September 12, 2024 02:56 PM UTC

Colorado Republicans Keep Learning the Cost of Incompetence

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Republican Party is currently overseen by Chairman Dave Williams…unless you think the true leader is “Chairman” Eli Bremer. You might be right either way.

The headquarters of the Colorado Republican Party is in Greenwood Village, south of Denver…or maybe it is in Colorado Springs, where Bremer recently opened a “satellite” office of the State GOP.

The Colorado Republican Party has been a boiling hot mess since Williams was first elected Chairman back in March 2023, and after dueling meetings and votes of GOP Central Committee members over the last month, it is still unclear who is actually in charge. As Colorado Newsline reported this week, Williams and Bremer will head to court on Oct. 14 in hopes of solving this dumb mystery once and for all:

A trial in the case between Eli Bremer and Dave Williams, who both claim to be head of the state party, will start on Oct. 14, the same week voters should get their ballots in the mail and three weeks before Election Day itself.

“It is evident to the court that the issues before it need an expedited resolution,” Judge Eric Bentley of the 4th Judicial District said in court on Tuesday morning. “Two separate individuals and leadership teams claim to lead the Colorado Republican Committee. They represent separate factions of the party. They point the party in very different directions and have different sets of supporters.”

“As everyone knows, an important national election is pending inside two months from now, and based on the limited information to the court at this time, it appears self-evident that the Republican State Committee cannot function as intended without its leadership issue resolved,” he said. [Pols emphasis]

Bremer sued Williams and his party leadership team late last month, asking the court to declare actions at an Aug. 24 meeting valid. At that meeting, members of the state GOP central committee voted to remove Williams, vice chair Hope Scheppelman and secretary Anna Ferguson from leadership, and then installed Bremer as chair and named a new vice chair and secretary.

We’d argue that the Republican State Committee would have trouble functioning “as intended” no matter who is in charge, but the key here is that Colorado Republicans won’t even know the answer to their leadership question until the same week that voters across the state will begin casting ballots. That simple fact highlights the underlying problem for Colorado Republicans throughout all of its internal leadership battles over the last 18 months: The State GOP is doing everything except the only thing that really matters for a political party, which is winning elections.

Check that; the Colorado Republican Party is having trouble even contesting elections.

This week the Colorado Secretary of State’s office finalized the 2024 General Election ballot, which was mainly interesting for the names that were not listed. In HD-61 (Arapahoe County), for example, Democrat Eliza Hamrick will apparently be running unopposed for re-election. This was no mere oversight on behalf of the State GOP.

Just one year ago, Williams listed Hamrick and HD-61 as one of his top 11 targeted races for 2024, which made sense given Hamrick’s narrow victory in 2022. Republicans did have a candidate in HD-61 named Luis Moy, but he was apparently never replaced after being disqualified from the ballot for failure to submit a candidate affidavit and personal financial disclosure as required by law. Moy’s disqualification was in May, so it’s not like this was some last-minute surprise.

Republicans also never found a candidate to replace Danny Moore in HD-37 (also Arapahoe County) after the 2022 Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor decided to drop out of the race in July. Democrat Chad Clifford is not technically an incumbent, having gained his seat through a vacancy committee in 2023; and while HD-37 is a fairly safe Democratic seat judging by registration numbers, it’s still bizarre that Republicans won’t even mount a challenge to someone who is facing voters for the first time in November (though Clifford does have an “Unaffiliated” opponent).

Republicans currently face a micro-minority in the State House of Representatives, holding just 19 of 65 possible House seats; they weren’t going to be able to take majority control in 2024 with those kind of numbers.

But the road back to some sort of respectability has to begin somewhere…and you can’t win if you don’t even play.