The two Democrats running for the chance to take on the Republican incumbent in Colorado’s most competitive congressional district traded blows during a feisty televised debate Monday night, sparring over their approaches to reining in the Trump administration’s immigration policies and their records delivering results in the legislature.

The winner of the June 30 primary between state Rep. Manny Rutinel and former state Rep. Shannon Bird will face first-term Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans in the 8th Congressional District, which has been decided by some of the closest margins in the country since its creation in 2021.

Covering parts of Adams, Larimer and Weld counties north of the Denver metro area, the 8th CD is considered a toss-up next year by election forecasters and has been targeted by both major parties. Evans doesn’t face a primary for his renomination.

Held the same day primary ballots started going out to voters, the fast-paced, hourlong debate on 9News featured sharp exchanges between the candidates over attacks they’ve hurled at each other on the campaign trail.

While the candidates agreed on a range of issues — both laid blame for Colorado’s fiscal woes on the Trump administration and Evans, both said they’re open to impeaching President Donald Trump, both spoke in favor of a Democratic-led ballot measure that would redraw Colorado’s congressional districts more favorably for the party and both said they’d be OK with siting a nuclear reactor in the district if they were satisfied sufficient safeguards are in place — they lobbed barbs at each other through much of the debate.

Rutinel repeatedly charged Bird with having voted in the legislature to allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into schools and hospitals, though she rejected his characterization of a committee vote she said was meant to improve a bill she supported that sought to ban the activity.

“He brings this up a lot,” said Bird. “There was a provision in the bill that would have fined normal people, front line workers, personally up to $50,000 anytime their boss broke the law. I didn’t think that was right.”

Bird said that she otherwise supported the bill and would have voted for it on the House floor if she hadn’t had to miss that vote due to a family medical emergency. 

“I would have voted for that, because we can’t allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good,” she added.

“What we’re seeing across American communities with masked, untrained agents terrorizing people is dangerous and un-American,” Bird said. “And at a federal level, we need a complete overhaul of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

Later in the debate, Rutinel, whose mother immigrated to the United States before he was born, called for an immediate “overhaul” of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and slammed the Trump administration’s enforcement policies.

“He’s terrorizing Latino immigrants across the country, setting up horrific conditions,” Rutinel said, referring to immigration detention centers. “We need to make sure that we have an immigration system that is comprehensive, with a pathway to citizenship.”

For her part, Bird slammed Rutinel for voting to cut Medicaid when he supported this year’s Democratic-led state budget, a position he countered did’t reflect the work their party’s lawmakers undertook to balance a budget thrown out of whack by congressional Republicans, including Evans. 

Democrats have routinely blamed the congressional budget for Colorado’s fiscal woes, while Republicans countered that the majority party overspent and lacked the discipline to rein in spending.

“Saving Medicaid was deeply personal for me,” said Rutinel, who noted that he was enrolled in the program when he was 10 years old. “What I did was work with my Democratic colleagues. We need fighters in this moment. When the time came to fight back, Shannon Bird quit the legislature to focus on her personal ambitions.”

Bird, who resigned from her Westminster-based state House seat late last year to campaign full time, said she stepped down because she didn’t “believe it was right to take a taxpayer-funded salary while running for the most competitive seat in the country.”

Asked by moderator Kyle Clark whether that means she’ll refuse to take a taxpayer-funded salary if she wins the race for Congress and seeks reelection in two years, Bird said that’s different.

“A situation like that, being part of a campaign is connecting with your voters and being out in your district full-time,” she said.

At one point, Clark pressed Rutinel to say whether he’s still a vegan, after working for years as an advocate for meatless eating — Rutinel said he isn’t, because he thinks it’s important “to be able to enjoy the delicious products that Colorado ranchers make” — and whether he’s changed his views on multiple topics that have recently drawn scrutiny from some progressive supporters, who allege he’s moderated his positions.

Denying that he’s abandoned stances that helped win endorsements from high-profile progressive groups, including the Working Families Party, Rutinel said his brief answers in interviews didn’t convey his fully fleshed-out positions, such as backing a public option for health coverage, rather than the universal single-payer system he once supported.

Rutinel also said he supports an “all-of-the-above” energy policy that has a role for natural gas — Bird described her energy policy in nearly identical language — even though he took part in a protest demanding the phase-out of fossil fuels when he was a student at Yale University.

Clark also pressed Bird over her involvement with a divisive, centrist-oriented group that has recently come under fire for spending heavily against more progressive candidates in Democratic primaries, but she said the organization she founded hadn’t done any fundraising before she departed the legislature, so she was unaware of its current activities.

County clerks started mailing primary ballots to Colorado voters on Monday, and they must be returned by 7 p.m. on June 30. Democrats and Republicans receive their party’s ballot, while unaffiliated voters receive both major parties’ ballots. The latter may only fill out and return one of them.