he "joined a bipartisan push" to create a $350 million police fund. That fund was actually created through a ballot measure put forward by a right-wing group.
Last month, Rutinel released a document titled "Plan to Keep Our Communities Safe." It states that Rutinel "joined a bipartisan push backed by Colorado's County Sheriffs to create a $350 million fund to recruit, train and retain police, and a $1 million fund to better support the families of fallen police officers."
Rutinel was referencing a 2025 bill in the Colorado House, where he served from 2023 to 2026, known as SB25-310. But that bill merely implemented Proposition 130, a ballot measure that voters passed by a six-point margin in November 2024. It was placed on the ballot and backed by Advance Colorado, a conservative nonprofit that local liberals have painted as a boogeyman for spearheading a wave of right-wing voter initiatives. Advance Colorado executive vice president Kristi Burton Brown said "Manny never once reached out to support the campaign for Prop 130, which was a ballot measure passed by voters, not legislators."
"He also never endorsed the measure while it was on the ballot," she told the Washington Free Beacon. "If he supported the bill to implement the funding, that bill was a requirement based on what voters passed, not an idea from legislators."
Rutinel's exaggerated public safety claims come as the Democrat attempts to rebrand his image as a left-wing activist in his race against Rep. Gabe Evans (R.), a former police officer, in what is expected to be one of the closest midterm elections in the country. Rutinel recently removed a section of his campaign website saying he was "committed to confronting systemic racism and advocating for policies that promote racial equity in … the criminal justice system," the Colorado Sun reported Saturday.
During a debate Wednesday night, Rutinel promoted his "Plan to Keep Our Communities Safe," calling public safety "a top priority for my campaign."
"I want to fund our police so that they have the resources to protect our communities. I've done that in the legislature. I have a public safety plan on my website that has all that laid out," he said, adding that the document "outlines a series of steps that I want to take when I'm in Congress."
That "series of steps" is light on specifics, like how Rutinel would subsidize local police departments from the federal level. And the plan's claim that Rutinel "consistently voted to fund Colorado state and local law enforcement" doesn't square with his record. The bills it points to as evidence were massive omnibus budget packages with a mix of increases and decreases for various public safety programs. This year's legislation, for instance, cut $200,000 from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Rutinel's plan also vows to "[e]quip law enforcement with the resources" needed to curb drug dealing and violent crime. But as a state lawmaker, Rutinel cosponsored legislation strengthening Colorado's sanctuary restrictions by further limiting local and state law enforcement's abilities to cooperate with ICE. That 2025 bill came as a string of violent incidents by illegal immigrants tied to the brutal Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua gripped Aurora, backyard to both the eighth district and Colorado's capital. The Drug Enforcement Administration, with help from ICE, raided a makeshift nightclub and seized crack, cocaine, and "tusi," a drug cocktail containing ketamine, MDMA, methamphetamine, and sometimes more dangerous drugs like fentanyl. ICE determined that 41 of the 49 arrested were illegal immigrants. A month earlier, suspected Tren de Aragua members illegally in the country were arrested for kidnapping and torturing two people.
Another section of Rutinel's safety plan focuses on his efforts to protect "against the sexual exploitation of children," pointing to his vote for HB26-1257, which he says was meant to "[c]rack down on human trafficking." But that legislation had no direct ties to kids. It was aimed at helping local governments shutter massage parlors suspected of conducting illegal activity, including human trafficking, but victims at those sorts of establishments are typically adults, according to the Polaris Project, a nonprofit that combats human trafficking and supports survivors. The bill makes no mention of children.
Rutinel also points to SB26-015, which he says "toughen[ed] penalties against child sex offenders." That bill, however, was a weaker version of legislation Rutinel helped kill in committee two years prior, a move that prompted the Gazette's editorial board to blast him by name and accused him of rolling "out a welcome mat for perverts." The version Rutinel supported removed a four-year mandatory minimum sentence for anyone convicted of soliciting for child prostitution, the Free Beacon reported.
That wasn't the only time Rutinel helped kill human trafficking legislation in committee. He also voted to indefinitely postpone a Republican-led bill that would have allowed nonprofits investigating trafficking or supporting services to sue alleged traffickers, subject to the attorney general’s review.
The safety plan is just the latest instance of Rutinel overstating his record. He has routinely described himself as a "first responder" in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. But he was actually a "logistics specialist" tracking "inventory of large and small generators."
Rebranding his image has also been a theme across his campaign. He's called himself a "friend" to ranchers, who are cornerstones to the eighth district's economy, and said in July that he hasn't "been a vegan for several years." Yet he'd been on an anti-meat crusade since college and wrote policy papers urging animal-based farmers to "transition" to plants to fight climate change. Just months before announcing his campaign, he said his "entire" job working for the far-left environmental group Earthjustice was to "take on large meat corporations and sue them for all they're worth," the Free Beacon reported.
