September 25, 2025 01:16 PM UTC

New House Minority Leader Faceplants in First Week

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• by: Colorado Pols

House Republicans in Colorado selected freshman Rep. Jarvis Caldwell (R-Monument) as their new Minority Leader last Saturday, surely hoping that he could do a better job than Rose Pugliese, the previous “Leader” who threw a tantrum and resigned from the legislature 10 days ago.

The early returns are not encouraging.

Pugliese was an absolute mess as Minority Leader, which was not a huge surprise given that she had only served one session — half of a term — in the state legislature at the time of her promotion. You might think that Republicans would have learned their lesson and chosen a successor to Pugliese who had a bit more experience…but of course they did not. Caldwell just concluded his first session in the legislature in May; he hasn’t even had to run for re-election yet.

Caldwell rewarded the faith from his caucus on Monday by posting a completely bizarre video on social media attacking House Democrats for being mean, or whatever. For some reason, Caldwell is dressed like Fidel Castro; there’s even a loud hum from the air conditioner in the background to complete the hostage-style video effect:

Caldwell’s message before Saturday’s leadership election was that he wanted to “bring the temperature down” in terms of the political infighting between Republicans and Democrats. At some point within the next 48 hours, Caldwell apparently decided that this narrative wasn’t going to work in a Republican caucus that really only exists for the purpose of engaging in verbal battles with whomever else is available.

The gist of Caldwell’s complaint, which was to announce a letter signed by all of the rocket surgeons in the GOP caucus, was to complain that House Democrats are not “policing their own” because some of them may have not sufficiently acknowledged the death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The real reason for the letter (and video) is that Republicans are still salty about voting to censure former Rep. Ryan Armagost for taking a picture of State Rep. Yara Zokaie (D-Ft. Collins), who was then the subject of mockery in an internal Republican text chat.

While all but two House Republicans voted to condemn Armagost, they also stood behind Pugliese at the time as she complained that she was the real victim in this entire scandal. House Republicans seem to have some regrets about that vote, as we noted recently:

Caldwell’s pledge to “bring that temperature down” may be tough to accomplish, particularly given his history as a former rhetorical bomb-thrower for the House Republican caucus. In his pre-election speech to the caucus on Saturday, Rep. Larry Don Suckla defiantly said that it was a mistake for House Republicans to vote in favor of last month’s censure of former Rep. Ryan Armagost for taking a photo of a Democratic Representative that Republicans then mocked on an internal text thread.

Now, here’s where Caldwell really steps in the muck…

On Monday, Caldwell was a guest on Mandy Connell’s radio show on KOA, during which he pretended that the House GOP letter was “breaking news” after boasting about his connection to the right-wing social media site “Libs of Tik Tok”:

CALDWELL: So I kind of made a little bit of a name for myself this past session because I really took on House Bill 1312, you know, the transgender parental rights bill. And so, you, know, and I just everybody has their own style. My style is to be passionate about the things that I care about, which parental rights is like my number one issue. And so I made a lot of headlines and got a lot of attention on this bill, but I didn’t do it in a way where I had to go down to the or in call names or anything like that.

You know, I made the arguments and then I used kind of the abilities I have outside the building to message this and it caught national news and you’d see it on Libs of TikTok and things like that. [Pols emphasis] And so, I’m a former communications director for the House Republicans for the very place where I’m now the minority leader and so, I’m gonna continue using those abilities and you know, this is exclusive and breaking news on your show but it’s certainly not public yet but you’ll see it very soon — um, I did just sign a letter, uh, to the Democrat majority, um, calling out some of their members who were what I would consider dancing on the graves of Charlie Kirk. And so you’re going to see that, um if you follow the Colorado House Republican, uh Twitter page, excuse me, X page, um you’ll, you’ll see that very soon. But I did sign a letter to them and, uh we had our, uh House Republicans sign on to it as well. But, you know, we just passed the resolution in a special session saying, now everybody’s to be better and all this stuff. Well, you know, we’re trying to stick to that resolution and some of your members, I mean, within a month are violating that.

Why is this important? Because one of the complaints from Democrats on the Armagost matter was that the photo of Zokaie became popular on right-wing social media accounts such as “Libs of Tik Tok.” There has been a lot of speculation in recent months about who leaked the Zokaie photo to “Libs of Tik Tok.” Caldwell’s comments to Mandy Connell would seem to indicate that the new Minority Leader was that source.

Caldwell’s pledge to “bring the temperature down” wasn’t just worthless rhetoric — he’s clearly attempting to do the exact opposite in his first week as Minority Leader. That’s certainly his prerogative, but if there was any hope that new leadership could take the House GOP in a more useful direction, Caldwell already made it clear that House Republicans have no intention of being taken seriously anytime soon.