June 10, 2025 01:44 PM UTC

Rep. Jeff "Bread Sandwich" Hurd Draws MAGA Primary Challenger

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• by: Colorado Pols

In just a few months in office, freshman GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd of Grand Junction has had several high-profile moments of disagreement with President Donald Trump on a range of issues from the layoff of federal workers to Trump’s pardoning of violent January 6th, 2021 insurrectionists–though notably not in the end opposed to the “We’re All Going To Die Act” to slash funding for Medicaid, food stamps, renewable energy credits, and other provisions Hurd’s constituents depend on. It’s nevertheless been enough public dissent from Hurd against the Dear Leader that grumblings in favor of a MAGA primary challenge have circulated for some weeks.

And as Colorado Public Radio’s Bente Birkeland reports, the first such challenger to throw her hat in the ring against Hurd definitely passes the Trump loyalty test, if perhaps not a lot of other qualifications:

Republican Hope Scheppelman formally announced her candidacy for the state’s Third Congressional District on Monday. She’s mounting a primary challenge against freshman GOP Congressman Jeff Hurd, accusing him of having disdain for the MAGA wing of the party.

Scheppelman, a Navy veteran who lives in Bayfield in southwest Colorado, worked for years as a critical care nurse. She also served as vice-chair of the state Republican Party. In her campaign launch, she criticized Hurd as anti-conservative.

“Jeff Hurd and his fake conservative puppet masters at ‘Americans for Chinese Prosperity’, the so-called AFP, tricked and lied to CD3 voters last year but they can’t deceive us any longer now that he’s exposed himself as just another liberal elitist who is dead set against President Trump and the millions of MAGA citizens like me who demand that Congress does the will of voters,” she declared in a press release announcing her candidacy.

Former Colorado GOP vice-chair Hope Scheppelman is perhaps best known for convening a bogus “meeting” of the Colorado GOP’s central committee under a literal bridge in her remote town of Bayfield for the express purpose of forestalling other meetings being organized by dissident Republicans seeking the ouster of Scheppelman’s boss and ally former chairman Dave Williams–the same Dave Williams who it was just announced got a plum appointment to Trump’s Commerce Department as a reward for his unswerving (and self-serving) loyalty. But beyond the relatively small and now highly unpopular faction of the Colorado GOP she represents, Scheppelman faces an uphill battle, lacking the name ID and the resources to mount an effect primary challenge against Jeff Hurd. And that’s before you address the baggage from her divisive two years at the state party under Williams.

How could that all change? Easy: Trump could throw down for Scheppelman. As the only Republican in Colorado’s delegation willing to talk back to Trump, intervention from the top in this relatively safe Republican district is not outside the realm of possibility. Scheppelman may not be the only MAGA loyalist upset enough with Hurd to primary him either, but if that faction of the party wants to have a chance they’ll settle on a single candidate well before next June.