Joined by Representative Gabe Evans. He is running in the eighth congressional district against Representative Yadiro Caraveo and he would love to be your next member of Congress.
Gabe, welcome back to the show.
First off, always great to be on with you, Mandy.
Gabe and I were just talking before he came on. And I tell candidates this all the time, that they want to come on in like June July of an election year. I go, no one's paying attention to you until after Labor Day. So here we are after Labor Day and the track meet to election day is on. I want people to know a little bit about you, Gabe, because I think your story, your backstory is just a really really good one. So tell people who is Gabe Evans.
Yeah, I mean my story starts with my grandparents on my dad's side, through naval officer on my mom's side. Actually an immigrant to the United States from Mexico, earned his citizenship with two purple hearts in World War Two, and so you know, I was born and raised in Colorado, spent twelve years in US Army, another ten years in law enforcement, and then because of what's happened to public
safety in Colorado. I stepped away from law enforcement in twenty twenty two, ran for and won my state House seat down at the state Capitol of Denver. Been fighting down there for two years to try to just restore some common sense. We know we have a crime problem. We know we have an affordability problem. The fact, you know, I'm married, My wife and I've been married for fifteen years. We got two boys. The fact that Colorado is the number two state in the nation for teenagers overdosing and
dying on fentanyl is abhorrent to me. That's why I got involved in politics after twenty two years in the military and law enforcement. That's why I'm running for Congress now in the eth Congression district. We have got to fix these problems.
Well, let's talk specifically about some of those issues.
Let's start with crime.
You know, we the last hour of the show, I talked about this massive story out of Aurora, and depending what news media outlet you listen to, there's either a huge gang issue in Aurora or there's nothing. I mean, it's the coverage of this story has been really amaze to me to see the broad nature of either dismissiveness or panic that is on display, but it's a real problem in Congress. What do you do to help with the problems that we're having here in Colorado when it comes to crime.
Again. So I was a cop in the Denver metro area from twenty eleven to twenty twenty two, and what we know is there's three big driving factors that are going on here. Number One, we've got a wide open southern border. We've got transnational criminal organizations and cartels that are coming into the United States. But then problem number two is what the progressive left has done here in Colorado. They've literally defunded the police, they have voted for those policies.
They've lowered the penalties for drug dealing, for breaking into cars, for everything that you can think of. And so that's attracted these cartels, these transnational criminal organizations. Out of the fifty states in the United States, they're going to go to play like Colorado because the state, the progressive Democrats
and the state have handcuffed law enforcement. And then that leads to the third issue that we have, which is that cops in Colorado would love to be able to enforce the law, but they can't because of the policies that the folks down at the state Capitol and the folks the progressive Dems in Congress have passed in Colorado right now, it is illegal for a police officer to pick up the phone and call Immigration and Customs and say, hey,
we got somebody in our communities causing problems. Who's here illegally? Come to port this individual. That phone call is illegal to make. It became illegal in twenty nineteen, and my Democrat opponent voted for that piece of legislation. We've got to secure the border, we've got to empower our state and local law enforcement, and we've got to get rid of these defund the police, pro crime policies. But the progressive left, to include my opponent, has championed.
You know, some in Congress have said, look, we're even and I believe, and I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I believe I've heard Lauren Voebert support this notion, which is defunding sanctuary cities, defunding sanctuary states.
Would that be.
Something that you would support as a threat in order to rescind these laws that you're talking about right now, kind of force the hand of Colorado lawmakers because we've just seen that when threatened with something like two ballot initiatives on property taxes, they can be brought to heal just a little bit, right, Is that something you would support?
