Manny Rutinel

Manny Rutinel worked at McDonald's while still in high school and sold plasma to help his family pay bills.¹ Raised by a single mother who immigrated from the Dominican Republic, he also tutored students and earned community college credits before spending his first college semester sleeping on friends' couches and floors.¹

He went on to study microbiology at the University of Florida, earn an economics master's degree at Johns Hopkins and graduate from Yale Law School.² Before law school, he worked as an economist for the Army Corps of Engineers and helped with the response in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.²

Rutinel subsequently worked as an environmental attorney at Earthjustice and joined the Colorado House in 2023, representing an Adams County district.² He resigned from the Legislature on September 4, 2026.³ His professional background combines economic analysis, disaster response and environmental law with state legislative experience.²

In his congressional campaign, he emphasizes protecting Social Security access and earned benefits, warning against reductions in staffing and local offices that he argues would make benefits harder to obtain.⁴ He faces Republican incumbent Gabe Evans and Libertarian David Wood in the Eighth District, a nationally watched contest for control of the House.⁴