From McDonald’s to Congress: can a former fry cook flip a key district for Democrats?

Manny Rutinel applauds during the last day of the legislative session at the Colorado capitol in Denver in May. Photograph: Aaron Ontiveroz/Denver Post/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenManny Rutinel applauds during the last day of the legislative session at the Colorado capitol in Denver in May. Photograph: Aaron Ontiveroz/Denver Post/Getty ImagesUS midterm elections 2026From McDonald’s to Congress: can a former fry cook flip a key district for Democrats?Manny Rutinel hopes price-tag politics can win key voters in Colorado House race

During his presidential campaign in October 2024, Donald Trump staged a photo op at a McDonald’s franchise in Pennsylvania, where he was briefly taught how to work the fryer and drive-thru window at the closed restaurant, while making several unsubstantiated claims about Kamala Harris’s past summer job at McDonald’s.

The posturing around McDonald’s garnered significant publicity, as Trump and Republicans capitalized on an affordability crisis triggered by high inflation that occurred globally due to the Covid pandemic.

Now, as Trump’s promises to “end inflation” and bring down prices have fallen flat, a real former fry cook is hoping affordability will help him flip Colorado’s eighth congressional district, a swing district narrowly won by the Republican Gabe Evans in 2024. The district is rated a toss-up by the Cook Partisan Index, and affordability is front and center in Democratic nominee Manny Rutinel’s congressional campaign.

Rutinel was raised by a single mother, an immigrant, and his family was one of millions who lost their homes to foreclosure in the 2008 economic recession.

When Rutinel graduated high school, he was also finishing his second year working at McDonald’s.

He worked multiple jobs through college, taking community college courses, having to sell his own blood plasma so frequently it has left a scar on his arm.

“I’m the son of a single mom who came to America in search of that American dream, and we worked hard every single day for this country, but we still struggled,” Rutinel told the Guardian. “I remember being 10 years old the first time I started filling out food stamp and Medicaid forms, and those are the same programs that Donald Trump and my congressman Gabe Evans are destroying right now to get tax breaks to their billionaire buddies.”

He worked through his associate’s degree to a bachelor’s degree, then worked as an economist for the US army corps of engineers and obtained a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University before attending Yale Law School.

He currently serves as a representative in Colorado’s state legislature, where he has “co-sponsored over 400 laws to fight for an affordable economy, make sure that folks have good-paying jobs”.

Those bills include expanding the earned income tax credit, and establishing a family affordability tax credit and child tax credit in Colorado, which collectively reduced child poverty in Colorado by nearly 40%, making Colorado the state with the lowest childhood poverty rate in the US.

“I think that’s the kind of leadership that we need right now in Congress, folks that understand the struggles of working people deep in their bones,” added Rutinel. “Sometimes you hear politicians talk about the affordability crisis, like they just read it in a memo somewhere. But for me, it’s deeply personal.”