Speaker 1: Joined by Representative Gabe Evans. He is running in the
Speaker 1: eighth congressional district against Representative Yadiro Caraveo and he would
Speaker 1: love to be your next member of Congress.
Speaker 2: Gabe, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: First off, always great to be on with you, Mandy.
Speaker 1: Gabe and I were just talking before he came on.
Speaker 1: And I tell candidates this all the time, that they
Speaker 1: want to come on in like June July of an
Speaker 1: election year. I go, no one's paying attention to you
Speaker 1: until after Labor Day. So here we are after Labor
Speaker 1: Day and the track meet to election day is on.
Speaker 1: I want people to know a little bit about you, Gabe,
Speaker 1: because I think your story, your backstory is just a
Speaker 1: really really good one. So tell people who is Gabe Evans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean my story starts with my grandparents on
Speaker 3: my dad's side, through naval officer on my mom's side.
Speaker 3: Actually an immigrant to the United States from Mexico, earned
Speaker 3: his citizenship with two purple hearts in World War Two,
Speaker 3: and so you know, I was born and raised in Colorado,
Speaker 3: spent twelve years in US Army, another ten years in
Speaker 3: law enforcement, and then because of what's happened to public
Speaker 3: safety in Colorado. I stepped away from law enforcement in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, ran for and won my state House
Speaker 3: seat down at the state Capitol of Denver. Been fighting
Speaker 3: down there for two years to try to just restore
Speaker 3: some common sense. We know we have a crime problem.
Speaker 3: We know we have an affordability problem. The fact, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm married, My wife and I've been married for fifteen years.
Speaker 3: We got two boys. The fact that Colorado is the
Speaker 3: number two state in the nation for teenagers overdosing and
Speaker 3: dying on fentanyl is abhorrent to me. That's why I
Speaker 3: got involved in politics after twenty two years in the
Speaker 3: military and law enforcement. That's why I'm running for Congress
Speaker 3: now in the eth Congression district. We have got to
Speaker 3: fix these problems.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk specifically about some of those issues.
Speaker 2: Let's start with crime.
Speaker 1: You know, we the last hour of the show, I
Speaker 1: talked about this massive story out of Aurora, and depending
Speaker 1: what news media outlet you listen to, there's either a
Speaker 1: huge gang issue in Aurora or there's nothing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the coverage of this story has been really amaze
Speaker 1: to me to see the broad nature of either dismissiveness
Speaker 1: or panic that is on display, but it's a real
Speaker 1: problem in Congress. What do you do to help with
Speaker 1: the problems that we're having here in Colorado when it
Speaker 1: comes to crime.
Speaker 3: Again. So I was a cop in the Denver metro
Speaker 3: area from twenty eleven to twenty twenty two, and what
Speaker 3: we know is there's three big driving factors that are
Speaker 3: going on here. Number One, we've got a wide open
Speaker 3: southern border. We've got transnational criminal organizations and cartels that
Speaker 3: are coming into the United States. But then problem number
Speaker 3: two is what the progressive left has done here in Colorado.
Speaker 3: They've literally defunded the police, they have voted for those policies.
Speaker 3: They've lowered the penalties for drug dealing, for breaking into cars,
Speaker 3: for everything that you can think of. And so that's
Speaker 3: attracted these cartels, these transnational criminal organizations. Out of the
Speaker 3: fifty states in the United States, they're going to go
Speaker 3: to play like Colorado because the state, the progressive Democrats
Speaker 3: and the state have handcuffed law enforcement. And then that
Speaker 3: leads to the third issue that we have, which is
Speaker 3: that cops in Colorado would love to be able to
Speaker 3: enforce the law, but they can't because of the policies
Speaker 3: that the folks down at the state Capitol and the
Speaker 3: folks the progressive Dems in Congress have passed in Colorado
Speaker 3: right now, it is illegal for a police officer to
Speaker 3: pick up the phone and call Immigration and Customs and say, hey,
Speaker 3: we got somebody in our communities causing problems. Who's here illegally?
