April 21, 2012 11:00 PM UTC

Fewer Jeffco GOP Delegates This Year? Blame Dan Maes.

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• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado politicos like to refer to Jeffco as a bellwether county. As goes Jeffco, the axiom holds, so goes Colorado. And as goes Colorado, goes the White House.

That’s why it’s so odd that Jeffco Republicans will have a diminished voice in selecting the GOP nominee this year. As Lynn Bartels notes in a blog post for the Denver paper, former 2010 Republican Gubernatorial nominee Dan Maes‘ piss-poor performance here last cycle reduced the number of delegates that Jeffco sent to the state convention earlier this month.

Because delegates are assigned in relation to the percentage that Maes, as the GOP nominee, won in each county last cycle, the Jeffco GOP sent over 100 delegates fewer to the state convention than they did in 2008. Maes, after all, earned a measly 7% of the vote in Jeffco. As a result, the Jeffco delegation had a lesser voice in deciding which delegates would be nominated to attend the national convention in Tampa later this year.

There’s no guarantee that Jeffco GOP voters would elect a delegate who would in turn vote for the candidate most likely to win Jeffco in an election year. But because Dan Maes performed better in smaller, more conservative counties, the faction of the Colorado GOP inclined to vote for Maes will have a bigger say in the national nomination process. In that way, then, the moderate voice that Jeffco Republicans bring to the table — in recognition of what it takes to win the votes of Jeffco’s large chunk of unaffiliated voters — has been dampened not insignificantly.

Mitt Romney, of course, is destined to become the Republican nominee. It’s still rather curious, however, that he may ascend to that position without the input of Republican voters from a county he absolutely needs to win in November.