The Congressman Targeted By AOC
Gabe Evans is the only congressional Republican who flipped a seat in a blue state in 2024.
The freshman Republican Rep. Gabe Evans of Colorado was sworn in only on January 3, but Democrats are already targeting him ahead of 2026. Those Democrats include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who bashed Evans while holding a rally in his district in March. Ocasio-Cortez told rallygoers they “deserve better” than Evans, whom she accused of plotting to “cut Medicaid.”
It’s no secret why the knives are out for Evans. He is the only congressional Republican who flipped a seat in a blue state in 2024, defeating incumbent Yadira Caraveo by less than a point. His primary fight was tough, too. Evans had the endorsement of President Donald Trump but not that of his own state party. Now that he’s arrived in Washington, Evans tells The American Conservative that he plans to use his background as a law enforcement officer and his coveted spot on the Energy & Commerce Committee (rare for a rookie representative) to find bipartisan solutions.
Can you describe your district? Why was it ripe to be flipped?
It’s Colorado’s 8th Congressional District. It’s the northeast suburbs of the Denver metro area, and then up toward Greeley along the Front Range… This district was drawn to be the Hispanic district in Colorado after the 2020 census. It’s 40 percent Hispanic, the highest of any of the eight congressional districts in Colorado. This is the district that builds, feeds, and fuels the rest of Colorado. Weld County in the north [is the] fourth-highest energy producing county in the nation. We produce 82 percent of the oil, 56 percent of the natural gas. We have one of the largest, if not the largest, wind generator manufacturing plants in the world in the district…. We have the only oil refinery in Colorado.
[Constituents are] concerned about good jobs. They’re concerned about cost of living. They’re concerned about public safety. Unfortunately, the last seven years of Democrat control at the state level and four years of the previous administration at the federal level have just been disastrous… Colorado is number one in the nation—three of the last five years running—for auto theft. We’re number two for teenagers overdosing and dying on fentanyl. We’re number three in the nation for our crime rate. Crime is estimated to cost the economy of Colorado $27 billion a year in lost economic productivity. All of these different issues came to a head in the recent election. I didn’t have to convince [voters] there was a problem. They knew there was a problem. I just had to convince them as a cop, a soldier, a Hispanic kid—my abuelo, my grandfather, he was born in Mexico, and he came to the U.S., got his citizenship in Patton’s army in World War II. My mom is a first-generation American. So being able to share that story, share the experiences that I had, the 22 years of military and law enforcement, as a father, as a husband, those were all of the things I think that resonated with people to be able to show them, “Look, I know how to fix this stuff.”
Ocasio-Cortez parachuted into your district and targeted you recently. What was your reaction to Democrats’ talking points ahead of 2026?
My seat was the only seat in the country where we unseated a Democrat incumbent in a blue state. That makes this the national bellwether seat. It is the bellwether seat in the state of Colorado. You fold in the Hispanic population, and all of the big trends we’ve seen around the country with hard-working Americans, union members, the Hispanic population shifting to the right—all of those things came to a head in this district.
It attracted a ton of attention. As we’ve seen, the Democratic Party both nationally and in the state of Colorado are struggling to find their brand in the wake of a pretty resounding defeat in November of 2024. With AOC and Bernie Sanders, some of the most extreme far-left voices, coming to my district, it really highlights just how out of touch they are. AOC is the inventor of the so-called Green New Deal, which is going to cost all of these people their jobs. I watched it happen in my church. The church that I go to has got a bunch of oil and gas workers, and when the Biden administration took over, the church membership went from about 150 to 50. Because all of these people were being driven out of Colorado, losing their jobs working in oil and gas and all of the associated industries. They were going to places like west Texas and the Permian Basin.
I’m focused on jobs, cost of living, making America energy dominant again, making sure we can produce the cleanest, safest, most socially responsible energy anywhere on the planet here in Colorado. [AOC] is coming to town for purely political purposes. AOC and I actually both serve on the [energy subcommittee]. If she was interested in having a conversation, she could have walked across the room and talked to me rather than, as she might say, increasing her carbon footprint by flying all the way out to Colorado to grandstand.
A lot of AOC’s attacks came on the Medicaid cuts front. What kind of messaging from Republicans will strike the right balance for members like you who face tight races in 2026?
The Democrats have screamed “Gabe is cutting Medicaid.” They actually put up a billboard in the district saying that, and then they had to take the billboard down when they were sent a legal letter pointing out how this is a blatantly false statement. The fact that they complied and they took the billboard down means that they know that that statement doesn’t pass legal scrutiny… The bogeyman they’re trying to generate here is nothing but political noise because they lost an election and they have no message.
