March 31, 2025 11:39 AM UTC

When Brita Horn Is The "Least Insane" Choice, Things Aren't Going Great

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Ernest Luning reports for the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog formerly known as the Colorado Statesman, the Colorado Republican Party ended the tumultuous era of chairman Dave Williams on Saturday, now a relic of history along with the “Let’s Go Brandon” slur Williams tried to use as his middle name for ballot purposes. Williams’ successor by a narrow 53% of the vote after multiple rounds is Brita Horn, the former Treasurer of Routt County, who despite her own past troubles with that most essential job of handling money was considered a safer choice to lead the party than ally of Williams and former state Rep. Lori Saine, who emerged as Horn’s principal opponent:

Horn defeated former Weld County Commissioner and former state Rep. Lori Saine 232-203, with 53% of the vote, in the second round of balloting after an initial seven-candidate field had narrowed to a two-way race.

Horn takes over a state party riven by disputes following a tumultuous two years under the outgoing state chair Dave Williams, who spent most of last year fending off attempts to force him from the position…

Brita Horn’s victory over Lori Saine should spell the end of Williams’ lawsuit against Horn and several other defendants on behalf of the party that Horn now controls:

Last month, Williams and the state party sued Horn and five other Republicans, accusing them of staging a failed “coup” that cost the party more than $100,000 in legal fees while diverting resources from campaigns in the months leading up to the November election.

In the lawsuit, Williams and his fellow plaintiffs alleged that Horn and other Williams critics engaged in “a series of unethical, dishonorable, and fraudulent actions designed to cling to power.”

After the first round of balloting showed very little support for Williams’ subordinate Darcy Schoening, it was quickly evident that the real contest was between Horn and former Rep. Saine. Had Saine prevailed in this close election, the party would be looking at two more years of Williams-style mismanagement, and continued mistrust by national Republicans that led to diversion of resources to the Arizona Republican Party last year to pay for mailers in support of Colorado Republican congressional candidates.

The question is, will Brita Horn be any better at managing party finances than Williams was? In 2018, Horn was briefly a candidate for state treasurer until a major blunder in her Routt County office resulted in millions of dollars of tax revenue going undistributed to its intended recipients. As the Steamboat Pilot reported at the time, it wasn’t a good look for someone seeking much greater fiscal responsibilities:

A recent mistake by the Routt County Treasurer’s Office deprived schools, libraries and dozens of other local taxing districts of nearly $6 million worth of their property tax revenue for more than two months.

Treasurer Brita Horn said the problem occurred in early May after the tax recipients received property tax payments for April 21 to April 30 instead of for the entire month.

Some tax recipients who were shorted by the mistake worried about their financial situations when their initial payments were short by as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars of what they were expected to be.

Not exactly a career high point, and a big part of why Horn never came close to becoming state treasurer. As for taking the Colorado GOP in a meaningfully different direction after the Williams era of self-serving treachery? While it’s possible Williams’ brand of overt primary meddling will stop, Horn reportedly committed this weekend to continuing the party’s lawsuit seeking to overturn voter-approved Proposition 108 opening primary elections to unaffiliated participation. The “dilution” of party activist influence in primaries is reviled by the far right but considered one of the only long-term hopes of future moderation in a party that has lurched distantly from Colorado’s political mainstream in recent years, with election results that track their departure.

In short, Brita Horn may not be as openly treacherous to her fellow Republicans as Dave Williams was. But for a party facing existential crisis in Colorado even as Republicans roll to victory in other states, what Brita Horn doesn’t represent is a meaningful change of course.

Ten years ago, electing Brita Horn to run the Colorado GOP would have been considered disastrous. That reality is only mitigated today by how far the party has fallen.