March 12, 2025 02:37 PM UTC

Rep. Jeff Hurd Switches To Tele Town Halls Ahead Of "Drill Baby Drill" Bill

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• by: Colorado Pols

Since winning the congressional seat vacated by exited-stage-left Rep. Lauren Boebert last November, freshman Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd has been a little more difficult to pin down politically than his predecessor, thoughtfully dissenting over President Donald Trump’s pardoning of January 6th insurrectionists and more recently co-sponsoring legislation intended to offer some measure of protection for employees who lose their jobs as part of the ongoing DOGE mass culling of the federal workforce.

But in addition to being figuratively difficult to pin down, it appears that Rep. Hurd’s constituents have been having literal problems making their voices heard to their representative. The Durango Herald’s Cameryn Cass reported late last month on a town hall set to be attended by Rep. Hurd’s Southwest region director in Montezuma County that went sideways when the large crowd who turned out frightened Hurd’s staffer right out of town:

While hundreds of people gathered at the Dolores Public Library to meet with Naomi Dobbs, Southwest Region director for Rep. Jeff Hurd, she was leaving town.

Initially considered a no-show for the League of Women Voters event, Dobbs had in fact arrived, but left after seeing a crowd…

When Dobbs arrived Monday, Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin offered to escort her safely in and out of the library.

[Karen] Sheek [of the League of Women Voters of Montezuma County] added that Dobbs likely did not expect such a large crowd and wasn’t comfortable attending.

Rep. Hurd reportedly held a telephone-based town hall yesterday, though we haven’t seen any coverage of that event. Telephone town halls, as readers know, are now the standing recommendation from Republican leadership in Washington after the first in-person events held by Republicans across the nation in the Trump 2.0 era have turned raucously against their hosts. Republican reluctance to face their constituents while the Trump administration radically and recklessly remakes the federal government in Elon Musk’s greedy techbro image, also shown by Hurd’s freshman counterpart Reps. Gabe Evans and Jeff Crank, is in increasingly stark contrast to Democrats hosting massive gatherings of sympathetic voters who want to fight back against Trump like it’s 2017 all over again.

Although Rep. Hurd has shown some independence from Trump in refusing to stay silent during the pardoning of violent criminals and trying to reduce the harm from mass layoffs of federal workers he still claims to support overall, The Denver Post’s Elise Schmelzer reports today on the priority that more than anything else represents the reason Jeff Hurd was chosen all the way back in 2023 to provide a less controversial alternative to Lauren Boebert:

The Western Slope’s newest congressman wants to reopen thousands of acres of federal public land across Colorado to energy development and reduce protections for wildlife habitat.

It’s a move that conservationists said would reverse years of federal planning, ignore environmental assessments and sideline public input. With Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress and President Donald Trump back in office, U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd’s new bill — introduced Monday — aligns with the empowered political party’s focus on increasing energy production and deprioritizing other uses of public lands.

The Productive Public Lands Act would undo decisions made in 2024 and 2025 under the Biden administration on how to manage vast swaths of Bureau of Land Management land across Colorado, Wyoming, Oregon and Montana. The bill, if passed, would impact 2.3 million acres in Colorado as well as roll back habitat protections for the Gunnison sage grouse and big game species…

By making Western Colorado a “national sacrifice zone” again! The powerful energy interests who tolerated Boebert’s constant excesses and scandals knowing she would be a reliable vote for their agenda now have an arguably much more effective advocate in Jeff Hurd, who is rewarding the fossil fuel industry that backed him to victory over Adam Frisch last November with a new literal lease on life. If the so-called “Productive Public Lands Act” passes, Jeff Hurd will have done as much as a freshman Republican to unleash oil and gas drilling across the West as his predecessors in the seat managed in their entire careers.

Some of Hurd’s constituents will no doubt be happy about this. The rest will want a town hall, in person, and right now.