The congressional district surrounding Colorado Springs was created over 50 years ago, and a Democrat has never even come close to winning it. U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO) took the seat by 14 points in 2024 after U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) retired after serving for 18 years.
But now, with signs that Republicans in red districts, like Crank’s, could be washed out of office in November by a blue wave of anger over Trump, affordability, chaos, and more, Crank’s race is suddenly getting more attention — particularly because Crank’s Democratic opponent, Jessica Killin, a former U.S. Army captain, has proven to be a strong fundraiser and campaigner.
But a major part of Crank’s record has mostly escaped the stepped-up scrutiny of the race. From 2008 to 2021, Crank hosted the Jeff Crank Show, a right-wing talk radio program on KVOR that is no longer available online and has been mostly ignored.
Colorado Times Recorder has taken a step in filling this gap in Crank’s public record by analyzing over 300 of his KVOR shows, totalling over 800 hours, from 2011 through 2021. The programs show that during his career on KVOR, Crank was a MAGA trailblazer on the full spectrum of domestic and foreign policy issues: favoring the repeal of Obamacare, military intervention abroad, an abortion ban, and the restriction of the basic rights of LGBTQ people. Like Trump, he gave a voice to racism and sexism, and promoted conspiracies about elections.
Crank’s radio shows display a record of hard-right stances on economic and social issues that were often far more conservative than the positions of Republicans who dominated the media and Washington, D.C. at the time — even if his opinions were largely aligned with the Christian right in Colorado Springs, where his talk radio show aired.
But over time, Crank’s views — and behavior — on the radio increasingly found a reflection in the MAGA movement.
In a series of articles, starting with this one, the Colorado Times Recorder will show how Crank’s views during his tenure on commercial talk radio connect to Trump’s Washington and to Crank’s stances today on major issues.
“Cheap Political Hit, Not Journalism”
Presented yesterday with most of Crank’s quotes in our upcoming series of articles, a Crank Campaign adviser called the reporting project a “cheap political hit, not journalism.”
“Jeff Crank was on public radio for over a decade in the Pikes Peak Region and spoke with residents of his community on a weekly basis,” said Crank’s campaign adviser via email. “Only now that D.C. Democrats are trying to buy this seat, the Colorado Times Recorder goes through over 800 hours of his old radio shows that have been publicly available for years, cherry-picking whatever they possibly can twist to serve their partisan political purposes. These are the actions of campaign researchers seeking to achieve a cheap political hit, not journalism.”
In fact, the shows aren’t publicly available now, having been removed by KVOR years ago, before Crank ran for Congress. Audio clips and stray shows are available online here and there, but there’s no archive – anywhere near 800 hours — of the Jeff Crank show available publicly.
The Colorado Times Recorder accumulated the shows it analyzed over many years as part of our journalism, reporting on media figures like Jeff Crank, holding them accountable. At the time, media criticism was a major reporting focus for us, as was political journalism. Crank was interviewed by yours truly multiple times — and Crank interviewed me — about issues that came up on his show over more than a decade.
Right-Wing Operative and Talk Show Host
KVOR’s weekly Jeff Crank Show was a side gig for Crank, from the day he started it in 2008 after losing his second congressional primary race to then U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), until it ended in October 2021, when Crank refused the radio station’s requirement that employees get COVID shots, a mandate he called “unethical and immoral.”
During most of that time, his day job — either as a staffer or consultant — was with Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a right-wing organization promoting free market policies and small government, bankrolled by the conservative Koch brothers, whom he ocassionally mentioned on his show and whose family money flowed originally from oil and gas. Crank started as AFP’s Colorado state director and later became AFP’s chief operations officer and a regional director.
So it’s not surprising that one of Crank’s most consistent ideological throughlines on his radio shows is his fervent advocacy for the diminution or elimination of government involvement across industries, including health care (but not abortion care), oil and gas, retirement programs, education, and more.
But unlike some libertarian-minded Republicans of his time, Crank was also a hardline and passionate social conservative, further connecting him to the Trump coalition and adding another layer of right-wing extremism to his radio show.
Crank’s Long War on Obamacare
Crank’s war on Obamacare started before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) became law in 2010. In 2009, as part of his AFP job, Crank led rallies across Colorado against the act, advocating for ill-defined freedom in health care choices — a theme he would amplify repeatedly on his radio show over the next decade.
For Crank, health care freedom meant less regulation, and he fought hard against the idea that the imperfections of a free market in health care would be worse than imperfect regulations, even going so far as to voice the unpopular ideas that kids under 26 need not fall under their parents’ health insurance and that if people with pre-existing conditions paid more for health care in a free market, it’s okay.
