The one-time star of a popular reality show about guns started work this week as the lead fundraiser for Colorado Republican Laurel Imer’s bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, an Arvada Democrat serving his eighth term.

Rich Wyatt, whose family ran Gunsmoke Guns in Wheat Ridge and appeared on the Discovery Channel’s “American Guns” program, was released from federal prison a year ago after serving an 18-month sentence on tax charges.

Imer’s campaign manager, her 17-year-old son Weston, told Colorado Politics he doesn’t think hiring Wyatt will overshadow his mom’s campaign.

“We think it will show that we believe in putting America first, and Rich agrees with that,” he said. “And putting America first starts with putting people first, and overlooking past issues and grievances. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

The Imer campaign plans to report raising about $6,300 from 92 donors through the end of the just-completed second quarter, Weston Imer said. The campaign finished the period with about $4,000 in the bank.

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Perlmutter, who has represented the suburban 7th Congressional District since 2007, has yet to file a second quarter campaign finance report but reported just over $1 million on hand at the end of the first quarter on March 31.

Wyatt and his wife, Renee, and their children, Paige and Kurt, were featured on the “American Guns” reality show for two seasons in 2011 and 2012. The highly rated show was centered around their work building custom firearms, holding shooting competitions and conducting business at the gun store.

After the network canceled the show following the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Wyatt’s brushes with the law began to mount, including raids by federal agents that led to indictments on firearms and tax charges. After a jury found him guilty on 10 counts in March 2017, Wyatt was sentenced a year later to 78 months in prison, but a plea agreement reached last summer on an additional charge resulted in his release.

“Yes, I’m a felon. No, I can’t have any guns, ammunition, none of that,” Wyatt said in an online video posted on Dec. 31, 2020, to YouTube’s Gunsmoke Guns TV channel.

Wyatt said in the video that he was seeking a pardon from then-president Donald Trump – he didn’t wind up receiving one – but maintained he had only pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor tax charge in order to win an early release from prison.

“Basically, they put a gun to my head and said, ‘Do you want to see your family?’ I hadn’t seen them in four years,” he said. “So I pled guilty to that charge, but I never did it. Even a judge acknowledged that I never did it. I was just pleading guilty to get out of jail.”

He stressed that he had only been convicted on tax charges, not what he called “a bunch of gun stuff I never did.”

“Listen, what I did was wrong,” Wyatt said. “I didn’t file the taxes. I honestly didn’t think anybody would go to prison for that.”

Added Wyatt: “All the (gun) stuff they said I did was a total and complete lie and fabrication. We never sold an illegal gun. We never illegally sold guns. We did everything right, and we did it to higher standards than they told us we had to do.”

Republican campaign consultant Ryan Lynch told Colorado Politics that donors appeared to be “unimpressed” with Imer’s campaign and said to expect additional Perlmutter challengers to emerge.

He added that hiring Wyatt had taken the Imer campaign to new levels.

“The long-shot Imer campaign might be the most cringe campaign in the history of a state with a stellar track record of cringe campaigns,” Lynch said. “Fortunately, more viable Republican candidates will likely enter the race in the very near future.”

Colorado’s congressional district boundaries won’t be finalized ahead of next year’s election until sometime this fall, when an independent redistricting commission completes its work.

According to a preliminary map released in late June, the 7th CD could become more of a swing district, losing parts of western Adams County and northern Jefferson County but gaining most of GOP-friendly Douglas County.

Several additional Republicans – including state Rep. Colin Larson, R-Littleton, and Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas – have begun taking steps toward running for the seat, though Imer is the only Republican to have launched a campaign.