According to census data, Colorado has the seventh-highest Hispanic population, with over 22% of Coloradans identifying as Hispanic or Latino.
As this group becomes an increasingly influential political force nationwide, recent trends suggest a growing shift to the right, particularly among Latino men. Nationally, 55% of Latino men voted for President-elect Donald Trump, compared to 36% in 2020. While Trump didn’t do as well with Latinas and Hispanic women, he still received 38% of their vote, up eight points from the previous election.
This election, several Hispanic Republican candidates in Colorado secured critical districts across the state, including Representatives-elect Ryan Gonzalez and Carlos Barron and U.S. Representative-elect Gabe Evans, all of Fort Lupton. Another northern Colorado resident, Yazmin Navarro of Johnstown, won her district’s race for the State Board of Education, becoming the only Latina Republican on the board.
While Republicans emerged victorious in several tight races, experts emphasize the need for greater outreach to the Hispanic community to ensure it’s not all just a fluke. Despite some national trends suggesting a shift, Colorado’s Latino voters remain largely left-leaning: a 2024 exit poll by the Colorado Latino Policy Agenda found that 67% of the state’s Latinos voted for Kamala Harris, while 63% said they supported Democratic Congressional candidates.
“Pale, male, and stale”: Has the Colorado GOP moved away from old, white men?
Republican strategist Tyler Sandburg has a term for the party’s stereotypical candidate — “pale, male, and stale.”
“For way too long, Colorado Republicans ran one kind of candidate,” he said. “I think what’s most important is that Republicans stop running old white men and instead really look to the next generation of leadership, which I think is a large part Hispanic. We have finally elevated Hispanic leaders in our party to run in top majors. In fact, at the moment, almost every single major victory for Colorado Republicans is from a Hispanic candidate.”
Two of Colorado’s newest Republican Latino elected officials, Rep-elect Gonzalez and Navarro, were the first in their family to graduate high school, Sandburg said.
“There’s very much an American Dream theme throughout,” he noted. “I think the American Dream and the opportunity that America provides is very resonant with the Hispanic community.”
The party’s shift away from traditional “pale, male, and stale” candidates is something Sandburg says he’s been advocating. “We need to diversify candidates,” he said. “It’s not tokenism, it’s not DEI; it’s about elevating leaders in the communities we seek to represent,” he said.
Sandburg said it’s noteworthy that Gonzalez, Barron, Evans, and Navarro all represent Northern Colorado, a region with a significant Hispanic population. Despite Latinos being the state’s largest minority group, they remain underrepresented in state politics — especially within the Republican Party. In the last legislative session, Evans was the only Latino Republican in both the House and the Senate. Now, there will be three with Gonzalez, Barron, and Rep-elect Garcia Sander of Eaton.
Republicans need to be strategic to ensure this trend isn’t an aberration, Sandburg said.
“I think it’s an opportunity, but by no means is it guaranteed to last more than one election cycle if Republicans are not very thoughtful and careful about how they engage and grow their relationship with various leaders and community members across Colorado,” he said. “It cannot be an October-of-election-year engagement. It has to be year-round.”
Sandburg also highlighted polling data suggesting the top issues among Hispanic voters include education, cost of living, and housing. School choice in particular resonated with Latino voters.
Sandburg says Amendment 80, which would have codified the right to school choice in the State Constitution, did especially well in areas with large Hispanic populations, such as Adams and Pueblo counties.
“Hispanics, at the core, have very conservative values”
Board of Education member-elect Navarro credits her upbringing in Mexico with instilling what she says are conservative values of faith, family, and country.
“Everybody I grew up with was also being taught the same principles and values,” said Navarro, who moved to the United States as a child. “So for me, the core of the Hispanic person is conservative.”
Navarro represents Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, which has the highest concentration of Latino voters in the state. As a teacher, she says she was motivated to run for the Board of Education after growing concerned about the current board members’ ability to address the problems she felt the state was facing when it came to education.
Another one of Navarro’s top priorities for her time on the board is ensuring that Colorado’s Latino population is being adequately represented and heard. She believes her fluency in Spanish will help her engage with constituents who previously faced barriers to participating in politics due to language barriers.
“I think that’s very important for them to see that someone can actually communicate with them,” she said. “There’s something to be said about communication in general, and I can speak from personal experience about how my mom was excluded from a lot of educational things because she didn’t have anyone to communicate with. I became the translator for my mother at a very early age, but she shouldn’t have had to rely on a child. So I think there’s a lot to be said about the voters of CD 8 who voted for me. They wanted more representation in a Hispanic woman that can truly understand the path that they’ve walked and can actually communicate.”
Navarro says it’s “fantastic” to see more Latino representation in Colorado Republican politics, which she attributes to a focus on issues like school choice, parental rights, and reducing the cost of living. However, she emphasized that her role on the Board of Education will be centered on advocating for all of her constituents, no matter their political or cultural backgrounds.