A caller asked Crank during a 2015 show directly about these issues.
Caller: You don’t like [Obamacare], but it covers kids who are up to 26 years of age on their parents’ health insurance. Are you in favor of that or not?
Crank: “I don’t know. I don’t really care, frankly. I don’t think it ought to be mandated by the government. I think that there ought to be a free market system where if an insurance company wants to offer insurance up until somebody’s 26 to be on their parents’ insurance, people can pay more for that.”
Caller: “… So are you in favor of the requirement that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions or not?” the caller asked.
Crank: “Again, I think that a free market way to do that would be for companies to offer that as a plan. It would cost more. I get that. But, you know, people with pre-existing conditions probably would pay a little bit more.”
Caller: “Okay, that used to be the way things were, that insurance companies could or could not. It was their decision.
Crank: “No. No. It was their decision, but it wasn’t a free market, a true free market system, and that’s the difference.”
On the radio, Crank often illustrated his views with vivid, yet simplistic comparisons. In the case of Obamacare, for example, on a 2017 show, he likened price reductions in 42-inch TVs at Best Buy over time to the lower costs he’d expect to see in health care if it were sold on the market like TVs are.
“Obamacare should be fully repealed and replaced by a free market system,” said Crank on air. “So whether people want to say, ‘I want to repeal it or replace or whatever,’ it’s simple. Repeal the bad law known as Obamacare, fully repeal it, and replace it with a free market system that allows for portability, selling insurance across state lines, greater competition, and less government interference, greater competition amongst private insurance companies, and reform so that we can control costs and have the free market control costs, not the government control costs, the free markets control costs, the way that it does in things like televisions and computers and things like that.
“Go walk into a Best Buy and look at a 42-inch LCD TV and just think what the price was three or four or five years ago compared to today. It’s called competition. It works. Free market competition works. We didn’t need the government to drive down the cost of LCD TVs. LCD TVs went down in cost because the free market was allowed to flourish and push the cost down. And that’s what should be happening in health care. So there should be a full repeal.”
This kind of thinking allowed him to state, confidently, “I’m glad that we’re ripping Obamacare out by its roots.”
With Republicans firmly in power in Washington in 2017, with Trump as president and in control of Congress, Crank wasn’t shy on his talk show about expressing his anger at fellow Republicans for repeatedly failing to repeal the ACA, even as the health care law’s growing popularity made the politics of the vote dicey.
“I just think it’s frustrating,” he complained in 2017 on KVOR. “It’s just frustrating to watch these guys who sat here for year after year, and how many times did they vote on repealing Obamacare? Fifty times? Let’s repeal Obamacare. Now you have everything to repeal Obamacare. And why have we done it yet?”
He took aim at former Sen. John McCain, whose thumb ended the GOP’s final attempt to repeal the ACA during Trump’s first term. He called McCain “mean,” “arrogant,” and “obstinate,” and called for his removal from office unless he changed his Obamacare ways,
“Obviously, John McCain did it again to us. Unfortunately, John McCain has become meaner in his old age,” Crank told KVOR listeners after McCain’s famous thumbs-down move. “…When I worked in Congress, and I’ve said this on the show many times, John McCain was arrogant. He was obstinate. He was mean, and that’s just who he is. Was he a great American hero for what he did as a POW during the Vietnam War? Absolutely, no question.”
“John McCain either needs to be convinced or he needs to be removed from office. And it can be a few years before you can do that,” he concluded.
After fighting against Obamacare on his radio show and elsewhere for so long, it’s no surprise that when Crank became a congressman himself and got the chance to take a bite out of the program — to vote to shrink it — he jumped at it.
In January, he voted against Obamacare subsidies that would push 80,000 or more people off the program in Colorado, explaining in a news release, “I cannot support an extension of the ACA subsidies without serious reform. Congress cannot keep writing a blank check to Obamacare and slapping a subsidy band-aid on a healthcare system that remains fundamentally unaffordable. Congress needs to focus on real reforms that lower costs, improve and expand competition so consumers have real choices.”
Today, Crank says he wants to “rein in insurance companies.”
Asked in November if he had a “definitive proposal” to replace the subsidies or fix Obamacare, Crank told KOAA TV, “There’s no specific proposal to do it, but we need to develop that; we need to work on it. And I think that the Congress gets that. I think that the leadership understands that. And I think we will see a lot of these proposals coming forward very soon.”
Republicans have offered no such proposals.
Crank Doesn’t Want Americans To Be “Forced Onto Medicare”
Crank’s advocacy for a free-market health care system extends to Medicare. He said on his radio show that he wants seniors to choose among competing health care options instead of being “forced” on Medicare.
