{"id":396,"date":"2026-06-24T17:41:48","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T17:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanindustryreview.com\/?p=396"},"modified":"2026-06-24T17:41:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T17:41:48","slug":"how-crank-got-a-stack-of-political-cartoons-and-a-great-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanindustryreview.com\/?p=396","title":{"rendered":"How Crank got a stack of political cartoons and a \u2018great name\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Jeff Crank points to a framed photo hanging in his office, signed by his boss at the time. \u201cGreat baby! Great name! Great family!\u201d wrote then-Rep. Joel Hefley in silver ink.<\/p>\n

Read more Rep. LaMonica McIver urges appeals court to toss charges<\/a><\/p>\n

In the photo, Hefley is holding Crank\u2019s son \u2014 also named Joel \u2014 in front of the Capitol. He wasn\u2019t named entirely after the congressman, Crank clarifies, though it didn\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had an uncle Joel as well, who I love, but I also respected Joel,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we liked the name Joel. I always told him, \u2018If your first name was Maurice, we probably wouldn\u2019t have named the kid Maurice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The picture was taken in 1997, toward the end of Crank\u2019s time as a congressional staffer. It took almost three decades, but now the Colorado Republican is back at the Capitol as a member himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty special moment,\u201d he says of walking onto the House floor last year.<\/p>\n

Crank first ran for Congress in 2006 in an attempt to succeed the retiring Hefley but fell short in the primary despite his former boss\u2019 backing. After another campaign defeat, he paused his electoral ambitions but kept his foot in politics, working for the Koch brothers-aligned advocacy group Americans for Prosperity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also hosted a conservative talk show \u2014 experience that shows as he rattles off stories from his staffer days with a podcaster\u2019s ease.<\/p>\n

When his onetime primary foe Doug Lamborn announced he wouldn\u2019t run for reelection in 2024, Crank tried again and won in Colorado\u2019s 5th District. It\u2019s the same seat Hefley once held, though it may not be as ruby red as it used to be; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added it to their target list this cycle.<\/p>\n

In his office in the Longworth Building, Crank keeps reminders of his early jobs on the Hill, including three bronze figures of Union soldiers sculpted by Hefley, who was also known to pass the time in committee hearings by scrawling out political cartoons.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s like a real artist,\u201d Crank says. \u201cHe\u2019s the real deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited and condensed.<\/em><\/p>\n

Q: You majored in political science. How did you get your first job on the Hill?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: I remember printing my resume on gray paper and walking around to most of the 175 Republican offices at the time. I laugh now, because I would talk to the person at the front desk and say, \u201cI\u2019m looking for a job, legislative correspondent or whatever,\u201d and I\u2019d give them my resume. But I\u2019m sure they were an intern trying to get the same job I was trying to get, so they probably just threw it in the trash can.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember exactly why [then-Oregon Rep.] Denny Smith said, \u201cYeah, we\u2019ll take you,\u201d but I ended up getting an internship with him. I was engaged at the time, or very close to it, and my future father-in-law was stationed here with the Army. They were out by Fort Belvoir, and so I lived in their basement.<\/p>\n

Q: Next you worked for <\/strong>Joel Hefley <\/strong>for several years, rising to become his top aide.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: I think I got paid $17,000 a year at first, and my job was literally to stamp the mail when it came in. Eventually I handled his defense issues, and then ran his Washington office.<\/p>\n

The most important thing in that whole experience was who Joel Hefley was. When I started working for him in 1991, I used all of my vacation on my wedding. And then one month to the day after I got married, my dad passed away very suddenly. I couldn\u2019t reach his chief, so I called the congressman at home.<\/p>\n

Read more Housing bill cleared for Trump\u2019s signature after winding journey<\/a><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a guy who I barely knew, right? I\u2019d been in the office like five months. He goes, \u201cFirst of all, don\u2019t worry about your job. Take as much time as you need.\u201d And as I was putting the phone down, I heard him go, \u201cHow are you getting back to Colorado for the funeral? I have some frequent flyer miles that are personal, they\u2019re not official, but I\u2019m just going to give those to you and Lisa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working for somebody like that will shape your life. If I\u2019d worked for a jerk, I probably would have been like, \u201cI\u2019m going to go do mortgages or build a house or something.\u201d But Joel became chairman of the Ethics Committee. I mean, he didn\u2019t cuss, he didn\u2019t drink, he was a paragon of virtue. He\u2019s just a good and decent person.<\/p>\n

Q: I understand he was a political cartoonist, too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: He\u2019s an amazing artist. He would take a little House of Representatives pad, and he would sit in committee and draw.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sometimes he would draw the witnesses, or he drew Bill Clinton a lot, and he\u2019d accentuate his big nose and paunchy belly. They were like political cartoons, and they got to be so popular that when he\u2019d get up and leave, his colleagues would go over and rifle through.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One time he drew one of John McCain. He was not a big fan \u2014 he thought he was arrogant, and McCain was the chairman on the Senate side of the subcommittee that Hefley was chairing, so they did battle sometimes on stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I thought, man, I don\u2019t want McCain to get a hold of that, so I grabbed it. So after that, every time he\u2019d walk out of the room, I\u2019d run up to the dais and grab all of them. I kept them, and I probably have 100 drawings in a folder at home.<\/p>\n

Q: You first ran for Congress two decades ago \u2014 and your campaign manager back then was a certain Jim Banks, now <\/strong>Indiana\u2019s junior senator.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: At the time he worked for Focus on the Family, which is headquartered in Colorado Springs. I decided to run, and I hired him, and Jim did a great job. He tells everybody I would have been in Congress in 2006 if I\u2019d had a better campaign manager, but that\u2019s not true.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jim and I are very close, and when I was running for Congress again in 2024, he was super helpful in getting me here. He was still in the House, and so I\u2019d ask him if he could talk to leadership or whatever, and he would always do that for me, and helped out raising money for me.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/strong>Now that you\u2019re back on the Hill, how have things come full circle?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: The most amazing thing for me was when I first got here for new member orientation after my election. I had spent eight years here as a staff member, and I\u2019d been gone for a long time.<\/p>\n

They brought us from the hotel, and as we got off the bus and started to walk into the Capitol, I started reaching in to get my keys and all that. But the cop looks at me and was like, \u201cJust come on through. You don\u2019t have to go through the metal detector.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was surreal. My wife was with me, and I was like, \u201cCan you believe this, Lisa? We worked here.\u201d My wife worked at HHS back when I was a staffer, so we would meet in the park near the Rayburn Building for lunch. We went through it together.<\/p>\n

Read more Senate joins House in calling for stop to US war on Iran<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Crank points to a framed photo hanging in his office, signed by his boss at the time. \u201cGreat baby! Great name! Great family!\u201d wrote then-Rep. Joel Hefley in silver ink. In the photo, Hefley is holding Crank\u2019s son \u2014 also named Joel \u2014 in front of the Capitol. He wasn\u2019t named entirely after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heard-on-the-hill"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Crank got a stack of political cartoons and a \u2018great name\u2019 - American Industry Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanindustryreview.com\/?p=396\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Crank got a stack of political cartoons and a \u2018great name\u2019 - American Industry Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jeff Crank points to a framed photo hanging in his office, signed by his boss at the time. \u201cGreat baby! 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