July 07, 2025 02:10 PM UTC

The New House Minority Whip is...This Guy

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• by: Colorado Pols

There has been a lot of shuffling of deck chairs recently among the House and Senate Republican caucuses in the state legislature — both of which have been mired in minority status for years.

Last week, a Republican vacancy committee in Colorado Springs replaced Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen with a nutball named Lynda Zamora Wilson. You might remember Wilson from her failed campaign to defeat Lundeen in a Republican Primary in 2022 — a loss she then blamed on rogue election machines, or something. Lundeen resigned his position in June in order to take a job with a conservative nonprofit; Senate Republicans subsequently chose Alamosa’s Cleave Simpson to serve as the new Senate Minority Leader.

Simpson was the only person nominated for the Senate Minority Leader position, but the battle for a leadership position in the House GOP caucus was much more of a fight. State Rep. Ryan Armagost announced in June that he would resign from the legislature in order to move to Arizona, which opened up the position of House Minority Whip. State Rep. “Boxwine” Brandi Bradley immediately announced her intentions to seek the position of Minority Whip; that battle was soon joined by Rep. Ron Weinberg.

The Bradley-Weinberg contest quickly led to someone barfing out a bunch of opposition research (which Bradley dutifully re-tweeted) that was condemned by Weinberg:

As we noted after Armagost’s resignation announcement, House Republicans were in a no-win situation with the comically-outspoken Bradley, who is both nuttier than a bag of squirrels and excellent at holding a grudge. Making Bradley the Minority Whip would be giving leadership responsibility to one of the…shall we say, “less stable” members of the legislature. On the other hand, a Bradley loss to Weinberg would lead to a different set of problems from the grumbling lawmaker from Littleton.

So what did the House GOP caucus do? They elected Rep. Carlos Barron (R-Ft. Lupton) as House Minority Whip. Our initial reaction to this news came with a simple recognition: Apparently there is a guy in the legislature named Carlos Barron.

Barron was elected in 2024 to succeed Gabe Evans, who ran for Congress instead of seeking re-election to the state legislature. Presumably Barron is aware of this election result, though he hasn’t mentioned the news on social media just yet (neither have Bradley or Weinberg, for that matter).

Colorado House Republicans did discuss Barron’s election on social media, though they’ve been having trouble with the fact that Barron is a Mexican immigrant who came to the United States as an infant. The official House GOP Twitter/X account initially published the second message below before deleting it in favor of the one on top:

Barron is still considered an “energy leader” and “fierce advocate for parental rights,” but the “first-generation American” thing has been removed. Perhaps House GOP leadership realized that they shouldn’t lean in too heavily on this point; it’s going to be awkward to ask an immigrant to whip votes in favor of whatever inevitable anti-immigrant legislation is proposed by House Republicans in 2026.

Anyway, congratulations to Carlos Barron, who is definitely a state lawmaker. We can’t tell you a thing about him, but Barron can’t possibly be a worse choice for Minority Whip than Brandi Bradley.