So I swore three oaths to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, US Army, Colorado Army, and National Garden. As an our battle police officer had deployed to combat zone for the better part of a year to uphold and defend the US Constitution, which barely clearly states that the US Constitution and all federal laws made in accordance
thereof are the supreme law of the land. So yeah, absolutely, when you have states like Colorado that blatantly ignore what the federal government is doing when they're trying to secure the border, and when we have folks like immigration and Customs and the Border Patrol, and the State of Colorado comes along and says, nah, we're not going to even let our state and local law enforcement officers work with
their federal counterparts. That's a major problem and that's something that we need to address at the congressional level as part of the broader conversation about how do we secure the border, how do we make sure folks like my grandfather, you know, who earned his citizenship in World War Two with two purple hearts, who wanted to be a part
of the American dream. How do we make sure that we keep the bad folks out and that we continue to be that shining city on a hill for those folks who legally want to come here be a part of the American dream. And how do we make sure that those laws are being enforced and respected by states? Colorado's not doing it. They're a blatant sanctuary state, and that's a big part of the problem.
So let's shift gears just a little bit and.
Talk about cost of living.
Because cost of living has some national components to it, it also has some local components to it intern of you know, housing costs and things of that nature.
What do you see your role.
In Congress as how do you rein in the cost of living as a member of Congress.
Yeah, so the first thing with the cost of living is just understanding the broader impacts, you know, the things that have an impact on our economy. I'm sure we'll talk about this here in a minute, but we've brokened a pretty historic agreement with the Libertarian Party here in Colorado. And one of the things that they talk about a lot is the fact that are literally our money supply, right, This is when we talk about inflation. That's the money supply.
The money supply is controlled by things like the Federal Reserve, and we don't have a good understanding at the congressional level of how the Federal Reserve is doing some of its internal business. We need to have policies like auditing the Fed, but we also need to make sure that we're taking the handcuffs off of our economy. And so that's things like here in the eighth Congressional District energy agriculture. The eighth Congression District has the fourth highest energy producing
county in the nation. It has the eighth highest agricultural producing county in the nation in the north and then the southern part of the district is the commerce, the transportation, the road networks, the truckers that are actually taking these raw materials, turning it into a usable good and distributing across the rest of Colorado. It is a multi billion
dollar driver for the region. But as we all know, when energy gets more expensive because of the laps of war on American energy, when agriculture gets more expensive because you know, and this isn't me, this is some of the farmers in the region that I've talked to that said that my Democrat opponent ass to the single most damaging bill in a decade or Colorado agriculture. Guess what, that drives up the cost of agriculture. All of these
costs are passed on to consumers. So to get the cost of living under control, we also need to make sure that we're focused on things like taking the handcuffs, the red tape, the bureaucracy off of our economy, producing American energy, producing American agriculture, and then allowing our transportation networks to be able to actually process and get that stuff to market. When you can do that cheaper and more efficient by cutting red tape, that drives costs down
for Americans. That empowers our economy. That's how we make Colorado in the eighth Congressional district in an affordable place. Those are the things that I support. My opponent, as we said, she's voted against all of those things. She's a pro big government, pro red tape Democrat.
You know, one of the things that has not really come to the United States yet. But I do worry about on a consistent basis when it comes to agriculture. We've seen this attack in Europe on nitrogen based fertilizers. We've seen farmers in certain parts of Europe being told that they can only plant a certain number of crops, which is so counterintuitive to when you have to feed people.
To tell farmers that.
They can't use the products that help food grow. How, I mean, what do you think about that kind of stuff, because I think that's all part of the Green New Deal as well.
Yeah. Absolutely, my opponent is one hundred percent bought into the Green New Deal. She costs this district billions of dollars in the energy sector. Energy and agriculture go hand in hand. When diesel goes up, agriculture becomes more expensive and you pay more for that at the store. So she's cost this district billions and energy. And exactly what
you described is what she's done to agriculture. When you have government bureaucrats with no background in agriculture who are then micromanaging how armors and ranchers literally the original stewards of the environment, because if they don't take care of their soil, if they don't take care of the environment. If we don't have clean air and we don't have clean water, guess what else. You can't grow your crops as efficiently as if we did take care of the environment.
Farmers and ranchers are the original stewards of our land, our water, our air. It's in there the best economic interests to take good care of those things, and that means we need to allow them the flexibility to be able to make those decisions, to be able to leverage
emerging technologies, emerging trends. And when you have folks that, as you said, are micromanaging what they can and can't do, that has an incredibly negative impact not just on the cost of producing these goods, but it has a negative impact on the economy. Excuse me, It has a negative impact on the economy, but it has a negative impact on the environment as well.
