March 07, 2009 07:24 PM UTC

Tom Stone Works Springs GOP Dinner

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Statesman reports on last week’s El Paso County GOP Lincoln Day dinner, laying the scene for a rare treat: press coverage of Dick Wadhams’ opponent for Chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

More than 300 Republicans attended the $80-a-plate dinner at the Antlers Hilton, where they dined on chicken breasts in Marsala wine sauce, sang patriotic songs and nodded their heads in agreement with speeches that ridiculed Obama’s economic recovery plan as socialistic voodoo.

As Obama inspired the majority of Americans for “change” in the election last year, the Democrats are inadvertently unifying Republicans in their march toward the next political battle.

The GOP unifier is fear – especially in these troubled economic times…

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez of the 7th Congressional District revved up the crowd with pep talks in preparation for the keynote speech by former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown.

An impassioned Beauprez called on Republicans to fight to save their country from being plundered by the Democrats.

“The battle that we’re in right now is really between the system that embraces the state and the system of self,” said Beauprez, adding that the long-range outcome depends on Republicans winning back majorities and defeating the Democrats.

Brown’s speech was more professorial. The president emeritus of the University of Colorado reeled off a list of countries that have succumbed to socialism – and suffered because their robust economies plummeted. Some – such as Cuba – have never recovered…

The tax increases on those earning $250,000 or more a year and the tax breaks to those beneath that threshold, Brown said, “will set one class against another. It’s a mistake.”

Yes, this post is is about Tom Stone. But that was some juicy “succumb to socialism” red meat and you know you wanted to read it.

Stone was there, however, working the crowd and talking with reporters, apparently with limited success:

Former Eagle County Commissioner Tom Stone didn’t miss the opportunity to court votes in his bid to unseat state GOP chair Dick Wadhams at the Colorado Republican Central Committee meeting coming on March 21 in Douglas County.

“I talked with Dick Wadhams for a couple of hours in January,” recalled Stone, “and it became more and more apparent to me that what I really needed to do was run for the party chair myself so that people would have a choice in leadership style.”

Stone said he wants to rev up high-tech communications and run a bottom-up organization to empower county parties.

“Instead of top-down control leadership style, what I prefer is to go out and hear the ideas of people in all of Colorado’s 64 counties,” said Stone, adding that his approach is vastly different from “the state party leaders telling counties, ‘This is the way you’re going to do things.'”

“I believe in being a good community organizer – you’ve heard of that job in a recent presidential campaign,” chuckled Stone.

Several legislators predicted that Stone might tap into anti-incumbent sentimentalists, who are still seething over the Republican losses throughout the past three election cycles. They didn’t think Stone had a prayer of mustering enough votes to knock Wadhams from the GOP pulpit.

That’s how this appears to be shaping up–Wadhams, as we said a couple of months ago, has worked fiercely to mollify his critics in the Republican Party and undermine potential challengers before they could gain support. There is a substantial disconnect between the Wadhams-locked party power apparatus and many rank-and-file members, but it’s the 500 Central Committee insiders who will vote later this month. We predict Wadhams will indeed keep his job, but that the disconnect between insiders and the base we’re talking about–represented by Stone but also revealed last year when former Rep. Scott McInnis broke his silence right before the election–will only continue to grow.

It’s also interesting to note the evolution of Democratic opinion about the possibility of Wadhams being ousted. Where Democrats previously cheered on speculation about challengers to Wadhams, many seem content to let him stay on–a highly placed source of ours smiled yesterday to us and said, “we’ve got [Wadhams’] number and they’re the only ones who don’t know it.”