April 16, 2024 01:38 PM UTC

Colorado Republicans Still Focused on Fighting...Colorado Republicans

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• by: Colorado Pols

As we noted earlier today, Colorado Republicans are unwilling to work with Democrats in the state legislature even on issues that should be nonpartisan. But these days Republicans seem to be focusing most of their fire in their own direction.

Last Friday, The Denver Post published a front page story about the ongoing infighting within the Colorado Republican Party that included news about growing calls for State GOP Chair Dave Williams to resign his position:

The Republican Party in Colorado is having a crisis of confidence, facing increasing calls from within for Chairman Dave Williams to step down following a raucous GOP assembly last weekend and, in the days that followed, bitter infighting in full view. [Pols emphasis]

Huerfano County Republican leadership in southern Colorado this week signed a letter demanding Williams “immediately resign his position,” while state lawmaker and congressional candidate Richard Holtorf said the same.

In an Eastern Plains stronghold, Yuma County Republicans took to Facebook to lambaste the state party for endorsing certain GOP candidates as a move that “undermines the electoral process within our party.” The endorsees include U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in her run for the 4th Congressional District, after she secured the top line at the assembly.

Still others expressed alarm after party officials ejected a Colorado Sun political reporter from the party assembly in Pueblo on Saturday because of Williams’ belief that the reporter’s coverage of Republicans had been “very unfair.” He later told Colorado Politics that he would’ve prohibited The Denver Post and 9News from covering the assembly, too.

In the face of all the criticism, the party under Williams has doubled down.

The Post story continues with examples of how Williams is using State GOP social media platforms to openly attack other Republicans who dare criticize his decisions. Williams has led the GOP in several odd directions in his first year as State Chairman; he is increasingly motivated not by what best serves Republicans but by what is most helpful to his own political ambitions (including another run for Congress in CO-05).

It appears, however, that Republican on Republican political violence isn’t relegated to social media accounts. As The Colorado Sun reports today in its “Unaffiliated” newsletter:

A lawyer representing the Colorado GOP subpoenaed a top Republican in the state House last week for records from his 2020 campaign in the latest example of how fractured the party is becoming as election season kicks into high gear.

The subpoena, issued by Colorado GOP attorney Randy Corporon and targeting former House Minority Leader Mike Lynch, R-Wellington, was served as part of the GOP’s drawn-out federal lawsuit seeking to block unaffiliated voters from casting ballots in Colorado’s partisan primaries. [Pols emphasis]

The subpoena seeks all documents and communications related to expenditures “for voter contact through advertisements, direct mail, digital communications, telephone communications or other means” in House District 49, including those with Kathryn Murdoch, Kent Thiry and Unite America.

The subpoena against former House Minority Leader Mike Lynch is less about concerns about that 2020 campaign (in which Lynch defeated former State Sen. Vicki Marble) and more about Lynch’s connections to anything related to a 2016 ballot measure that allowed Unaffiliated voters in Colorado to participate in either the Democratic or Republican Party Primary elections. Williams has been on a lost-cause crusade since before being elected State Party Chairman to overturn Proposition 108 — or at least get Republican central committee voters to agree to opt-out of the process. Non-crazy Colorado Republicans, to the extent that there are any of those left, understand that it is NOT a good idea for the GOP to be trying to box out Unaffiliated voters (the largest bloc of voters in Colorado by a wide margin).

As the Sun continues:

The Colorado Sun asked Corporon and Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams why the party was subpoenaing Lynch and whether subpoenas had been issued to anyone other than Lynch.

“No comment,” Corporon said in a text message.

Williams didn’t respond. But we know that when he served in the legislature with Lynch, the two men were part of opposite factions of the House Republican caucus. And we know the thinking behind the Colorado GOP’s lawsuit is that unaffiliated voters participating in primaries results in less conservative candidates being sent to general elections. [Pols emphasis]

“I think this is a continuation of an active ploy to destroy the state party by attacking fellow Republicans,” Lynch told The Sun on Monday.

But Lynch, who said he will comply with whatever he must legally, said he’s not totally sure what Corporon and the Colorado GOP are seeking or aiming to prove.

“My best guess is that I was effective in unseating a sitting state senator that fell into their camp in ideology and they’re trying to make sure I don’t do that again to Boebert,” Lynch said, a nod to how Williams and the Colorado GOP have endorsed Boebert in the 4th District Republican primary.

Not coincidentally, Lynch told Colorado Public Radio in February that he no longer trusted the Colorado Republican Party.

As for the Republican legal attempts at getting around Prop. 108, a federal judge in February rejected a request for a preliminary injunction to prevent Unaffiliated voters from participating in Republican Primary Elections in 2024. The case is floundering at the moment, particularly with a need for new legal counsel (Corporon is filling that role currently). The Colorado Republican Party had been paying John Eastman for this work…the same John Eastman who helped craft Donald Trump’s coup attempt plans in late 2020. Eastman has since lost his ability to practice law in California as he awaits a formal disbarment. The U.S. District Court in Colorado no longer considers Eastman to be an attorney “in good standing.”

At the end of the day (and this post), those details are less important than the fact that the Colorado Republican Party continues to spend most of its time attacking other Colorado Republicans instead of trying to defeat Democrats in 2024. It should be more than a little concerning to Republicans that the State Party is expending resources to subpoena other Republicans for a cause that seeks only to help ensure that the most right-wing Republicans win whatever races are still winnable for the GOP.