Speaker 3: Come to port this individual. That phone call is illegal
Speaker 3: to make. It became illegal in twenty nineteen, and my
Speaker 3: Democrat opponent voted for that piece of legislation. We've got
Speaker 3: to secure the border, we've got to empower our state
Speaker 3: and local law enforcement, and we've got to get rid
Speaker 3: of these defund the police, pro crime policies. But the
Speaker 3: progressive left, to include my opponent, has championed.
Speaker 1: You know, some in Congress have said, look, we're even
Speaker 1: and I believe, and I don't want to put words
Speaker 1: in her mouth, but I believe I've heard Lauren Voebert
Speaker 1: support this notion, which is defunding sanctuary cities, defunding sanctuary states.
Speaker 2: Would that be.
Speaker 1: Something that you would support as a threat in order
Speaker 1: to rescind these laws that you're talking about right now,
Speaker 1: kind of force the hand of Colorado lawmakers because we've
Speaker 1: just seen that when threatened with something like two ballot
Speaker 1: initiatives on property taxes, they can be brought to heal
Speaker 1: just a little bit, right, Is that something you would support?
Speaker 3: So I swore three oaths to uphold and defend the
Speaker 3: United States Constitution, US Army, Colorado Army, and National Garden.
Speaker 3: As an our battle police officer had deployed to combat
Speaker 3: zone for the better part of a year to uphold
Speaker 3: and defend the US Constitution, which barely clearly states that
Speaker 3: the US Constitution and all federal laws made in accordance
Speaker 3: thereof are the supreme law of the land. So yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: when you have states like Colorado that blatantly ignore what
Speaker 3: the federal government is doing when they're trying to secure
Speaker 3: the border, and when we have folks like immigration and
Speaker 3: Customs and the Border Patrol, and the State of Colorado
Speaker 3: comes along and says, nah, we're not going to even
Speaker 3: let our state and local law enforcement officers work with
Speaker 3: their federal counterparts. That's a major problem and that's something
Speaker 3: that we need to address at the congressional level as
Speaker 3: part of the broader conversation about how do we secure
Speaker 3: the border, how do we make sure folks like my grandfather,
Speaker 3: you know, who earned his citizenship in World War Two
Speaker 3: with two purple hearts, who wanted to be a part
Speaker 3: of the American dream. How do we make sure that
Speaker 3: we keep the bad folks out and that we continue
Speaker 3: to be that shining city on a hill for those
Speaker 3: folks who legally want to come here be a part
Speaker 3: of the American dream. And how do we make sure
Speaker 3: that those laws are being enforced and respected by states?
Speaker 3: Colorado's not doing it. They're a blatant sanctuary state, and
Speaker 3: that's a big part of the problem.
Speaker 1: So let's shift gears just a little bit and.
Speaker 2: Talk about cost of living.
Speaker 1: Because cost of living has some national components to it,
Speaker 1: it also has some local components to it intern of
Speaker 1: you know, housing costs and things of that nature.
Speaker 2: What do you see your role.
Speaker 1: In Congress as how do you rein in the cost
Speaker 1: of living as a member of Congress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the first thing with the cost of living
Speaker 3: is just understanding the broader impacts, you know, the things
Speaker 3: that have an impact on our economy. I'm sure we'll
Speaker 3: talk about this here in a minute, but we've brokened
Speaker 3: a pretty historic agreement with the Libertarian Party here in Colorado.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that they talk about a
Speaker 3: lot is the fact that are literally our money supply, right,
Speaker 3: This is when we talk about inflation. That's the money supply.
Speaker 3: The money supply is controlled by things like the Federal Reserve,
Speaker 3: and we don't have a good understanding at the congressional
Speaker 3: level of how the Federal Reserve is doing some of
Speaker 3: its internal business. We need to have policies like auditing
Speaker 3: the Fed, but we also need to make sure that
Speaker 3: we're taking the handcuffs off of our economy. And so
Speaker 3: that's things like here in the eighth Congressional District energy agriculture.
