September 18, 2024 10:29 AM UTC

Yadira Caraveo Not Letting Gabe Evans "Memory Hole" His Fired Political Director

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post’s John Aguilar reports, incumbent Rep. Yadira Caraveo, defending her seat from freshman state Rep. Gabe Evans, took the offensive yesterday against Evans over the firing last week of Evans’ political director Jessica Spindle, a longtime Evans ally who was exposed by the Colorado Times-Recorder to have a lengthy history of overtly racist, pro-violence, and generally far-out conspiracist social media musings dating back many years:

U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo lambasted her Republican opponent Tuesday, saying Gabe Evans had not adequately renounced recently publicized social media posts by his now-former political director that were antisemitic and promoted political violence.

“He has not said whether he disagrees with her offensive posts or spoken out against antisemitism,” Caraveo, a Democrat, said during a brief online news conference. “Let’s be clear: Hate and antisemitism have no place in our society. We must stand up to all forms of intolerance, wherever and whenever we see it.”

For the last week since the Colorado Times-Recorder’s expose of Political Director Jessica Spindle’s racist and sometimes shockingly violent social media posts, including a call for someone to “please shoot” House Speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi, Gabe Evans and his campaign surrogates like Republican multitool Alan Philp have said as little as possible about the story hoping it would get lost in the crush of the election year news cycle. But last Friday, KOA News did manage not only to bring up but hold Evans’ feet moderately to the fire on the subject of Jessica Spindle, in which Evans once again denies any knowledge of Spindle’s extreme political views:

KOA: The dismissal or firing of your political director, why did you do it and why now?

EVANS: Well, I’m always going to stand with Israel. And so whenever there’s comments that are made that are, you know, not supportive of Israel, I just can’t have my campaign associated with that. Unfortunately, my my Democrat opponent continues to accept money from major anti-Israel donors. She’s voted to withhold funding from Israel. So I’m always going to be an ally and a friend for Israel unlike my Democrat opponent who’s got a long history of, of opposing Israel.

KOA: Did you know Jessica Spindle’s background, though? Because it goes beyond that. There’s certain Qanon conspiracies and beliefs that she held. Were you not aware of her background? Is this new to you?

EVANS: Well, there’s a lot of things, you know, that were new to me. I’m a police officer for ten years, which means that I know two things. I believe in second chances, but I also believe in accountability. So like I told all of my officers, I told all of my soldiers, when I was in the military, look, I’m going to treat everybody like an adult unless you give me a reason to think otherwise. And unfortunately, you know, we had to part some, part company there. But yeah, there were some things that I definitely did not know.

Speaking reluctantly on the matter with the Post’s John Aguilar, Evans’ campaign again insisted they didn’t have any prior knowledge of their political director’s political views:

“Gabe fully rejects the offensive material contained in those social media posts,” campaign spokesman Alan Philp wrote. “That’s why he acted immediately upon learning of them.”

Unfortunately for Gabe Evans, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) wasn’t interested in admitting to any kind of wrongdoing by anybody, choosing instead to call the allegations against Evans’ fired political director “disgusting and misleading.”

Yadira Caraveo and her supporters are trying to change the subject because they don’t want to talk about Caraveo’s deadly track record of legalizing fentanyl, defunding law enforcement, and refusing to secure the southern border. Gabe Evans has put his life on the line for Coloradans and will always fight back against disgusting and misleading political attacks like this.

In short, you’ve got the candidate trying to get ahead of the fallout from the firing of his political director by acknowledging that Spindle’s remarks were not acceptable, while the NRCC is contradicting the candidate to dismiss the allegations as “disgusting and misleading.” Obviously, only one of these interpretations of events is accurate. Much like the Colorado GOP’s vile email blasts “in support” of key candidates, this is a case of the NRCC not helping their charge.

And it leads to the next logical question, which we’ve been asking from the beginning: how is it possible that Gabe Evans didn’t know the political views of his political director?

Evans’ campaign said Spindle was fired last week “after a number of inappropriate comments she made on social media were brought to our attention.”

Philp didn’t respond to a question about how Spindle had been vetted for the campaign’s political director position or how Evans could have been unaware of her postings on social media. [Pols emphasis]

The problem for Gabe Evans is that Jessica Spindle was not a low-level volunteer, but rather one of the highest-ranking full-time employees of Evans’ congressional campaign. Spindle reportedly has ties to Evans dating back at least to his run for the state house in 2022. The idea that Evans did not know the political views of his campaign’s political director prior to their exposure by the Times-Recorder, which they insist is the case, is implausible to say the least–and if it is somehow true that Evans didn’t know the politics of his political director, it’s a tremendous lapse in Evans’ vetting process for his highest-level employees.

Either way, Caraveo is taking the initiative to hold Evans accountable for a major embarrassment he doesn’t need in this close race. The more CO-08 voters learn about Jessica Spindle, the more questions they’re going to have for her erstwhile boss.