Perennial candidate Geoff Young—a Democrat who dreams of unseating Republican Rep. Andy Barr in Kentucky’s 6th District—has gained attention this election cycle for parroting Kremlin talking points on the war in Ukraine and failing to get leaders of his own party to endorse him.
But a review of Young’s campaign filings by The Daily Beast uncovered some other eyebrow-raising arrangements behind the scenes of his campaign: One of his top consultants allegedly threatened a firefighter with a semi-automatic weapon, while another is a confessed child molester.
The financial disclosures reveal that Young’s main consultant in the race has been a little-known firm called Bolder Fundraising & Strategy, which has worked for other long-shot progressive candidates and with the Pakistani-American Public Affairs Committee. Materials submitted to the Federal Elections Committee show that Bolder aided Young free of charge, its services registered as individual in-kind contributions from members of its team.
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Young told The Daily Beast that the firm’s founder, Stephen Tyger Roch, approached him and offered to volunteer his firm’s assistance.
“They wanted to work with me, and I looked at their track record and I decided to work with them,” Young told The Daily Beast.
Young accepted Roch’s help in spite of charges the 25-year-old faces in Colorado—where, according to authorities, he threatened to “take out” a local firefighter with an AR-15 last December after being urged to evacuate his house ahead of the destructive Marshall wildfire. Cops arrested Roch, and allegedly discovered the semiautomatic, a pistol, and some 2,000 rounds of ammunition.
The case will go to trial in January. Reached by The Daily Beast, Roch declined to comment on the charges against him except to assert that the police report was inaccurate.
“I’m excited to see my day in court, and I’m excited to be vindicated by the people of Colorado,” Roch said.
The operative added that he decided to work for Young for free after learning the gadfly had paid to print “Abolish the CIA” on a billboard in Lexington.
“I’ve worked for plenty of progressive candidates, and I've never seen anybody call for abolishing the CIA,” Roch said, adding that he similarly adored Young’s stance on ending U.S. aid to Ukraine.
Roch isn’t the only Bolder staffer with a checkered past.
Filings shows that the address for Trey Daniel Hawk of Pahrump, Nevada, who also provided the maximum $5,800 in donated services to the campaign, matches the address given for a Trey Hawk in the state’s sex offender registry. According to local reporting at the time, Hawk, then 20, pleaded guilty to two assaults on an 8-year-old girl in Utah in 2016.
Roch said he never conducted a background check on Hawk, whom another Bolder staffer had met playing XBox games, and claimed he was unaware of his criminal history until The Daily Beast reached out. He said his firm severed relations with him immediately.
“I would never have hired him if I had known that,” Roch insisted. "I told him what he did was degenerate and that he should find God.”
Hawk told The Daily Beast he did not disclose his past to Roch when he was hired, and Young said he was unaware of the conviction..
Roch said Hawk had developed a social media tool for the campaign, although Hawk said he mostly just answered emails; they both said Hawk managed FEC compliance for the campaign.
Roch handled fundraising for the campaign—and Young credited him with bringing in “the vast majority” of the money raised. However, this amounts to only a few thousand dollars, with Young the largest financial supporter of his campaign.
