October 11, 2024 01:08 PM UTC

Arizona GOP Confirms They're Filling In For Dave Williams' Nonfunctioning Colorado GOP

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby ran down the scoop on the strange story we’ve been talking about for over a week now, mailers delivered in two competitive Colorado congressional races paid for by the Arizona Republican Party–a situation sufficiently unusual that we at first speculated it may have been some kind of printing error.

As it turns out, the Arizona GOP is making no mistake, and is indeed paying for mail pieces in support of Colorado candidates to fill in the gap created by the more-or-less moribund Colorado Republican Party under the chairmanship of Dave “No More Brandon” Williams–which continues after staving off a palace coup attempt to do essentially nothing to help Republican candidates win in the rapidly-approaching elections:

Why the Arizona GOP is spending money on Colorado races is unknown, but presumably it’s to help maintain a Republican majority in the U.S. House.

In a short text message to The Daily Sentinel from an unnamed person in the Arizona party, it said it “is happy to help our Republican neighbors in Colorado anyway it can.”

Why the Colorado GOP isn’t doing the same, is also unknown…

We wouldn’t say that the Colorado Republican Party’s recent struggle to contribute anything of value after being unsuccessfully turned into a vehicle to support Williams’ personal political aspirations is an “unknown.” It’s been known for months that a large percentage of what little the party has managed to raise over the last year and a half has been funneled directly into Williams’ and a favored consultant’s pockets, kicking off a downward spiral that further choked off any responsible donations.

The campaign manager for Jeff Hurd, one of the beneficiaries of the Arizona Republican Party’s generosity, is pretty frank about what’s going on:

“The AZGOP and Republicans all across the country know the Colorado 3 House race is a majority maker — how the district goes goes the majority,” Nick Nbayer, Hurd’s chief of staff, said in an email. “The Colorado GOP is involved with its own struggles and has not provided assistance.” [Pols emphasis]

Readers will recall that immediately following the now-voided vote by a faction of Colorado GOP central committee members to remove Williams from his position, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) immediately recognized Williams’ pretender successor Eli Bremer, who set to work on bringing national Republican support in for Hurd and CO-08 GOP candidate Gabe Evans. It hasn’t been confirmed, but we wouldn’t be surprised to learn that these mailers are the result of that partnership. Mailers take time to produce and send, so these could have been in the works before the recent court decision upholding Williams’ control of the Colorado GOP.

Either way, Democrats couldn’t invent a more compelling vote of no confidence in Dave Williams’ operation. For national Republicans, giving Williams another dollar would be the functional equivalent of setting that dollar ablaze. They appear to have figured it out, and are diverting resources accordingly to compensate for the Colorado GOP’s debilitation.

For these two congressional candidates, it’s better than nothing. For candidates down the Republican food chain, it’s another warning that the support they could have counted on in previous elections from the state party simply doesn’t exist in 2024.