As U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo emphasizes abortion rights in her reelection race in Colorado’s battleground 8th Congressional District, she’s moved the right on immigration — angerin…
U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo greets supporters who gather at her campaign office to promote her reelection bid on Oct. 12, 2024, in Northglenn. As the freshman Democratic congresswoman campaigned on a recent weekend, abortion rights were never far from center frame, whether her audience was on the sixth floor of an office building in Denver’s congested northern suburbs or in a quiet backyard in rural Larimer County.
Caraveo invited Dr. Rebecca Cohen, a self-described Colorado abortion provider, to warm up about 100 volunteers at her Northglenn campaign headquarters before a day of canvassing. Caraveo, a pediatrician and former state lawmaker, told the volunteers about a 14-year-old girl who came to her office with a stomach ache.a situation that has since become more fraught in many parts of the country following the U.S. Supreme Court’s “I never thought I would be in a country where I couldn’t have that conversation ,” Caraveo said, even if Colorado While the congresswoman’s comments prompted whoops and hollers of support in the room, abortion is not the only driving factor in the tight 8th Congressional District race between Caraveo and Republican Gabe Evans. The economy, immigration and housing affordability are far more pressing for voters in the heavily Latino district, according to a, and Caraveo’s political foes have launched millions of dollars’ worth of ads to highlight what they claim are her failures on border security, crime, oil and gas jobs, and the fentanyl crisis. She has also upset allies on the left by moderating some of her more progressive past positions — most notably on immigration and energy extraction — as she negotiates a race where polling shows herCongresswoman Yadira Caraveo, left, greets her supporters, including Isla Griebling, 11, of Lafayette, who gathered in her campaign office to promote her reelection bid on Oct. 12, 2024, in Northglenn. At a gathering of three dozen or so friendly voters earlier this month in a backyard in the Riverglen neighborhood, south of Berthoud, Caraveo said she was chasing the 12% of voters who have yet to make up their minds. “We’ve gotta keep the seats we have now that are very close,” Caraveo said of House Democrats, as guests wolfed down empanadas hot off the grill. “That majority is going to run right through the middle of the 8th District.” Sitting down with The Denver Post, Caraveo, 43, hearkened back to her roots growing up with three siblings in south Adams County. Her parents immigrated to the U.S. from Chihuahua, Mexico, and her father supported the family with construction jobs. That modest upbringing motivated Caraveo to go to college, to earn her medical degree and, eventually, to enter politics. As a doctor, Caraveo found that two-thirds of her patients were on Medicaid, a reality that she has said gave her a close-up view of the struggles working-class and immigrant families regularly face. “The biggest issue is cost of living, right?” she said. “In Colorado, we’ve had issues around affordable housing for a very long time. Inflation is cooling, right? We just saw good numbers, in particular for Colorado — but people are still worried about making ends meet.”Given voters’ ambivalence on economic issues, Colorado State University political science professor Kyle Saunders said there was little use for stridency on either side in a race this tight. He’s not surprised Caraveo has steered toward the middle. “The path for both of them is to be as moderate as possible without demobilizing their base — that’s political skill, that’s political acumen,” he said.Caraveo, a fluent Spanish speaker who learned English by watching Sesame Street, made history as the state’s first Latina representative to Congress. This time, she has the benefit of incumbency: She’s outraised Evans more than 3-to-1, with a nearly $7 million haul so far. But even as allies have supported her with millions of dollars in outside spending, she’s faced an onslaught of negative adsYard signs supporting U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo as well as other Democratic candidates dot the landscape on Oct. 12, 2024, in Berthoud, Colorado. “Affordability of prescription drugs is one of the reasons that I decided to run for office in the first place — and making sure that health care is accessible and affordable for the people like the ones that I saw in clinic,” she said. Caraveo, who lives in Thornton, graduated from Regis University with a biology degree and earned her medical degree in 2009 from the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. She completed her residency in Albuquerque, then worked in private practice in the north Denver suburbs before running for the state House in 2018.that directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology to focus its research on existing and emerging illicit drugs containing xylazine, or “tranq,” a powerful and potentially lethal animal tranquilizer. Despite being in the minority party, her bill made it to Biden’s desk to be signed — “one of only 44 in one of the least productive Congresses since the Civil War,” she said. Her focus for a second term, Caraveo said, will be trying to get bills out of the House that address her constituents’ bread-and-butter concerns. “So whether it’s health care as a whole, whether it’s prescription drugs, whether it’s food, focusing on affordable housing, looking at utilities — everything that people need to get through every day,” she said. “Making sure we vote on it is going to be a priority.” Former state Rep. Susan Lontine, a Denver Democrat who served with Caraveo on the Colorado House’s Health and Insurance Committee, said she always “associates her with kids’ health.” She called Caraveo, who served two terms in the state legislature, “really smart and a really determined person.” “She was a great believer in the fair treatment of others,” Lontine said, a point echoed by Denver City Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez. She ran for the state House in 2018 alongside Caraveo and fondly remembers their time in the Latino Caucus. “We were doing what we could to ensure immigrants had the ability to be members of our community,” Gonzales-Gutierrez said. “She was very strong in advocating for immigrant rights and protections.”In her recent interview with The Post, the congresswoman said she has struggled with depression since she was a teenager. “You don’t really know when it’s going to rear its head, but the important thing is getting treatment,” she said. “And because of the position that I’m in, I’ve had access to incredible doctors at Walter Reed, at Johns Hopkins . … And because of that, I’ve gotten better. And so the reason I decided to speak out about it is because everybody should have access to that level of care.”As Caraveo has moved into the general election, a myriad of issues beyond health care have intruded on the race, complicating her prospects for reelection. Chief among those is immigration, one of the most salient discussion points in the top-of-the-ticket presidential matchup between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Migrant encounters at the southern border Her political foes claim Caraveo’s past positions make her unfit for Congress. Notably, as a state lawmaker, she signed on to a letter“Yadira Caraveo is making her party’s out-of-control illegal immigration crisis even worse, and her constituents are paying the price,” CLF spokesperson Courtney Parella wrote on the organization’s website. Rob Preuhs, a political science professor at Metro State University of Denver, said it is no surprise that Caraveo’s position on immigration has evolved. “The big picture for Caraveo on immigration is that she’ll want to distance herself from the Biden administration as much as she can, and not embrace the Harris administration as well,” he said. U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo, right, speaks to supporters gathered at a private home to promote her reelection bid on Oct. 12, 2024, in Berthoud, Colorado. Her move to the right on immigration infuriated members of the left flank of her party, prompting former state Rep. Joe Salazar tothat Caraveo owed Latinos in her district an explanation for her “hypocritical public support of racist, conspiratorial right-wing immigration stances.” “Compromising principles is not leadership,” Salazar told The Post nearly three months later. “That’s being a damn politician.” Salazar said he was particularly disappointed because he sees Caraveo as a good person who “leads with a kind heart.”Caraveo said she represents a district “that is very divided,” and she is “voting and speaking to topics in line with what my constituents want.” “Immigration is an issue that they are concerned about,” she said. “I hear that from the Latino community, in terms of people having been here for 30, 40 years, and they can’t legalize their status — and they’re upset about the process that they’re seeing at the border right now.”Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo, the Democratic incumbent, left, and Republican state Rep. Gabe Evans participate in an 8th Congressional Debate in 9News’ studio in Denver on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. that aimed to break the logjam, so far unsuccessfully, by providing law enforcement with more resources, helping cities like Denver deal with the mounting costs of assisting migrants, and shortening those migrants’ wait for work authorization.an exit poll conducted after the election . But Preuhs is among those who think that dynamic will be blunted this time, given Evans’ own Latino lineage. Latino concerns, Caraveo said, are in large part the same as those of the larger electorate. And they are the issues she has been toiling on for months. She’s hopeful, she said, because of “the fact that I’m focusing on lowering costs for people, that I’m focusing on actually getting a solution to the immigration crisis, that I’m focused on giving women the right to do what they will with their own bodies — which is something that Latinos do care about,” she said. “Those are the issues that Latinos tend to focus on, and so they’re really looking for the candidate that is going to have the right positions on those — and not necessarily what our race is.”Retired slugger Charlie Blackmon lists Belcaro house for $4.3MHow to handle questions about judges on the Colorado ballot and make informed votesPueblo man made fake kidnapping report, prompting Amber Alert, to find stolen truck, police sayThree in a row: Another office building along DTC corridor enters foreclosureLiam Payne’s ex-fiancee says he barraged her with warnings about his early deathListeria recall grows to 12 million pounds of meat and poultry, some of it sent to US schools
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New poll shows how close Rep. Yadira Caraveo’s race against Gabe Evans is, with plenty of undecided votersSeth Klamann is a statehouse reporter at the Denver Post, covering policy, state government and the legislature. He previously worked for the Gazette, the Casper Star-Tribune and the Omaha World-Herald. He's a graduate of the University of Missouri and a proud Kansas City native.
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Yadira Caraveo, Gabe Evans spar over immigration in first congressional debateSeth Klamann is a statehouse reporter at the Denver Post, covering policy, state government and the legislature. He previously worked for the Gazette, the Casper Star-Tribune and the Omaha World-Herald. He's a graduate of the University of Missouri and a proud Kansas City native.
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Yadira Caraveo, Gabe Evans spar over immigration in first congressional debateSeth Klamann is a statehouse reporter at the Denver Post, covering policy, state government and the legislature. He previously worked for the Gazette, the Casper Star-Tribune and the Omaha World-Herald. He's a graduate of the University of Missouri and a proud Kansas City native.
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