{"id":24953,"date":"2024-11-05T19:59:54","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T02:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-commissioner-gerald-koppenhafer-re-elected\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:04:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:04:55","slug":"montezuma-county-commissioner-gerald-koppenhafer-re-elected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-commissioner-gerald-koppenhafer-re-elected\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County Commissioner Gerald Koppenhafer re-elected"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=5121ba49-0000-57d0-bdb0-ce4d6a9e37ae&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"720\" height=\"756\" alt=\"Gerald Koppenhafer was voted onto the primary ballot during the Montezuma County Republican General Assembly Friday night in Cortez. (Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Gerald Koppenhafer was voted onto the primary ballot during the Montezuma County Republican General Assembly Friday night in Cortez. (Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Gerald Koppenhafer secured his seat for another four-year term as Montezuma County Commissioner representing Mancos, which is District 3.<\/p>\n<p>He ran uncontested for the seat and won, securing 100% of the county vote.<\/p>\n<p>Besides waking up every morning, Koppenhafer said a major priority is to \u201cmake this county survive on what we have. We\u2019re supposed to operate on what we take in, and we haven\u2019t done that in years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve done enough pulling out of reserves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He first became county commissioner in 2004 and served two terms until 2012.<\/p>\n<p>More recently, Koppenhafer was sworn into the role on Feb. 1 2022 after Montezuma County Commissioner Joel Stevenson unexpectedly died of a COVID-related illness on Jan. 18, 2022.<\/p>\n<p>He served the remainder of Stevenson\u2019s term, which ended this year.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to his role as county commissioner, Koppenhafer is the president of the Montezuma Valley Irrigation Company, director of the Southwestern Water Conservation District and a large animal veterinarian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>uncontested to secure another four-year term in the District 3 seat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78742,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24953\/revisions\/78742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24953"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}