July 26, 2024 10:56 AM UTC

Richard Holtorf Jumps Into Colorado GOP Chairmanship Fracas

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• by: Colorado Pols

With a faction of members of the Colorado Republican Party’s central committee set to meet this weekend to vote on whether to oust embattled party chairman Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams and his crew of allies in state party leadership–a meeting that the party has declared “illegal” and vowed to ignore the results of–another candidate to replace Williams besides failed GOP U.S. Senate candidate Eli Bremer has emerged. State Rep. Richard Holtorf, who clashed repeatedly with Williams over the party’s formal endorsement of Lauren Boebert in the CO-04 Republican primary, says he’s the man to pull the party out of its latest terminal nosedive. From a letter Holtorf sent yesterday to central committee members:

Great controversy and challenge has fallen upon the Colorado Republican party and as a result the State Central Committee must come together to have serious debate to determine the future of the COGOP’s strategic future…

You see fellow Republicans, Colorado is like Baskin Robbins with 32 flavors of ice cream not just one ruby red, far right, Republican flavor. We have extreme disunity and many see these leadership shortcomings damaging the internal fabric of the Colorado Republican Party.

Our readers are already very familiar with Rep. Holtorf’s tendency to swamp himself in his own verbal diarrhea, from telling the father of a mass shooting victim to get over it to unintentionally making one of the strongest arguments for abortion rights this session in the Colorado legislature. Lobbing sexist spitballs at Boebert during the CO-04 primary earned Holtorf some media attention, but completely failed to move the needle in the race. The three assets Holtorf brings to the GOP chairmanship fight are a burning dislike for Dave Williams, a chronic inability to stop talking, and as the party faithful will hear tomorrow in Brighton, some kind of plan:

It is time for a new strategic direction which I will be outlining to all the SCC delegates on Saturday, July 27, 2024 at the Harvest Fellowship Church, 11401 East 160th Street, Brighton Colorado starting at 9;00 AM. I will be offering my services as a future candidate for the position of State Party Chair if my strategic vision has merit. I encourage maximum attendance by all available SCC members.

Again, it’s an open question whether the meeting scheduled for tomorrow will count for anything, since the party leadership has promised to disregard whatever comes of it. Williams’ request for an injunction against the meeting being held reportedly failed last night, but if the party’s leadership simply chooses to ignore tomorrow’s meeting in favor of their own schedule set under a literal bridge hundreds of miles from Denver last weekend calling for the next regular meeting at the end of August, we’re not sure what the path forward for dissidents is to stop them.

The biggest takeaway for Democrats is that with the clock ticking down toward Election Day, Colorado Republicans remain locked in an internal power struggle instead of organizing to get out the vote in November. The objective of Williams’ takeover of the party, to tilt the scales in Republican primaries toward fringe candidates like himself, proved a costly and embarrassing failure, and it doesn’t seem like Williams planned for what was supposed to happen after the primaries. Were it not for Williams’ dogmatically loyal allies in party leadership, none of what Williams did to promote himself at the party’s expense would have been possible.

And they’re the ones who might well keep Williams in power despite it all! Stay tuned for the next episode of Dave Makes The Rules.