So it sounds to me, Gabe, and you know you can correct me if I'm wrong. You sound very sort of data and results driven. And if that's the case, I have to ask you about ethanol subsidies, because ethanol subsidies have distorted a marketplace under the guise of giving us better energy efficiency, of energy efficiency and things of that nature that have not proven to be to work out the way that they have worked out, But the farm lobby is very strong and they don't want to
give up their ethanol subsidies. Where do you stand on if you haven't opinion at all.
I like things that work. You know, when I was flying a Blackhawk helicopter overseason to combat zone, things get really really simple. If it works, do it. If it doesn't work, don't do it, because that's a really, really dumb reason to crash and explode a helicopter because you tried something that looked really good on paper but doesn't actually work in reality. And so that's where I stand on all of these, you know, alternate forms of energy.
If they work, let's do it absolutely. But if they don't work, if you have to continue to subsidize and subsidize and subsidize them, then that's not actually producing energy efficiency, that's not actually taking good care of our environment. I'll give you a precise example. Here in Colorado, we often hear about, you know, zero emission electric cars. Well, this isn't my data, this is the State of Colorado data.
The electric grid in Colorado produces about fifty percent more carbon per megawatt of produced energy then just pure natural gas. So every time we're plugging something into the electrical grid you're in Colorado. Again, not my data, this is state data. Every time we plug something into the electrical grid in Colorado, it's actually producing fifty percent more carbon for a unit of energy producers than if we just used natural gas.
These are the conversations that we need to have to ensure that we're actually producing energy that were energy independent. And when we do those things that actually work, we can reduce our carbon footprint by having more natural gas right here in Colorado. My opponent's opposed to it, she's voted against it. I support American energy because that actually lowers our carbon footprint.
Well, I'm speaking with Gabe Evans. He's running in the eighth congressional district. And Gabe, not for nothing. If we really truly and we are one of the world's largest, if not the world's largest energy producer now, but if we truly unleash our enemy, our energy economy, it also cuts the knees out of some of our geopolitical foes, right, It cuts the knees out from under Russia, It cuts the knees out I'm under Saudi Arabia, who is an ally, but I don't trust him.
I'm going to be perfectly honest.
And that's one of the things that we don't talk about enough, is that if we truly really exploited all of our energy options, we would be able to not only power our own economy, but also create big problems for Russia and for other bad actors around the world. Who's their entire economy is their oil economy.
I mean, why don't we talk about that more?
Oh, we need to talk about it more. And the big one that we've left out so far is China. China is making more and more stuff with dirty coal and with quite literally slave labor. So every time we're exporting jobs and energy production from the United States, it's going to places like China that are producing it again in an inhumane, environmentally catastrophic manner. And so we need
to talk about that. We need to talk about how if we truly want to take care of the environments, we've got to make sure that we're bringing jobs, that we're bringing production, that we're bringing energy back to the United States, because here we produce it more efficiently than anywhere else in the world. We produce it more humanely
than anywhere else in the world. And if we're truly concerned about global the global carbon footprint, what we need to do is make sure that we're not sending things to China, where they produce it with five ten times the amount of carbon that we could do it with here in the United States. And the absolute worst part about all of this is that pollution blows right back here to Colorado. We've got satellites we can track where
this stuff goes. Again. State of Colorado data says that seventy percent of the air pollution in Colorado doesn't actually originate in Colorado. So when you have folks like my opponent that have blatantly voted numerous times against the American energy economy, they're not actually doing anything for the environment either.
They're costing us jobs. But we're still reaping all of the pollution from places that produce it less efficiency and less responsibly, because again, it blows right back here in Colorado.
Your campaign gab just got a really good shot in the arm when the libertarian candidate in the eighth congressional district dropped out and has removed his name from the ballot. And endorsed to You tell me about how that all came about.