In 2017, when congressional Republicans were driving Crank crazy because they couldn’t repeal Obamacare, Crank explained to a caller, whom he referred to repeatedly as “Radical Red Rudy,” that Crank believed in a similar market reform for Medicare as he advocated for Obamacare, saying he didn’t think seniors should be “forced” to go on Medicare at age 65.
Caller: “When the government provides something for you, is that not socialist?”
Crank: “But I don’t want the government providing it to me, and they don’t in my case. I pay for my health insurance. I don’t get subsidies of any kind from the federal government.”
Caller: “Okay, well, when you get Medicare, that’s not socialist, you’re saying?”
Crank: “I’m not on Medicare.”
Caller: “Well, when you do get it, I say.”
Crank: “Listen, I’m not a big fan of the fact that at 65 everybody gets forced onto Medicare. I think we ought to find a — I think our seniors deserve better. They ought to have choice.”
Crank’s support of “choice” in Medicare aligns with his support of former U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) 2012 budget proposal that would have raised the retirement age and provided future Medicare recipients with funds to buy private health insurance on their own, eliminating the guarantee of coverage that Medicare provides Americans.
Crank lauded the Ryan Plan as “bold,” saying on his show in 2011, “It was only the Ryan Plan, when it came forward, that was bold and got us on a path to a balanced budget at some point in the future.”
After his conversation with Radical Red Rudy during the radio program quoted above, Crank advocates the same market reforms for Social Security as he promoted for Medicare, which would similarly turn Social Security into a “system of choice.”
“Medicare isn’t this great program,” Crank told another caller on the same show in 2017. “Look, I’m in favor of obviously funding Medicare and reforming Medicare to the point where it’s more efficient and effective for seniors. But at the same time, I’d prefer our seniors had a system of choice, just like on Social Security. I wish people had the choice to decide, ‘Hey, I wanna go to this plan or this doctor.’ And they don’t have that under Medicare. So I wish they did. So I’m not looking at it as some great program that we should move all of America to Medicare. I think we should look at moving people on Medicare to a choice that has good coverage and has more choice and plans for them.”
Crank also denounces Social Security Disability — and social support programs broadly — presenting himself as an example of what he wants Americans to be.
“Listen, here’s the thing,” Crank told a caller, also in 2017. “You know, so I’m the dumb one. I’m the dumb one because I go out and I pay for my own health insurance. I don’t ask the government to do it. I’m a stupid one because I go out, and I budget for disability insurance so that if something happens to me, I get hit in the head with an anvil, my family still gets some income. So I pay, you know, probably $2,000 a year for disability policy. But I but I’m the stupid one, you see. I should just go out and just say, ‘Oh well, if I get hit in the head with an anvil, I’ll go on Social Security disability.’ I mean, I’m the dumb one. I get that. So I’m not the responsible one; I’m the stupid one for doing that kind of stuff. That’s the problem with our society is that we’ve flipped it on its head that somehow we’re supposed to allow government to take care of us. We’re supposed to be wards of the state.”
Crank’s hostility as a talk radio host toward safety-net programs broadly mirrors Trump’s actions in Washington, particularly his push for the Big Beautiful Bill — supported by Crank — that reduced the Medicaid rolls to pay for tax cuts mostly for the wealthy.
Today, Crank doesn’t talk much about his specific ideas for transforming Medicare and Social Security. He refers to the need to find a “solution.”
“We gotta come together, as Democrats and Republicans — as Americans — and figure out a solution whereby we protect the benefits of Social Security recipients, and we ensure the future viability of that program,” said Crank during an Aug. 27 debate against Killin, his Democratic opponent.
Presented via email with many of Crank’s statements in this article and others in our forthcoming series, Killin’s Campaign Manager Emily Dalgleish replied that Crank has shown himself to be a “MAGA extremist” in Congress.
“Jeff Crank has shown exactly who he is in Congress: a MAGA extremist who puts loyalty to Donald Trump ahead of the people he represents,” wrote Dalgleish in a statement to the Colorado Times Recorder. “While El Paso County families, seniors, and veterans struggle, Crank has voted 100% of the time with Trump, including votes to cover up the Epstein files, six votes against ending the Iran War, and eight times to protect Trump’s tariffs. El Paso County deserves someone who will stand up to either party to do what is right, and Jessica Killin will do that.”
Research assistance provided by Bryon Neitzel.
Read Part II of the Colorado Times Recorder’s series on the Jeff Crank Show here.
CORRECTION: Dalgleish’s statement was initially misattributed.
