Manny Rutinel, who is vying to represent an area full of cattle ranches, also penned headlines like, ‘The 5 Stages of Becoming a Vegan’
The Democratic nominee in Colorado’s competitive Eighth Congressional District, Manny Rutinel, wrote blog posts advocating for socialism and veganism, a Washington Free Beacon review of the archived blog found. Headlines included “What Would Jesus Do? Socialism” and “The 5 Stages of Becoming a Vegan.”
Rutinel—who won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday—published the blog between 2013 and 2014, but it remained active until around 2022, when the site began redirecting users to Rutinel’s campaign website when he launched his campaign for state legislature, according to a former friend of Rutinel’s, the left-wing political operative Deep Singh Badhesha. Only the blog’s homepage was archived, so the full posts are no longer accessible. The titles and excerpts, however, provide plenty of insight into Rutinel’s far-left views.
One post, published in May 2014, is titled “What Would Jesus Do? Socialism,” and begins, “First, allow me to clarify that, technically, Jesus is a monarch because he is the ‘king of kings.'” Five days earlier, Rutinel published a post headlined, “Why a More Socialistic Society Is Superior.”
The posts were published to the “Politics” section of MannyRutinel.com, the same domain Rutinel’s congressional campaign now uses. Other sections included “Environment,” “Health,” “News,” and “Veganism.” Rutinel was especially active in posting to the last of those sections. Headlines include “The 5 Stages of Becoming a Vegan or Vegetarian” and “Top 5 Benefits of Being Vegan or Vegetarian,” which argues that a meatless diet is “better for your health.” Included in the “Health” section is the headline, “The Benefits of Universal Health Care.”
Details of Rutinel’s blog come amid a socialist surge in Democratic congressional primaries, including in Colorado. On Tuesday, one week after Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist sweep in New York City’s congressional primaries, another socialist in Denver, Melat Kiros, unseated 15-term congresswoman Diana DeGette.
Rutinel won his own primary against the more moderate Democrat Shannon Bird by nearly 30 points. Though he ran to Bird’s left, he is not running as a socialist like Kiros and the Mamdani-backed challengers in New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez. Those candidates are effectively guaranteed to win their general elections in deep-blue districts come November. Rutinel, by contrast, is running in a competitive general election against a Republican incumbent, Army veteran Gabe Evans, who unseated Democratic congresswoman Yadira Caraveo in 2024.
Rutinel, a former vegan activist and attorney with the left-wing environmental group Earthjustice, has attempted to present a more moderate image—one in which he often wears boots and a cowboy hat, though he was born in Los Angeles—while campaigning against Evans. Rutinel has notably downplayed his longstanding opposition to the meat and oil industries, which make up the backbone of the eighth district’s economy.
Rutinel, for example, was one of dozens of left-wing protesters who stormed the field at the 2019 Yale-Harvard football game to accuse the universities of being “complicit in climate injustice.” Rutinel and his comrades delayed the game by nearly an hour as they chanted, “hey hey, ho ho, fossil fuels have got to go.” Rutinel also spent years arguing that animal agriculture is “horrific,” holding a protest while attending the University of Florida in which he held a sign reading, “Animal liberation is human liberation.”
Colorado’s eighth district is responsible for 4 percent of all U.S. crude oil output and is home to roughly 4,000 farms and ranches, which may explain why Rutinel now says he supports an “all-of-the-above energy solution” that “protects good-paying jobs in our communities” and “will always fight to support farmers and ranchers.” Rutinel also says he now eats meat. Asked during a June debate to explain why he made the change, Rutinel said, “it’s important for me to be able to enjoy the delicious products that Colorado ranchers make.”
Those positions stand in stark contrast to what Rutinel told the Working Families Party last year as he sought the far-left group’s endorsement. In an interview published in part by Rutinel’s former friend Badhesha, Rutinel told the party he supported universal health care and a ban on fracking. Badhesha has accused Rutinel of ditching his “progressive” views in pursuit of power, though he also expressed hope that Rutinel could emerge as a reliable left-wing vote when elected.
“There’s a version of this story where Manny is a good progressive who is simply scared of the money now but will vote fine in the future,” Badhesha wrote in June. “I want to believe that version, because it’s the one I lived.”
If Rutinel indeed plans to return to his leftist roots while serving in Congress, his campaign isn’t making it known.
“The posts on this website were written more than 10 years ago,” a Rutinel spokesman told the Free Beacon. “Manny is not a vegan or a socialist, he is a former economist in the US Army Corps of Engineers who supports Colorado famers [sic] and ranchers.”
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