The Reason George Brauchler Resigned from KNUS to Run for a New District Attorney Position.

Big-name coaches in professional sports now frequently take jobs in broadcasting to bridge the time between managing teams. Sean Payton, who left his post as head coach of the New Orleans Saints to take the helm of the Broncos after receiving an offer from Denver to take over, is a prime example of this.
Such scenarios play out in politics, too. Take George Brauchler, a Republican who served Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties as district attorney for the 18th Judicial District from 2013 until January 2021, when he departed because of term limits. Just over a year later, talk-show legend Peter Boyles announced his retirement from KNUS, an outlet at 710 AM with a notably conservative perspective — and in August 2022, Brauchler, who’d remained in the public eye through radio fill-ins and opinion columns for the Denver Post, was named Boyles’s permanent replacement. He quickly established himself as a first-rate host.

However, Brauchler has now hung up his microphone (referred to as taking a “leave of absence”) in order to run for district attorney in the newly formed 23rd Judicial District, which includes a sizeable portion of his former stronghold on the right. Although Brauchler cherishes his recollections of working in the morning drive slot at KNUS, he views the relocation as a much-needed return to his career.

Brauchler states, “I don’t consider myself a regular or career radio guy.” “And with this new judicial district, there’s a real opportunity to start a DA’s office without having to worry about ‘This is the way we’ve done things in the past.'”

He adds: “I’m invested in this community. I’ve been here for almost three decades. My kids go to school here. My business is here. And since I’m the guy who represented this area for eight years, maybe it makes sense to put someone in there who has the passion and commitment to make sure it’s done right.”

Brauchler’s stint as DA earned him plenty of national attention owing to his prosecution of the Aurora theater shooter, who was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in August 2015. But Brauchler wasn’t able to parlay this notoriety into electoral success on a statewide basis, in part because Colorado was moving to the left. His bids for two major offices — first governor, then state attorney general — both fell short, and while he subsequently toyed with taking a stab at a couple of congressional seats, he ultimately chose not to do so based on family considerations, he says.

Radio turned out to be a lot more user-friendly, even if it required him to wake up earlier than he might have preferred. “I enjoyed everything about it except the hours,” he admits.

Not that his shows always went smoothly. Brauchler came of age politically in the era that preceded the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party in Colorado and beyond, and he continued to espouse his original views whether they were beloved by the red-hat crowd or not. “I was a conservative talk-show host, but I was not viewed as a die-hard Trump supporter,” he says.

This approach — one also taken by Boyles, whose longtime producer, Bill Thorpe, Brauchler inherited — meant that exchanges with devotees of The Donald could shift from love fests to ideological bloodbaths at a moment’s notice. “There were definitely days when I’d take the headset off and look at Billy and say, ‘What in the hell is going on?'” Brauchler recalls. “Sometimes it felt like we were on the radio during a full moon.”

But instead of regularly engaging in yelling matches, Brauchler took a less combative approach. “I would let folks talk about things they believed and then ask, ‘How do your values support that decision?'” he says. “That seemed like a little piece of public service, and it made a lot more interaction possible.The majority of the discussions I attempted to have on the radio were ones I would have had in my backyard after talking to my neighbors and turning off the lawnmower.”

Brauchler sensed along the way that a good number of KNUS listeners had a philosophical connection. “I received numerous texts,” he says. People seemed more at ease texting than calling in, which I assume has a lot to do with people not wanting to say things that their supervisor or other known individuals would find out. However, it gave me comfort in knowing that most people who hold similar political beliefs are not radicals. People on the periphery tend to be more outspoken and willing to take risks. But it doesn’t mean that their viewpoint is the majority.
Though Brauchler didn’t initially concentrate on the 23rd Judicial District, which was established by the Colorado Legislature in 2020 and will cease to exist on January 7, 2025, he continued to search for political opportunities in the interim. Indeed, a remark from Brauchler dismissing the concept of being the 23rd’s first DA appeared in a 2019 Post article regarding the proposal to have the 18th Judicial District focus on Arapahoe County and establish a new body that would handle Douglas, Elbert, and Lincoln counties. He said that he hadn’t thought much about the possibility before saying, “I don’t know if my wife would tolerate any more politics at this point.”

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