Speaker 3: The eighth Congression District has the fourth highest energy producing
Speaker 3: county in the nation. It has the eighth highest agricultural
Speaker 3: producing county in the nation in the north and then
Speaker 3: the southern part of the district is the commerce, the transportation,
Speaker 3: the road networks, the truckers that are actually taking these
Speaker 3: raw materials, turning it into a usable good and distributing
Speaker 3: across the rest of Colorado. It is a multi billion
Speaker 3: dollar driver for the region. But as we all know,
Speaker 3: when energy gets more expensive because of the laps of
Speaker 3: war on American energy, when agriculture gets more expensive because
Speaker 3: you know, and this isn't me, this is some of
Speaker 3: the farmers in the region that I've talked to that
Speaker 3: said that my Democrat opponent ass to the single most
Speaker 3: damaging bill in a decade or Colorado agriculture. Guess what,
Speaker 3: that drives up the cost of agriculture. All of these
Speaker 3: costs are passed on to consumers. So to get the
Speaker 3: cost of living under control, we also need to make
Speaker 3: sure that we're focused on things like taking the handcuffs,
Speaker 3: the red tape, the bureaucracy off of our economy, producing
Speaker 3: American energy, producing American agriculture, and then allowing our transportation
Speaker 3: networks to be able to actually process and get that
Speaker 3: stuff to market. When you can do that cheaper and
Speaker 3: more efficient by cutting red tape, that drives costs down
Speaker 3: for Americans. That empowers our economy. That's how we make
Speaker 3: Colorado in the eighth Congressional district in an affordable place.
Speaker 3: Those are the things that I support. My opponent, as
Speaker 3: we said, she's voted against all of those things. She's
Speaker 3: a pro big government, pro red tape Democrat.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that has not really
Speaker 1: come to the United States yet. But I do worry
Speaker 1: about on a consistent basis when it comes to agriculture.
Speaker 1: We've seen this attack in Europe on nitrogen based fertilizers.
Speaker 1: We've seen farmers in certain parts of Europe being told
Speaker 1: that they can only plant a certain number of crops,
Speaker 1: which is so counterintuitive to when you have to feed people.
Speaker 2: To tell farmers that.
Speaker 1: They can't use the products that help food grow. How,
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you think about that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: because I think that's all part of the Green New
Speaker 1: Deal as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, my opponent is one hundred percent bought into
Speaker 3: the Green New Deal. She costs this district billions of
Speaker 3: dollars in the energy sector. Energy and agriculture go hand
Speaker 3: in hand. When diesel goes up, agriculture becomes more expensive
Speaker 3: and you pay more for that at the store. So
Speaker 3: she's cost this district billions and energy. And exactly what
Speaker 3: you described is what she's done to agriculture. When you
Speaker 3: have government bureaucrats with no background in agriculture who are
Speaker 3: then micromanaging how armors and ranchers literally the original stewards
Speaker 3: of the environment, because if they don't take care of
Speaker 3: their soil, if they don't take care of the environment.
Speaker 3: If we don't have clean air and we don't have
Speaker 3: clean water, guess what else. You can't grow your crops
Speaker 3: as efficiently as if we did take care of the environment.
Speaker 3: Farmers and ranchers are the original stewards of our land,
Speaker 3: our water, our air. It's in there the best economic
Speaker 3: interests to take good care of those things, and that
Speaker 3: means we need to allow them the flexibility to be
Speaker 3: able to make those decisions, to be able to leverage
Speaker 3: emerging technologies, emerging trends. And when you have folks that,
Speaker 3: as you said, are micromanaging what they can and can't do,
Speaker 3: that has an incredibly negative impact not just on the
Speaker 3: cost of producing these goods, but it has a negative
Speaker 3: impact on the economy. Excuse me, It has a negative
Speaker 3: impact on the economy, but it has a negative impact
Speaker 3: on the environment as well.
