Colorado-based radio host Jeff Crank, a political activist who has shared his opinionswith AFN for years, is now headed to Washington to represent Colorado’s 5th District after winning election Nov. 5.
Crank, a Colorado native, defeated Democrat candidate River Gassen in a district considered safe in blue-state Colorado. The district covers Colorado Springs and its suburbs.
The congressional seat was left open after Rep. Doug Lamborn did not run for re-election.
Reached by AFN after the election, the Congressman-elect rattled off his list of top priorities as a freshman lawmaker.
“Secure the border, get control of spending, renew the tax cuts, get American energy up and running again, and slow the rate of inflation,” he says.
Crank also supports Donald Trump’s plans to deport illegal aliens. "I'm on board for deporting folks who came here illegally, absolutely," he says.
Art Arthur, of the Center for Immigration Studies, tells AFN federal law is on the side of Trump if he follows through on that plan.
Citing the Immigration and Nationality Act, Arthur says that law mandates mass deportations and states "shall take into custody" and "shall remove" in its language.
Dept. of Education has survived for long time
The very first thing he's going to work on, Crank says, is a personal campaign promise that Republicans have been promising for a long time.
“I've campaigned on getting rid of the federal Department of Education,” he tells AFN. “There are already several bills to do that. I certainly will at least sign on to an existing bill to get rid of the Department of Education.”
Republicans in Congress have dangled that promise in front of their base for decades, going back to Ronald Reagan’s two terms. Back then, the most famous Republican president of all time famously tried and failed to get his own party to shutter the then-new agency.
The federal agency, which began in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, currently operates with 4,000-plus employees and a current $238 billion budget.
According to news stories at NPR and BBC, Trump would need approval of Congress to shutter the agency, and that approval is unlikely.
The two news outlets, which are admittedly liberal, report that some Republican lawmakers from rural states could oppose the plan if Title I funding to their states is threatened.
A spokesman from the American Enterprise Institute told NPR the Dept. of Education is necessary to follow through on Trump's promises to punish campuses for DEI instruction and for allowing anti-Semitism.
In light of that speculation, a spokesman for the Trump campaign told NPR that American voters "re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver."
According to Crank, President Trump’s landslide election gave the president-elect permission to go big and to turn Washington, D.C. upside down.
“The mandate that [Trump] got was equaled by the 1980 mandate that Ronald Reagan got, and then again in 1984, when he beat Walter Mondale,” Cranks says.
“Republicans were elected with a majority in the House and Senate,” he concludes, “and now it's time to lead.”
