April 01, 2024 01:51 PM UTC

Greg Lopez: Jeff Hunt Will Be My Theocratic Chief of Staff

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

Today in an interview with conservative AM radio host Ross Kaminsky, CO-04 special election Republican nominee Greg Lopez dropped the first bit of news since unexpectedly securing the nomination to serve the remaining months of Rep. Ken Buck’s term last Thursday:

KAMINSKY: I’m just about out of time, Greg. So one one kind of logistical question if if you win, would do you essentially take over an office where Ken Buck’s staff would be staying to support you or do you somehow get new staff?

LOPEZ: Well, that’s that’s an interesting question that I really don’t know how to answer that right now because it just happened on Thursday. But I want to be reaching out to the staff today, the staff here in Colorado, he’s got three offices. I’m going to try to reach out to the staff in Washington. And just give them a sense of assurance that, hey, if you want to stay, there’s no reason for you to start, you know, baling ship yet. You haven’t met me. I haven’t met you. But obviously the congressman has put you there for a reason. I want you to stay. I don’t need you to be, you know, moving along unless you really feel that’s what you need to do. And that is one of the first things that I need to do is to give the staff reassurance that I’m not looking to eliminate any of their positions.

KAMINSKY: Right. Those are going to be those are going to be the people with the institutional knowledge that you’re going to need…

Lopez starts with this reassurance to Buck’s erstwhile staffers that they won’t be summarily dismissed by their new placeholder, which seems like good news for Buck’s constituents. But then Lopez indicates that won’t be true, at least for Buck’s current chief of staff:

LOPEZ: It’s true and, you know what, and I’m very fortunate because you know Jeff Hunt. Jeff Hunt, you know, which just left the Centennial Institute, he has agreed to work with me as my quasi chief of staff as I make this transition into this office. [Pols emphasis]

That’s right, folks–Lopez’s first staff hire in his unlikely-but-happening bid to serve in Congress for a few months is none other than Jeff Hunt, the recently-departed director of the recently-shuttered Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. The full story of Hunt’s sudden departure from CCU’s payroll still hasn’t been disclosed, but it does not have the appearance of what you’d call an honorable discharge. It’s furthermore tough to see what Hunt’s value to Lopez will be as a “quasi chief of staff,” having blocked most of the Colorado press corps from his social media accounts in a huff after Hunt made some decidedly ill-advised comments about Colorado’s lack of “Christian leadership.”

As you may know, Colorado’s governor, attorney general, and secretary of state are Jewish! These are the mad public relations skills that made Hunt a fixture in Colorado Republican politics, until he recently for reasons as-yet unknown was not. But like Lopez himself is showing the world, each tomorrow is a new beginning in Colorado Republican politics–even if your career should have ended yesterday.

How will it end? Damned if we can say. We’re still somewhat in disbelief that Greg Lopez, GOP nominee for Congress is happening at all.