The American people are smarter than that. They intuitively know that there is a ton of fraud, waste, and abuse, not just in the federal government, but also in the Medicaid space. The Denver Post just published a story talking about how Colorado has paid $7 million [for] dead people in the healthcare space. We know that the cost of healthcare to illegal immigrants in Colorado, depending on which numbers you look at, it’s forecast to be anywhere between $31 and $51 million in 2025. The state doesn’t have the money on hand to cover that tab, so they’re actually looking to raise fees on private insurers in the state of Colorado.
I have a medically complex kid. My second son, I couldn’t even tell you how many thousands of pages of medical records that he’s had. Five surgeries before the age of five, we’re on two different hormone therapies, one different steroid therapy, he’s in a cast right now—we’ve had a lot of medical issues. It’s critically important to me that working families like mine have the ability to rely on these programs and these programs remain financially viable for generations to come… The [Government Accountability Office] estimates that there’s $31 billion annually just in the Medicaid space in improper payments. For Medicaid, Medicare, that whole space, Republicans are trying to protect the financial viability of those programs.
Democrats are seizing on a specific CBO report for their Medicaid cut claims – do you take issue with that report and the inferences drawn from it?
CBO has missed by over a trillion dollars in some of their recent financial assessments. When we had the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, CBO said that that was going to cost the federal government money because of the loss of revenue from lowering taxes. What they didn’t take into account is when you lower taxes the economy grows… When you have a bigger economy, the government actually gets more revenue, even with lower taxes… The important part to note is that right now we’re in the reconciliation resolution. That’s the topline numbers. In household budget terms, that’s saying, “Hey, we’re going to spend $600 on food this month and $400 on gas and this much on housing.” And then you’ve got to go back and figure out, “Okay, now that I’ve set my topline budget numbers, am I going to buy peanut butter or Nutella?”
There are a lot of options to cut out the fraud, waste, and abuse by doing things like closing the 90-day lookback window in Medicaid. An individual doesn’t even have to prove citizenship for 90 days after being put on Medicaid. What’s happening in states like Colorado is somebody gets signed up for Medicaid, they run up a bill for 89 days, and on day 90 they’re kicked back off of Medicaid because the state—it’s very important to remember the federal government writes a big part of the check, but the state administers the program—so the state is taking blatant advantage of the situation to be able to funnel across the country billions of dollars to people without even verifying their citizenship.
You’ve previously spoken about how bad policy was making your job as a law enforcement officer really hard. How does that continue to affect the policies you pursue and the bills you support?
The state of Colorado under the trifecta Democrat control the last seven years has really attacked law enforcement officers, added tremendous amounts of new red tape and liability to cops, and at times outright defunded them. The city of Denver cut their police budget by $8 million in order to pay for illegal immigrants because of their sanctuary city status. Being able to draw attention to those policies to try to help our state and local law enforcement officers is something that’s very important to me from my new perch as a congressman.
In the last couple of years in Colorado, over 7,000 Coloradans have lost their lives as a result of illegal drug overdoses—things like fentanyl. That’s double the September 11 attacks death toll. Being able to equip law enforcement officers to go out and get the drug dealers, get the cartel members, get the bad guys off the street is something I’m working on in Congress. Colorado is a sanctuary state. That means state and local law enforcement officers are often prohibited outright from working with their federal counterparts to get these violent criminals out of our community. A piece of legislation I’ve introduced is the UPLIFT Act: Unhandcuffing Police to Locate and Interdict Foreign Transgressors Act. It does a couple of things. One of the most important is it extends hold harmless protections to state and local law enforcement officers if, in contradiction to state law, they choose to share information with their federal counterparts. Doing things like that reduces the liability on law enforcement officers. It shows them that they’re appreciated. It gives them the tools they need to be able to actually go out and do their job. As a cop, when you’re actually able to go and successfully get a bad guy out of the community, there’s a huge sense of satisfaction in that, and that’s a huge part of what keeps cops coming back and being able to do the job.
A lot of our readers and contributors are history buffs, so I have to ask, do you have a historical figure who stands out in your mind as a role model or favorite historical figure?
Let’s go with Jan III Sobieski. He was the king of Poland who led the Holy League in the relief of Vienna during the 1683 siege that pretty much stopped the Ottoman advance into eastern Europe. Major tipping point in relationships between the East and West at that point. Also critically important to modern day because the relief of Vienna happened on September 10 and 11, so it’s a date that sticks in the consciousness of both the West and then also the Islamic world. It’s also the cavalry charge of the Winged Hussars coming down to relieve Vienna [on which] J.R.R. Tolkien based the ride of the Rohirrim when they relieved Minas Tirith in Return of the King.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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