“I’m always going to be looking out for every single student, no matter their race, their gender, anything,” she said. “I think children are absolutely amazing, and I’m always going to fight for them to make sure that they are protected.”
Like Navarro, Representative-elect Carlos Barron was born in Mexico. He moved to Colorado at just a year old, but he echoed Navarro’s sentiments when it came to the values his parents instilled in him as a child.
“Growing up in a Mexican family, you learn the values of family, faith and hard work,” he said. “That’s how I grew up, and as I got older, I aligned those values with the Republican Party.”
Barron contended that many Latinos share similar values, but they sometimes lack the political knowledge to recognize which party aligns with those values.
“They don’t understand politics enough to understand that they’re more conservative than they’re not, and that’s the reason I got into politics — to be able to represent the Hispanic people, not just in my district, but in the state of Colorado, and not just the Hispanic people, of course; I’m representing all people,” he said.
Like Navarro, Barron wants to use his Spanish fluency to educate his constituents about the ins and outs of the political system.
“My main focus was to help Hispanic people get more involved in politics and help them understand it in their own language,” he said. “A lot of Hispanic people don’t get involved in politics because they don’t have the representation in their own language. I’m not trying to convert them into Republicans, I’m just trying to give them a good understanding of what politics is so they can make their own decision.”
Barron’s district is 65% Hispanic, and while he ran unopposed for the seat formerly held by U.S. Rep-elect Gabe Evans, the adjacent House District 50 was won by Rep-elect Gonzalez by just over two percentage points. Gonzalez’s win marks the first time a Republican has represented HD50 in a decade. Given recent data suggesting the majority of Latino voters in Colorado vote Democratic, Barron says he is optimistic about the future for Republicans in Weld County, but the party is going to have to put in significant effort to ensure Latino voters connect with their platform.
“I do believe that this trend will continue as long as we reach out to more Hispanic people and let them know hey, we’re here to represent you,” he said. “If you have any questions, come to us, and we will explain the best way we can so you can make the better decision for you and your family, and the more people start seeing that, they’ll start looking at more Republican candidates.”
When asked how he plans to work alongside Latino Democrats in the House to best represent their community, Barron said he will tap into his experience as a manger for his father’s oil and gas company.
“It’s all about giving the olive branch and saying, ‘you know what? I’m here to listen to you. I’m here to work with you,'” he said. “I know we’re not always gonna agree on everything, but we can have a cordial conversation where we can reach a mutual agreement for the greater good of the entire population. That’s the reason I got in here too, because I have that experience where I can work with others, even if I don’t agree with them”
Latinos are not a monolith, says COLOR CEO
Dusti Gurule, President and CEO of the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR), says the narrative of Latino voters shifting significantly to the right has been overexaggerated and does not paint the full picture.
She pointed to the Latino Policy Agenda exit poll as evidence that the majority of Latinos, at least in Colorado, continue to vote Democratic. Gurule suggested that the growing support for conservative causes among Latino men may be partially due to individuals immigrating from more traditionally conservative countries.
“There is a gap between Latinas and Latino males,” she said. “Latino males, everyone says are moving to the right, but the numbers in Colorado aren’t exactly the same. That’s happening less here in Colorado. I think people sort of overstate the fact that Latinos are not a monolith, and one perspective to understand is that as people migrate to a different state or a different country, the realities around the politics are very different. So I think that could contribute to the sort of variance of voting patterns this election.”
Gurule noted the success of COLOR’s Amendment 79, which enshrined the right to abortion in the State Constitution. The amendment received 62% of the vote statewide, and 66% of the Latino vote — it even did well in Republican-leaning areas, she said.
“I think that shows how critical and how important bodily autonomy and self-determination is and how that breaks through the party dialogue, she said.
While COLOR is celebrating the success of Amendment 79, Gurule admits that there is still much work to do, especially given the impending inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
At the state level, she advocated for more engagement with the Latino community by both parties outside of election season, a sentiment echoed by GOP strategist Sandburg.
Gurule said she was “deeply disappointed” that Evans defeated U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo for the Congressional District 8 seat. Caraveo was the state’s first Latina congresswoman, but even with her losing, Gurule maintained that the narrative that Hispanic values are conservative values is simply untrue.
“We’re not all the same,” she said. “I come from a strong family of matriarchs and strong women; there’s nothing conservative about the way I grew up. My family always worked and still do work toward social justice. So I disagree that she can claim that for all Latinos. It’s ridiculous. We need to think critically and do more in-depth analyses and not just take what people saying as what is really happening, because the majority of Latinos in Colorado have progressive values, and it shows by them voting yes on Amendment 79, and that’s not the only one.”
