October 25, 2024 10:27 AM UTC

Hey, Look: The Colorado Republican Party Does a Thing for a Candidate

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• by: Colorado Pols

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been tracking an unusual story about how the Arizona Republican Party is sending direct mail pieces to Colorado in support of Republican congressional candidates Jeff “Bread Sandwich” Hurd in CO-03 and Gabe “-ish” Evans in CO-08. We know of at least three mail pieces for Evans and at least one for Hurd.

After some initial consideration for the idea that perhaps a mail vendor just made an error somewhere, it became clear with subsequent mail pieces that this was not a one-off mistake. Mail pieces originating from a state political party not in Colorado is something that we had never seen before; national outlets that have picked up on the weirdness are as dubious as we are about the legality of such a maneuver.

Our theory for what is happening here — backed up by reporting from Charles Ashby at the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel — remains that the Colorado Republican Party has simply been too dysfunctional and too distracted by shiny social issues to focus on the work of trying to get Republican candidates elected in 2024. Recently, however, we finally caught wind of a paid communications effort for a Colorado congressional candidate that actually came from the Colorado Republican Party.

Crazy, right?

Here’s that mail piece promoting the no-hope candidacy of Republican John Fabbricatore in CO-06. Fabbricatore is NOT going to unseat incumbent Democratic Congressman Jason Crow, but he’s (sorta) making an effort:

It’s hard to say what this might or might not mean for a potential investigation into whatever is happening with the Arizona Republican Party and its support of Colorado candidates. It does prove, however, that the Colorado GOP was theoretically capable of sending out mail for Hurd and Evans rather than forcing them to lean on another state’s Republican Party for assistance.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Colorado Republican Party infighting routine.