Speaker 1: So it sounds to me, Gabe, and you know you
Speaker 1: can correct me if I'm wrong. You sound very sort
Speaker 1: of data and results driven. And if that's the case,
Speaker 1: I have to ask you about ethanol subsidies, because ethanol
Speaker 1: subsidies have distorted a marketplace under the guise of giving
Speaker 1: us better energy efficiency, of energy efficiency and things of
Speaker 1: that nature that have not proven to be to work
Speaker 1: out the way that they have worked out, But the
Speaker 1: farm lobby is very strong and they don't want to
Speaker 1: give up their ethanol subsidies. Where do you stand on
Speaker 1: if you haven't opinion at all.
Speaker 3: I like things that work. You know, when I was
Speaker 3: flying a Blackhawk helicopter overseason to combat zone, things get
Speaker 3: really really simple. If it works, do it. If it
Speaker 3: doesn't work, don't do it, because that's a really, really
Speaker 3: dumb reason to crash and explode a helicopter because you
Speaker 3: tried something that looked really good on paper but doesn't
Speaker 3: actually work in reality. And so that's where I stand
Speaker 3: on all of these, you know, alternate forms of energy.
Speaker 3: If they work, let's do it absolutely. But if they
Speaker 3: don't work, if you have to continue to subsidize and
Speaker 3: subsidize and subsidize them, then that's not actually producing energy efficiency,
Speaker 3: that's not actually taking good care of our environment. I'll
Speaker 3: give you a precise example. Here in Colorado, we often
Speaker 3: hear about, you know, zero emission electric cars. Well, this
Speaker 3: isn't my data, this is the State of Colorado data.
Speaker 3: The electric grid in Colorado produces about fifty percent more
Speaker 3: carbon per megawatt of produced energy then just pure natural gas.
Speaker 3: So every time we're plugging something into the electrical grid
Speaker 3: you're in Colorado. Again, not my data, this is state data.
Speaker 3: Every time we plug something into the electrical grid in Colorado,
Speaker 3: it's actually producing fifty percent more carbon for a unit
Speaker 3: of energy producers than if we just used natural gas.
Speaker 3: These are the conversations that we need to have to
Speaker 3: ensure that we're actually producing energy that were energy independent.
Speaker 3: And when we do those things that actually work, we
Speaker 3: can reduce our carbon footprint by having more natural gas
Speaker 3: right here in Colorado. My opponent's opposed to it, she's
Speaker 3: voted against it. I support American energy because that actually
Speaker 3: lowers our carbon footprint.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm speaking with Gabe Evans. He's running in the
Speaker 1: eighth congressional district. And Gabe, not for nothing. If we
Speaker 1: really truly and we are one of the world's largest,
Speaker 1: if not the world's largest energy producer now, but if
Speaker 1: we truly unleash our enemy, our energy economy, it also
Speaker 1: cuts the knees out of some of our geopolitical foes, right,
Speaker 1: It cuts the knees out from under Russia, It cuts
Speaker 1: the knees out I'm under Saudi Arabia, who is an ally,
Speaker 1: but I don't trust him.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be perfectly honest.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that we don't talk
Speaker 1: about enough, is that if we truly really exploited all
Speaker 1: of our energy options, we would be able to not
Speaker 1: only power our own economy, but also create big problems
Speaker 1: for Russia and for other bad actors around the world.
Speaker 1: Who's their entire economy is their oil economy.
Speaker 2: I mean, why don't we talk about that more?
Speaker 3: Oh, we need to talk about it more. And the
Speaker 3: big one that we've left out so far is China.
