August 07, 2024 01:37 PM UTC

The On-Again Off-Again Quest For Dave Williams' Metaphorical Head Is Back On

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Ernest Luning reports for the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog, the judge who just over a week ago stopped the attempt by dissident members of the Colorado Republican Party central committee to convene a meeting to vote on the ouster of embattled party chairman Dave “New Nickname Needed, Brandon” Williams with a temporary restraining order yesterday reconsidered his prior decision, greenlighting in the eyes of Williams’ opponents a new meeting to do just that later this month:

Following an hour-long virtual hearing held earlier the same day, Arapahoe County District Court Judge Thomas W. Henderson reversed an order he issued last month that prohibited Williams’ critics from convening a meeting, writing that the court lacked jurisdiction in the internal party dispute.

In response to Henderson’s new order, the Republicans who have been attempting to oust Williams all summer almost immediately scheduled a meeting on Aug. 24 at a church in Brighton.

“We are very pleased that the court sided with our obviously sound reasoning,” El Paso County GOP Vice Chair Todd Watkins told Colorado Politics. “We are even more pleased that the court has correctly decided to let the (GOP’s state central committee) solve its own problems as we originally intended.”

But court ruling or no court ruling, Williams and his loyalist executives say that any meeting convened by opponents instead of the party officially is “illegal,” instead steering central committee members to the August 31st meeting in Castle Rock set up under a literal bridge near the New Mexico border by Williams’ lieutenant Hope Scheppelman:

The State Executive Committee has rendered a decision that Watkins’ meeting is invalid and illegal. That has not changed, and its determination is still in full force and effect.

There is a properly called meeting on August 31st where the SCC is empowered to address the State Executive Committee’s decision.

Watkins does not get to call illegal meetings and then expand the scope of those fraudulent meetings while stealing the authority of the already existing standing committees that draft the rules or properly credential members.

And in a preview of the argument central committee members will hear on whichever meeting turns out to be the real meeting, Williams says it’s too close to the election to change leaders–so very convenient after delaying the vote as long as procedurally possible:

Watkins’ attempt to remove all officers 90 days before an election while also attempting to install fake leadership who seek to end the open primary lawsuit and undermine the opt-out is dangerous and causing harm to our efforts to elect President Trump and our nominees.

The counterargument to that, of course, is that Republican candidates are not presently receiving any material benefit from the state party to jeopardize. After squandering what little money the party raised on mailers supporting himself and his favored primary candidates, most of whom lost their primaries, Williams has been mostly AWOL while Scheppelman and the party’s wacky “Director of Special Initiatives” Darcy Schoening send out low-budget email blasts that do nothing help the candidates being promoted…at best.

In the end, it may come down to who shows up to which meeting. Williams is clearly banking on the “official” meeting in Castle Rock on the 31st having enough of his allies in attendance to survive the vote, which is less likely at the meeting Williams has declared “illegal.” In a way, this latest ruling affirming the right of the party to resolve these disputes internally empowers Williams and his allies in control of the process to continue throwing up roadblocks to impede Williams’ removal.

Democrats would be fine with the Colorado GOP’s civil war raging unchecked all the way until November.