September 23, 2024 03:10 PM UTC

What Coordinated Campaign? Colorado Republicans Face The Down-Ballot Abyss

• 5 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

We’re just 42 days away from the 2024 general election, and as Colorado Public Radio’s Bente Birkeland and Caitlyn Kim report, the divided Colorado Republican Party’s disorganization and lack of resources to assist candidates at any level this year is becoming a full-scale emergency–and despite the urgency with yet another looming catastrophe at the polls in November, nobody knows what to do:

Usually, the state party has a big role to play in down-ballot races. Former Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams said especially when it comes to the get-out-the-vote operations.

“That’s the one thing that the state party can do more efficiently for candidates from the state legislature, and also for Congress,” Wadhams said, noting those operations are built over the two-year election cycle. “It requires a lot of money. It requires a lot of staff and it requires a lot of thoughts about how to get that Republican vote out.”

Wadhams gave 2010 as an example where a massive field operation helped defeat two incumbent Democratic congress members. And this is where Wadhams, a vocal critic of Williams, thinks the party is falling down this year.

“Whatever alleged victory operation the state party has, it is a mere shadow of what it’s been in the past,” said Wadhams. [Pols emphasis]

In a normal election year, the state party does a lot more than sending out cost-free email blasts that candidates wish they wouldn’t and holding meetings where the main order of business is to decide who is in charge. The bread-and-butter work of organizing campaign events, phone banks, and field canvassing campaigns vital to the success of candidates running in downballot races simply isn’t happening right now, or if it is it’s being organized (with one notable exception) entirely by the candidates themselves. With Republicans deep in the minority in both legislative chambers and facing the possibility of a Democratic supermajority in the Colorado Senate to augment their dominance in the Colorado House, they desperately need a functioning coordinated campaign to hold the line and prevent the loss of the last bit of legislative power they possess.

And…Republicans just don’t have one. The work is simply not being done. The contrast between the Colorado GOP’s organizational brokenness and the Colorado Democratic Party’s massive and well-funded coordinated campaign to boost their candidates at all stations on the ballot cannot be overstated.

The one exception to this general state of disarray appears to be the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), who immediately jumped ship to side with Colorado GOP pretender-chair Eli Bremer after the disputed vote ousting Dave “Buh Bye Brandon” Williams. Working with Bremer, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy campaigned this weekend for GOP congressional contenders Jeff Hurd and Gabe Evans:

When Williams’ opponents picked Bremer as chair in August, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House campaign arm, immediately recognized him as chair but so far the RNC has not weighed in.

Readers’ opinions will differ on whether an appearance by the famously failed former GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy helps or hurts these candidates, but that’s the star power Bremer managed to draw. The NRCC does have the resources to directly help these candidates, and smart down-ballot Republicans would do themselves a favor to sidestep the state party and ensure their walk pieces are in the hands of the congressional field campaigns.

With the trial to at least begin adjudicating the question of who the rightful chairman of the Colorado Republican Party is still weeks away, short of Williams voluntarily having a change of heart and handing the keys over to Bremer there’s really nothing that can be done to change course in time to effect the elections. The outcome of that case is itself in no way certain, since the two competing votes to oust and then to retain Williams have their respective parliamentarian stamps of approval. In addition, Williams received more votes in support of his chairmanship than the alternate meeting produced to oust him.

In a year when Colorado Republicans needed everything to go perfectly, pretty much the exact opposite has occurred. Republicans are at their most divided since at least 2010, when the party abandoned their own nominee for governor and turned what was nationally a wave year for Republicans into a local calamity despite Dick Wadhams’ rosy assessment above.

This year, Colorado Republicans are setting themselves up to lose the last of what they have to lose.