Jeffrey Ross Gunter’s year-and-a-half tenure as U.S. ambassador to Iceland under Donald Trump was, by many accounts, a chaotic mess.
The wealthy dermatologist and GOP donor—who’d never been to Iceland before being confirmed to the post—churned through staff, lashed out at employees, demanded a gun and armed security guards in the world’s safest country, and tried to do the job remotely in California during the pandemic, according to a bombshell CBS News report.
A subsequent report on Gunter by the State Department’s Inspector General found that he threatened to sue embassy employees he perceived as enemies, and alleged that Washington was so disturbed over the situation that it instructed U.S. diplomats in Europe to work directly with Icelandic officials, bypassing Gunter.
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Now, Gunter wants to add an even bigger job to his résumé: U.S. senator.
Gunter has indicated to multiple Republican operatives that he plans to challenge Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) in the competitive battleground of Nevada next year, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
It’s unclear when exactly Gunter might launch a campaign, but there’s already a world in which Gunter has spun his disastrous tenure in Reykjavik as a smashing success: a webpage he created to list his “triumphs” as ambassador.
All 122 of them, to be exact.
The first accomplishment is a legitimate one: Gunter oversaw the completion of a new U.S. embassy in Reykjavik during his tenure. But from there, he often measures his diplomatic success more in retweets from Donald Trump and social media view counts than anything else.
On his website, Gunter’s sixth-rated accomplishment is posting a “congratulatory tweet on President Trump’s historic brokering of the Abraham Accords,” which drew “unprecedented engagement” and “stands as Ambassador Gunter and Embassy Reykjavik’s most reacted-to tweet.”
“It was retweeted,” the website notes, “by the President of the United States.”
Gunter’s fifth accomplishment is a July 4th Facebook video he recorded, which purportedly “offered a simple but impactful message of patriotism, shared democratic values, and the deep connection between the United States and Iceland. Reaching over 171,000 people, viewership of this video far eclipsed any other social media post in the history of U.S. Embassy Reykjavik.”
At 80 on the list was Gunter’s creation of “three Facebook videos to inspire people during the COVID-19 pandemic,” which created solidarity between the United States and Icelandic people and inspired many in these difficult times.”
Notably, the reporting on Gunter’s tenure as ambassador revealed his obsession with social media, which was so acute that he would spend hours with embassy staff crafting a single tweet.
Gunter also gives himself credit for performing the most basic duties of an overseas diplomat, like processing passport requests, hosting U.S. officials, and communicating with his Icelandic counterparts. One accomplishment was simply welcoming the Icelandic foreign minister to the embassy. Notably, U.S. citizens in Iceland, and some Icelanders, bristled at Gunter’s performance, with some calling for him to be recalled.
Another Gunter accomplishment: starting a “tradition of ‘light lunches.’”
“Initially launched during the long, dark winters, these lunches (and sometimes breakfasts) continued through the summer, as the COVID pandemic threatened both the community and peoples’ sense of community,” the site reads. “Taking care of the team is key to leadership.”
That line may ring hollow to Gunter’s former team. In his tenure, the ambassador burned through seven deputy chiefs of mission—the top diplomat in an embassy other than the ambassador—firing one simply because he didn’t “like the look of him,” according to CBS News. He also once chewed out a staffer for keeping snow boots under their desk in the Icelandic winter.
The former ambassador’s list of self-identified accomplishments—and the failures he conspicuously omitted from it—is a good encapsulation of why Gunter is not exactly a top-tier recruit for Republicans.
Gunter did not respond to a request for comment through his website.
In Nevada, Republicans will need a strong challenger to Rosen in 2024. Last year’s race between Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) and Adam Laxalt (R) was the closest Senate contest of the cycle, decided by just 8,000 votes. National Republicans have been anxious to claw back a seat in Nevada, and a victory there could easily tip the Senate majority their way.
According to the Nevada Independent, GOP brass has been recruiting Sam Brown, a retired U.S. Army Captain and Purple Heart recipient who unsuccessfully ran for the party nomination in the 2022 Senate race.
The leading declared candidate in the race, Jim Marchant, also worries many Republicans. A far-right former state legislator who lost a bid for Nevada Secretary of State last year, Marchant vocally denied the outcome of the 2020 election and has close links to key figures in the QAnon conspiracy movement.
In a crowded primary field, however, Gunter’s ability to fund his campaign through his own wealth could make him a formidable candidate. A dermatologist by training, he founded national skin clinic chains, with locations in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. He has been a prolific donor to Republican campaigns and causes, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to them over the years.
That giving is likely what landed Gunter a coveted ambassadorship in the northernmost capital of the world. He donated $100,000 to a super PAC supporting Trump’s 2016 campaign, and donated another $100,000 to Trump’s inaugural celebration. While it’s common for presidents to award certain ambassador posts to donors, Trump nominated an unusually high number of political, non-diplomatic appointees to ambassadorships, particularly those who gave lavishly to his inaugural committee.
But Gunter’s potential Senate bid could be tripped up by ties to the GOP that aren’t totally rock-solid—and ties to his adopted home state that appear flimsy.
For one, he appears to be registered to vote in two different states and with two different parties. In 2021, Gunter registered as a Republican in Nevada, according to voting records reviewed by The Daily Beast. But since 2000, he has been registered to vote as a Democrat in California, which has long been his home state.
Gunter went to high school and college in Berkeley, studied medicine in Los Angeles, and built his dermatology business in the city of Lancaster, just outside of Los Angeles. He has owned property in Nevada since 2007 and owns a home in the town of Pahrump, an hour west of Las Vegas on the border with California.
Gunter’s web site states that he resides in Nevada. But in 2020, during the COVID pandemic, Gunter wanted to work in California rather than return to Iceland, CBS News reported, and would not do so unless then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordered him to. (Pompeo eventually did.)
While the majority of Nevada residents are originally from elsewhere, Marchant has lived in the state since 2005 and Brown has lived there since 2018, though he unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Texas legislature in 2014.
According to the voter records, Gunter last voted in 2018, in California. There is no record of him voting in the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost.
In 2022, an election year in which Nevada could have tipped the Senate majority to Republicans, Gunter requested an absentee ballot—from California—but apparently did not return it.
While Gunter gave over $10,000 to committees supporting Laxalt, the 2022 Senate nominee, and $5,000 to the state GOP, he appears to have not cast a vote in an election Laxalt ultimately lost by fewer than 8,000 votes.
Ironically, the 94th accomplishment from Gunter’s ambassadorship touts his efforts to help U.S. citizens in Iceland exercise their rights to vote.
Gunter, his list of accomplishments reads, “helped Americans to register to vote and cast their ballots in the 2020 U.S. elections.”
“Helping Americans in Iceland is a core part of the work of the Embassy and helping them participate in these important elections is an honor and pleasure,” it said.