Well, it's what the American people want us to do. The American people want good government. They want responsible adults who can sit down, who can have a conversation, who can find and collaborate on the common ground and then actually move things forward. You know, that's what I tell everybody. I've buried entirely too many friends in military and law enforcement. I've sworn three oaths up to and including my life.
So I know those things that I will never compromise on because I literally put my life on the line and I buried friends who made the ultimate sacrifice to stand for those things. I know those things I'll never compromise. Can collaborate with anybody, and that's what the Libertarian Party and I did. We sat down. Of course, there was the original pledge a couple of months ago. There were some things that we couldn't agree on, but we sat down,
we have the conversation. We realized, look, we agree on
about ninety percent of the stuff. So we drafted a pledge two point zero that we could both agree on, and that really does highlight those things that we care about small, limited government, making sure that we respect individual liberty, making sure that we're focused here on the United States critical things like securing our borders, and so by sitting down, by having that conversation once again, what we've shown is that, you know, I'm willing to work with anybody that's focused
on these issues. The Libertarians were fantastic partners in promoting our shared visions and ideals for things like small government, individual liberty, accountability for federal agencies like the Federal Reserve, and moving the ball floor, and so it truly is a you know, we talked about the phrase bipartisan all the time. This is really something now where I'm tripartisan. I've worked with the Libertarians, we've found that common ground.
But as a state legislator, you know, I'm in the MIT super minority down at the state Capitol, nineteen Republicans to forty six Democrats in the state House, and i still got almost sixty percent on my bills pass because I'm able to work across the aisle there. That's what I'm focused on. How do we move the ball forward, how do we make sure that we're passing on to future generations the same American dream that my grandfather Mia Ethel gave to me when he immigrated here to this country.
You know, I think you have to use the language of today. You're polypolitical, that's what you are. You're not you engage with all political parties. There, Gabe, I do want to ask you one question from our text line, because I think it's a question that a lot of people have and I bet you have.
A good answer for it.
Hey, Mandy, please ask Gabe what are we're going to start seeing commercials from him?
Live in the eighth district and have not seen.
A single one, but I see one from his opponent every five minutes, and I want to use that as a springboard to ask you about the challenges going on at the state party and how that has affected your campaign in terms of the support that you have gotten or not gotten from the state campaign. It just kind of give me a minute on that.
Yeah, So really two things there. Number One, Conservatives, we are the fiscally responsible party. And so as you yourself said kind of at the beginning, you know, after Labor Day is when folks start tuning in, and so I'm not going to waste my money on a bunch of campaigns in advertising before Labor Day. So don't worry. The ads will be here as you know, real quick. We're in like single digit days now, so the advertising for for the Gay Evans campaign is going to start your
fast and furious. But the other part of this is these things are expensive to be able to run. A good TV ad is close to a million dollars. And so if anybody's listening to this wants to help you keep me on the air again, we have enough to get us on the air for quite a bit. But if anybody wants to help keep us on the air once we go on. Elect Gaveevans dot com is the website elect g a v e e v a ns dot com. You can go there learn more about me.
There's a donate button there, and that's going to be a really critical part of making sure that we get our message out because folks are stick and tired of the high prices, the high crime, the spentanyl crisis, the border crisis that my Democrat opponent has voted lockstep with the Biden Harris regime.
On Gave Evans is my guest, and when we talk about the dumpster fire that is the state party right now, I always say find the candidates you like and give them money. And if you like what gave us had to say today, take that money you might have donated to the state Party and put it directly into his coffers so he can win the eighth congressional district. Gabe, I think you'll race is entirely winnable. I think you're
the right candidate to win that race. And I look forward to talking to you after the election, if not before, to be able to congratulate you.
On your victory.
So let's let's do the assumed clothes on that one and.
And uh, we'll be in touch again before the election. I can assure you.
Always great to be hon with you, Mandy. Thanks so much.
All right, that is Gabe Evans, and I put a link on my blog to his website, so if you'd like to donate, and trust me, guys, these candidates are dealing with no support from the state Party as it tries to sort itself out, So this is really important that you go ahead and donate directly to these candidates.
If you like what you're hearing,