July 24, 2024 10:23 AM UTC

The Road to Respectability Won't Include Matt Burcham

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• by: Colorado Pols

Republicans have had a hard time winning elections in Colorado in recent years. The way back to political relevance in the state legislature, such that one exists when the GOP only holds 19 of a possible 65 seats, apparently starts with a bonkers candidate in Douglas County named Matt Burcham.

The 2022 “Bluenami” in Colorado that saw Democrats win every statewide race by double-digit margins included a surprise win in HD-43, where Democrat Bob Marshall upset incumbent Republican Rep. Kurt Huffman by less than one percentage point. Because HD-43 should give Republicans a natural 7-point advantage (based on prior election results), Republicans had a contested Primary Election in June between Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas and Burcham, with the latter winning the GOP nomination fairly easily. But even if Burcham goes on to defeat Marshall in November, Republicans may take two steps backward for this one step forward.

Much of the media narrative following the June Primary Election was about how more moderate candidates beat more extreme opponents, but that’s not what happened in the HD-43 Republican Primary. Both Burcham and Thomas were on the far-right side of the political aisle; while Thomas had more enemies in Douglas County after years as a cranky elected official, Burcham might actually be the weirder candidate.

Yet as Colorado Community Media noted in early June, Burcham has a strong list of Republican names endorsing his candidacy (which no doubt has something to do with the unpopularity of Thomas in general). Burcham is backed by the Colorado Republican Party; Rocky Mountain Gun Owners; former legislator Kurt Huffman; Parker Mayor Jeff Toborg; state Sen. Kevin Van Winkle; and retired Castle Rock police Cmdr. John Anderson. He’s also supported by some of the biggest Republican establishment names in Colorado, highlighted by former Republican Governor Bill Owens and longtime Republican political operative Sean Tonner, who helped direct big money in support of Burcham in the Primary Election.

Who is Matt Burcham? He appears to spend most of his time “working” on projects related to his belief that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump. When he was a candidate for a Centennial Water District position in 2023, Burcham wrote this about his profession: “I work in the structured product finance sector, providing asset analysis and automated technology solutions.” In other words, he is unemployed. His wife, Meredith Burcham, seems to be the financial anchor for the family with her position as Executive Director of CTSI, an organization that provides some sort of insurance guidance for county governments.

As Erik Maulbetsch reported for Colorado Times Recorder last week, Burcham has been a busy boy regardless of his employment status. Burcham was an early actor in the formation of The U.S. Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), a group formed after the 2020 Presidential election. Burcham was among the speakers at a December 15, 2020 hearing of the Colorado Audit Committee, in which election truthers spent eight hours providing “testimony” about their fact-free belief in a fraudulent election.

As Maulbetsch writes:

Burcham then shared his beliefs about Colorado’s elections, first saying that “military votes are wide open for fraud,” then calling for a ban on voting machines and mail-in ballots.

“Me personally, I’d like to say let’s forget the machines overall,” said Burcham. “Let’s go to all paper, right? Let’s go all in-person, on-paper. Let’s just go back old-fashioned and remove all those different things you can cheat with.” [Pols emphasis]

The call for paper ballots is a common argument for election conspiracists who conveniently ignore the reality of their proposal. We’re not going to bother with trying to do the math, but it’s safe to assume that hand-counting 3 million paper ballots would take somewhere short of “forever” to complete.

A few weeks later, Burcham traveled to Washington D.C. to be present on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. There, he spent time around some of Colorado’s more unsavory conspiracy nuts; he posted a video that he appeared to record himself of far-right conspiracy leader Joe Oltmann speaking in Washington D.C. the night before the insurrection.

As Maulbetsch continues, Burcham is now the Republican candidate in HD-43 because of this nonsense:

According to Burcham’s post, USEIP appears to have been the catalyst for his political career, as he described working to become a local GOP leader as “a first step.”

The Colorado Times Recorder confirmed via its own open records request that Burcham indeed filed requests with multiple county clerks listed in his posts. Specifically, six days earlier he filed Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) requests for “scanned ballot images” from the Nov. 3, 2020, General Election, with the Mesa County and Jefferson County Clerks’ Offices.

Burcham remained active with USEIP well after Jan. 6, 2021. He helped organize insurrectionist attorney John Eastman’s virtual presentation to the group, adding the Mar. 9, 2021 event to the Basecamp platform and asking its members to share it “far and wide.” The presentation’s title, “We Are the Plan!” is a slogan that originated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. [Pols emphasis]

Anyway, if you have been wondering if Colorado Republicans would make more of an effort in 2024 to diversify their caucus in the State House of Representatives, that answer is an unequivocal, “Nope.” Republicans will need years to win back control of the State House, if that is even possible anymore, but doing so is definitely going to require taking some nuts out of the recipe — not adding more. Burcham comes out of the same mold that produced the likes of Reps. Scott “There is No” Bottoms, Ken “Dildo” DeGraaf, and “Box Wine” Brandi Bradley. Republicans absolutely do not need more of these folks.

You would think someone like Bill Owens would understand this and avoid Burcham like he was a Ukrainian bank (IYKYK). Or perhaps there is a simpler explanation. We know that the GOP struggled to find candidates to run for various legislative seats and had trouble convincing other recruits to remain in their respective races. It may be that the Mark Burchams of the world are all that Colorado Republicans have left.

If that’s the case, the GOP had better get comfortable with its minority party status.