Speaker 3: China is making more and more stuff with dirty coal
Speaker 3: and with quite literally slave labor. So every time we're
Speaker 3: exporting jobs and energy production from the United States, it's
Speaker 3: going to places like China that are producing it again
Speaker 3: in an inhumane, environmentally catastrophic manner. And so we need
Speaker 3: to talk about that. We need to talk about how
Speaker 3: if we truly want to take care of the environments,
Speaker 3: we've got to make sure that we're bringing jobs, that
Speaker 3: we're bringing production, that we're bringing energy back to the
Speaker 3: United States, because here we produce it more efficiently than
Speaker 3: anywhere else in the world. We produce it more humanely
Speaker 3: than anywhere else in the world. And if we're truly
Speaker 3: concerned about global the global carbon footprint, what we need
Speaker 3: to do is make sure that we're not sending things
Speaker 3: to China, where they produce it with five ten times
Speaker 3: the amount of carbon that we could do it with
Speaker 3: here in the United States. And the absolute worst part
Speaker 3: about all of this is that pollution blows right back
Speaker 3: here to Colorado. We've got satellites we can track where
Speaker 3: this stuff goes. Again. State of Colorado data says that
Speaker 3: seventy percent of the air pollution in Colorado doesn't actually
Speaker 3: originate in Colorado. So when you have folks like my
Speaker 3: opponent that have blatantly voted numerous times against the American
Speaker 3: energy economy, they're not actually doing anything for the environment either.
Speaker 3: They're costing us jobs. But we're still reaping all of
Speaker 3: the pollution from places that produce it less efficiency and
Speaker 3: less responsibly, because again, it blows right back here in Colorado.
Speaker 1: Your campaign gab just got a really good shot in
Speaker 1: the arm when the libertarian candidate in the eighth congressional
Speaker 1: district dropped out and has removed his name from the ballot.
Speaker 1: And endorsed to You tell me about how that all
Speaker 1: came about.
Speaker 3: Well, it's what the American people want us to do.
Speaker 3: The American people want good government. They want responsible adults
Speaker 3: who can sit down, who can have a conversation, who
Speaker 3: can find and collaborate on the common ground and then
Speaker 3: actually move things forward. You know, that's what I tell everybody.
Speaker 3: I've buried entirely too many friends in military and law enforcement.
Speaker 3: I've sworn three oaths up to and including my life.
Speaker 3: So I know those things that I will never compromise
Speaker 3: on because I literally put my life on the line
Speaker 3: and I buried friends who made the ultimate sacrifice to
Speaker 3: stand for those things. I know those things I'll never compromise.
Speaker 3: Can collaborate with anybody, and that's what the Libertarian Party
Speaker 3: and I did. We sat down. Of course, there was
Speaker 3: the original pledge a couple of months ago. There were
Speaker 3: some things that we couldn't agree on, but we sat down,
Speaker 3: we have the conversation. We realized, look, we agree on
Speaker 3: about ninety percent of the stuff. So we drafted a
Speaker 3: pledge two point zero that we could both agree on,
Speaker 3: and that really does highlight those things that we care
Speaker 3: about small, limited government, making sure that we respect individual liberty,
Speaker 3: making sure that we're focused here on the United States
Speaker 3: critical things like securing our borders, and so by sitting down,
Speaker 3: by having that conversation once again, what we've shown is that,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm willing to work with anybody that's focused
Speaker 3: on these issues. The Libertarians were fantastic partners in promoting
Speaker 3: our shared visions and ideals for things like small government,
Speaker 3: individual liberty, accountability for federal agencies like the Federal Reserve,
Speaker 3: and moving the ball floor, and so it truly is
Speaker 3: a you know, we talked about the phrase bipartisan all
Speaker 3: the time. This is really something now where I'm tripartisan.
Speaker 3: I've worked with the Libertarians, we've found that common ground.
