Colorado Democrat Manny Rutinel once said his whole job was suing large meat corporations for all they’re worth, now he is running in ranching country and calling himself a friend to ranchers.
Manny Rutinel, the Democratic nominee challenging Republican Rep. Gabe Evans in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, spent years as an Earthjustice attorney and animal-advocacy speaker before launching his bid in cattle country. At the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s 2024 student convention, he described that legal work in blunt terms.
“Before I was a legislator, I was an environmental attorney with Earthjustice. My whole job was to take on large meat corporations and sue them for all they’re worth, to defend low-income people of color that were subjected to the environmental injustices of those factory farms that they were responsible for holding up,” Rutinel said, according to a Washington Free Beacon report.
That record sits uneasily beside the district he wants to represent. Ranches and other animal-based agriculture produced roughly $1.2 billion there in 2022. The same district is Colorado’s leading producer of beef cattle and dairy, accounting for 26% of the state’s output, with about 75% of its land devoted to farming and livestock.
Rutinel now calls himself a “friend” to the district’s ranchers and says he started eating meat after years as a vegan because “it’s important... to be able to enjoy the delicious products that Colorado ranchers make.” Voters will decide whether that pivot matches the paper trail.
Between 2022 and 2024, Rutinel spoke at eight conferences and events organized by vegan and animal-rights groups. Those appearances continued into October 2024, only months before he turned 30 and launched his congressional campaign.
In May 2024 he addressed the Animal & Vegan Advocacy Summit, whose website describes “one shared vision: removing animals from our food system and other human uses.” Germany-based Animal Society called his talk on politics and legislative policy for animal advocacy “a standout,” saying he “shed light on the mechanisms of navigating the political landscape to enact laws that protect animals” and issued “a call for the politicisation of the animal movement.”
Animal Society bills itself as “the world’s first animal rights organization to advocate for their political representation,” seeks recognition of animals “as sentient beings,” and campaigns for a “Ministry for Animals.” Another speaker praised alongside Rutinel represented Animal Think Tank, which wants “a law that bans animal farming.”
Rutinel also joined an October 2024 Animal Legal Defense Fund panel titled “Navigating Politics to Protect Animals.” ALDF has argued that animals should be recognized as legal persons and, in 2018, filed a negligence lawsuit on behalf of a horse as part of that effort. He launched his House campaign about three months after that conference appearance, the Free Beacon later reported.
Rutinel founded and serves as CEO of Climate Refarm, a group that works to push hospitals and schools away from animal-based products. In public remarks he has said “meats produce a lot of emissions,” floated “a meatless Monday program,” and argued that “we’re taking up huge amounts of land just for livestock,” so “that land can’t grow forests that could otherwise be sequestering carbon at immense rates.”
He also helped win at least one lawsuit that forced the EPA to enforce stricter regulations on slaughterhouses. That legal win fits the same pattern as his conference circuit: pressure on meat production from the courtroom and the activist stage.
Republican critics say the pattern goes further. Rep. Gabe Evans has labeled his opponent a “socialist vegan” who called for a vice tax on meat, dairy, and eggs to raise prices and steer people toward plant-based alternatives. Evans summarized the pitch this way: raise the cost of animal protein “so much that nobody can afford it, and they have to eat tree nuts.”
Evans has also said Rutinel described farmers and ranchers as “horrific and exploitive” during his Earthjustice years. Rutinel denies being a socialist. The tax proposal and the farmer language remain part of the record Evans is pressing in a swing district reshaped by redistricting.
Rutinel’s animal activism started early. In college he stripped off his shirt, donned a PETA sign, and promoted veganism at an Earth Day event. “In order to go green, you have to eat green,” he said at the time. He had also written blog posts including “The 5 Stages of Becoming a Vegan” and “What Would Jesus Do? Socialism.”
The Colorado Sun later unearthed nearly decade-old Reddit posts in which he backed giving animals the same legal rights as people. Rutinel dismissed those posts as “the views of a 22-year-old kid,” adding, “I’ve grown a lot, and I’m glad that I have.” In July he said he has not “been a vegan for several years.”
Republican National Committee spokesman Zach Kraft put the clash in sharper terms for Fox News Digital: “Meatless Manny makes PETA look reasonable and he wants to force Coloradans to scrounge for berries and nuts off the ground like cave men.”
Campaigns often feature candidates who revise old positions. What stands out here is the timing. Rutinel was still appearing on animal-rights panels and pitching plant-based institutional menus in 2024, then presented himself as a rancher’s ally once the House race began. Similar accountability fights have surfaced elsewhere as Democrats reverse earlier stances under campaign pressure.
Colorado’s 8th is not a symbolic farm district. It is a working agricultural economy where beef, dairy, and livestock dominate land use and local payrolls. Rutinel’s Earthjustice boast, Climate Refarm mission, conference circuit, and earlier calls to tax or sideline animal protein all point the same direction.
He now says those views are behind him. He eats meat. He calls ranchers friends. He treats the Reddit archive as youthful excess. The speeches, the lawsuit work, and the nonprofit he still leads are not ancient history, they run into the months just before he filed to run.
Democratic primaries and general-election races keep elevating candidates with activist pedigrees that later need sanding down for swing voters, a pattern visible when a DSA-backed challenger toppled an incumbent in Michigan and in other party fights over how far left is too far for the map.
Evans is running on the opposite message: protect the producers who already feed the district and the country. Rutinel’s answer is personal evolution. The district’s $1.2 billion animal-agriculture base gives voters a concrete measuring stick.
Party turmoil is not limited to one state. Democratic voters have ousted incumbents at a pace Republicans have not matched, and leadership headaches in Washington continue after caucus revolts over strategy and agenda fights. Colorado’s ranching district is testing a simpler question: whether a candidate who spent years trying to sue, tax, and phase out meat production can reset that record with a few campaign lines about friendship and dinner plates.
Ranchers live with the policies Congress drafted. They are entitled to judge the résumé, not the rebrand.
