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July 10, 2024 02:12 PM UTC

Campaign To Remove Dave Williams Descends Into "Calvinball" Chaos

1 Comments
by: Colorado Pols

As Ernest Luning at the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog reports, a coalition of Colorado Republicans who have banded together behind El Paso County GOP vice chairman Todd Watkins looking to oust state party chairman and humiliatingly defeated congressional candidate Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams is battling with Williams’ allies in party leadership over the scheduling of a meeting where a vote to remove Williams would take place–with, no surprise, leadership looking to punt any such meeting as far off in the future as possible:

Organizers of a long-simmering move to oust Williams from the party position said Monday that they’ll convene on July 27 at a church in Brighton, where the agenda could also include votes to oust Williams loyalists from their state vice chair and secretary positions before electing replacements for all three party bosses.

Todd Watkins, the El Paso County GOP’s vice chair, said he issued a formal call for a meeting of the Colorado party’s central committee after Williams and other state GOP officers failed to comply with a petition he submitted late last month demanding that they schedule a meeting within 30 days to consider removing Williams…

Unfortunately for Watkins, it’s Dave’s fast friends like vice chair Hope Scheppleman in charge of the state party’s calendar, not the vice chair of the El Paso County party:

Within hours of Watkins emailing his notice on Monday, however, Scheppelman fired off a response blasting Watkins’ call as “fraudulent” and “invalid,” adding that “any such meeting convened would be illegal.”

“We will be engaging Party attorneys to take immediate legal action in court to stop Mr. Watkins’ fraud and abuse,” Scheppelman said. “(State central committee) members are advised to ignore his fraudulent call as any actions taken at the meeting will be invalid. The Colorado Republican Party urges Mr. Watkins to immediately cease and desist from promoting this invalid meeting which is confusing members.”

Colorado Newsline:

The email from Scheppelman says the party already mailed and emailed a special meeting notice within the timeline required by party bylaws. That meeting is scheduled for July 19 in Bayfield, but the notice Scheppelman sent says those attending will gavel in and “immediately recess” so the meeting can be reconvened on Aug. 31 in Castle Rock…

The notice says one of the reasons for the Aug. 31 meeting is to consider “any potential special meeting petition removal requests/questions that were properly submitted and verified.” It also says members at the meeting will consider a bylaw change related to fractional voting and receive an update related to open primaries.

“As the meeting has been properly called despite Mr. Watkins’ unverified and improperly submitted request, the notice that was sent out by Mr. Watkins is invalid,” the party’s email continued.

“Calvinball,” where the rules always change.

It’s not difficult to understand the strategy being employed by Williams here. It’s clearly the hope that by Labor Day Weekend, anger over Williams’ brazen misappropriation of party resources to support Williams’ dismally failed primary campaign against now-CO-05 nominee Jeff Crank will have subsided enough for Williams to survive. In addition, a regularly scheduled meeting is more likely to be packed with Williams’ loyalists than a special meeting in less than three weeks convened for the primary purpose of ousting Williams.

And no matter how the vote goes for Williams, August 31st gives him that much more time to write himself checks.

Williams’ unprecedented abuse of his position as chairman to steer the party into what turned out to be a disastrous interference in this year’s primaries was made possible by a total lack of effective oversight on the part of the GOP central committee, who rubber-stamped all of Williams’ schemes over the objections of every Republican who didn’t benefit from the party’s favoritism. Even though with the exception of carpetbagging superstar Lauren Boebert the party’s congressional endorsements went down in flames in the primary, we have little confidence that the same central committee that allowed Williams to run hog wild will vote to remove him now.

In the meantime, Williams’ ally and former no-show job employer Rep. Brandi Bradley offered up this cryptic assessment of the situation, along with proof of life for Williams personally, who has been virtually invisible since getting blown out in the June 25th primary:

We’ll be damned if we can tell you what that messianic gobbledegook means, but Team Williams is clearly not ready to throw in the towel just yet.

What happens next? The rules and the courts have said that unless laws have been broken, the party has to work these kinds of insider disputes out among themselves. With Williams’ allies in control of the process and the central committee, Williams appears to be in a position to decide his own fate. It may be that the die was cast, at least until the next regular state GOP leadership election, when someone as singularly unscrupulous as Dave Williams was allowed to ascend to the position of state party chairman to begin with.

In which case Williams’ reign of bungled terror will have to run its natural course, while Colorado Republicans forfeit yet another election cycle.

One thought on “Campaign To Remove Dave Williams Descends Into “Calvinball” Chaos”

JohnInDenver says:

July 11, 2024 at 10:42 am

Calling a meeting with "the notice Scheppelman sent says those attending will gavel in and “immediately recess” so the meeting can be reconvened on Aug. 31 in Castle Rock…"

Of course, a motion to recess has to be passed by those attending. The dissidents ought to brush up on their parliamentary skills to avoid a voice vote, followed by a ruling of the chair that "the ayes have it," and the meeting ending.

Even in the Republican party, there ought to be an understanding that the majority should rule.

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Campaign To Remove Dave Williams Descends Into "Calvinball" Chaos

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