Speaker 3: But as a state legislator, you know, I'm in the
Speaker 3: MIT super minority down at the state Capitol, nineteen Republicans
Speaker 3: to forty six Democrats in the state House, and i
Speaker 3: still got almost sixty percent on my bills pass because
Speaker 3: I'm able to work across the aisle there. That's what
Speaker 3: I'm focused on. How do we move the ball forward,
Speaker 3: how do we make sure that we're passing on to
Speaker 3: future generations the same American dream that my grandfather Mia
Speaker 3: Ethel gave to me when he immigrated here to this country.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you have to use the language
Speaker 1: of today. You're polypolitical, that's what you are. You're not
Speaker 1: you engage with all political parties. There, Gabe, I do
Speaker 1: want to ask you one question from our text line,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a question that a lot of
Speaker 1: people have and I bet you have.
Speaker 2: A good answer for it.
Speaker 1: Hey, Mandy, please ask Gabe what are we're going to
Speaker 1: start seeing commercials from him?
Speaker 2: Live in the eighth district and have not seen.
Speaker 1: A single one, but I see one from his opponent
Speaker 1: every five minutes, and I want to use that as
Speaker 1: a springboard to ask you about the challenges going on
Speaker 1: at the state party and how that has affected your
Speaker 1: campaign in terms of the support that you have gotten
Speaker 1: or not gotten from the state campaign. It just kind
Speaker 1: of give me a minute on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So really two things there. Number One, Conservatives, we
Speaker 3: are the fiscally responsible party. And so as you yourself
Speaker 3: said kind of at the beginning, you know, after Labor
Speaker 3: Day is when folks start tuning in, and so I'm
Speaker 3: not going to waste my money on a bunch of
Speaker 3: campaigns in advertising before Labor Day. So don't worry. The
Speaker 3: ads will be here as you know, real quick. We're
Speaker 3: in like single digit days now, so the advertising for
Speaker 3: for the Gay Evans campaign is going to start your
Speaker 3: fast and furious. But the other part of this is
Speaker 3: these things are expensive to be able to run. A
Speaker 3: good TV ad is close to a million dollars. And
Speaker 3: so if anybody's listening to this wants to help you
Speaker 3: keep me on the air again, we have enough to
Speaker 3: get us on the air for quite a bit. But
Speaker 3: if anybody wants to help keep us on the air
Speaker 3: once we go on. Elect Gaveevans dot com is the
Speaker 3: website elect g a v e e v a ns
Speaker 3: dot com. You can go there learn more about me.
Speaker 3: There's a donate button there, and that's going to be
Speaker 3: a really critical part of making sure that we get
Speaker 3: our message out because folks are stick and tired of
Speaker 3: the high prices, the high crime, the spentanyl crisis, the
Speaker 3: border crisis that my Democrat opponent has voted lockstep with
Speaker 3: the Biden Harris regime.
Speaker 1: On Gave Evans is my guest, and when we talk
Speaker 1: about the dumpster fire that is the state party right now,
Speaker 1: I always say find the candidates you like and give
Speaker 1: them money. And if you like what gave us had
Speaker 1: to say today, take that money you might have donated
Speaker 1: to the state Party and put it directly into his
Speaker 1: coffers so he can win the eighth congressional district. Gabe,
Speaker 1: I think you'll race is entirely winnable. I think you're
Speaker 1: the right candidate to win that race. And I look
Speaker 1: forward to talking to you after the election, if not before,
Speaker 1: to be able to congratulate you.
Speaker 2: On your victory.
Speaker 1: So let's let's do the assumed clothes on that one and.
Speaker 2: And uh, we'll be in touch again before the election.
Speaker 2: I can assure you.
Speaker 3: Always great to be hon with you, Mandy. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: All right, that is Gabe Evans, and I put a
Speaker 1: link on my blog to his website, so if you'd
Speaker 1: like to donate, and trust me, guys, these candidates are
Speaker 1: dealing with no support from the state Party as it
Speaker 1: tries to sort itself out, So this is really important
Speaker 1: that you go ahead and donate directly to these candidates.
Speaker 2: If you like what you're hearing,