November 02, 2023 10:46 AM UTC

GOP Keynote Speaker Celebrates Indicted Clerk Tina Peters

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• by: Colorado Pols

As readers know, this weekend’s annual Colorado Republican Party fundraising gala will feature as its keynote speaker infamous serial election denier and Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake, one of the most ardent supporters of ex-President Donald Trump who argues to this day that both Trump’s re-election in 2020 and her own loss in last year’s Arizona gubernatorial race were the products of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

Like we said when Kari Lake was announced by fellow “Ultra MAGA” election denialist and Colorado GOP chairman Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams as the keynote in late September, choosing Lake to headline the state party’s fundraising gala lashes the Colorado GOP even more tightly to the “Big Lie”–not just that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, but that all elections going forward that don’t go the GOP’s way are ipso facto illegitimate. This mindset has a way of altering one’s theory of engagement with the democratic process in, to deliberately understate it, troubling ways.

Perhaps the best evidence for this embrace of electoral unreality by the state party is a mutual admiration video from mid-October of Lake with indicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is facing trial on multiple felonies stemming from her failed attempt to prove election equipment in her charge was somehow compromised in a way that proved the election had been stolen from Trump:

After Dave Williams took control of the Colorado Republican Party last March, Tina Peters was reportedly set to accept a position in the party related to “election integrity,” and Williams spoke highly of Peters’ ability to marshal the resources of powerful friends like Mike “MyPillow Guy” Lindell. Williams soon backed away from Peters as her legal troubles deepened with self-inflicted complications related to her attempts to obstruct and disrupt court proceedings. And Mike Lindell is broke.

We’re not sure what to say now that the party’s upcoming keynote speaker has embraced Tina Peters as a champion of “election integrity.” Peters has managed to repeatedly push back the start of her criminal trial, but at some point in the foreseeable future Peters will either have to defend her actions in court or accept whatever mercy prosecutors might still be inclined to offer after Peters’ subordinates flipped and agreed to testify against her for more lenient sentences. In the criminal case playing out in Georgia, Peters would be a low-level conspirator making a plea deal–but in Peters’ Mesa County case, she’s the defendant at the top.

The fictional universe of the “Big Lie” will hit the wall of the justice system in Tina Peters’ case just as it is hitting the wall in Georgia. By trying to reshape the GOP primary process to benefit fringe candidates and now headlining the nation’s biggest election deniers, Colorado Republicans are effectively disengaging from the democratic process as we know it. They’ve become a political movement for whom democracy is an impediment.

Historically, that seldom ends well.