Category Archives: Colorado House

Colorado GOP chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown in 2021.

The conclusion of this year’s historically productive session of the Colorado General Assembly was marred, as readers know, by a failed attempt by the hard right wing of the House Republican minority to remove Minority Leader Hugh McKean from his position immediately following adjournment. Freshman Rep. “Raging” Ron Hanks led the rhetorical assault on McKean, but as the Denver Post’s Alex Burness explains, the same old factional split with which the House GOP started out the session is what’s driving the ongoing conflict:

To the 24 caucus members gathered, Hanks complained they were ineffective, unwilling to fight the Democrats in the majority and generally rudderless. He called for the ousting of the caucus leader, Loveland Rep. Hugh McKean. Over about 45 minutes, the Republicans snapped at one another, cursed, fought over the basic rules of how the meeting should be run — all in front of the media and House GOP staffers.

Recall that McKean became the leader because the caucus decided to move on from former leader and current Rep. Patrick Neville of Castle Rock, who has a record of going after his own colleagues and has been accused by former and sitting Republican lawmakers of mismanaging campaign funds.

The pro-Neville faction, of which Hanks is a part, appears to be even more out of power than a year ago. Other than Lauren Boebert, the far-right, no-compromise culture-war stuff just hasn’t worked on voters, which is one big reason the Colorado GOP is out of power…

Yesterday afternoon, Colorado Republican Party chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown weighed in with a statement co-signed by almost all of the House Republicans who voted 15-8 against ousting McKean, calling out infamous “no compromise” gun-rights organization Rocky Mountain Gun Owners by name in a turnabout that makes the head spin:

Together with Representatives Baisley, Bradfield, Carver, Catlin, Geitner, Holtorf, Larson, Lynch, McKean, Pelton, Pico, Rich, Soper, Van Beber, Will, and Woog, the Colorado GOP urges our fellow Republicans to dismiss false accusations that any member of our House caucus is anti-gun. Every Republican elected to our State House is an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment and will continue to defend each Coloradan’s constitutional right to defend themselves and their families.

This session, Democrats shamefully voted to endanger Coloradans’ concealed carry permits and take away their right to self-defense. Rocky Mountain Gun Owners should join in defending lawful gun owners against the real opponents of the Second Amendment — the Democrats.

Kristi Burton Brown’s public rebuke of RMGO is especially noteworthy since just two years ago in 2019, KBB and RMGO were allies in the disastrous failed recall campaign against Rep. Tom Sullivan of Centennial. The hubris of the Sullivan recall helped break the back of the larger campaign mounted by Republicans following the 2019 legislative session to target vulnerable lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis for recall campaigns, but it didn’t hurt KBB personally as she ascended to the post of party chairwoman. If anything, the failed recall gave KBB some juice with the conservative grassroots.

Despite the fact that McKean survived the attempt to remove him from his Minority Leader post, the underlying conflict between the “suits” wing of the Republican Party and the activist base who the Neville clan still very much aspires to speak for is not going away. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s low-information big-MAGA energy helped propel KBB past her opposition for party chairwoman, but since then KBB has gone off-message in some troubling ways for conservatives: suggesting that a focus on abortion doesn’t win elections, that there’s no “loyalty test” to former President Donald Trump in today’s Republican Party, and now siding with the corporate wing of the party over her erstwhile RMGO allies.

All we can say is that either KBB has learned a lesson, or she’s about to.

Because this isn’t over, and RMGO has never once in our experience gone away quietly.

House Minority Leader Hugh McKean (R-Loveland)

Colorado Public Radio’s Bente Birkeland follows up on a story we’ve been watching develop over the last week and a half, renewed infighting among the Colorado House Republican Minority after a mistaken vote by House Minority Leader Hugh McKean in favor of legislation to tighten background check requirements for gun sales.

McKean, as we discussed in this space ten days ago, immediately tried to take back his fat-fingered misvote, which wouldn’t have affected passage of the bill, but Democrats refused to allow it with Majority Leader Daneya Esgar shading McKean gloriously: “I understand and appreciate your situation, and will take this moment to remind us all that on third readings, we really should have our computers closed and our phones down and paying attention.”

Every bit as noteworthy is the pummeling McKean received after this mistaken vote from his putative allies at Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, who despite knowing the vote was a mistake tore into McKean in a message to their devoted supporters calling for McKean to immediately step down as Minority Leader.

And that’s where Birkeland picks up the story:

The political fallout for McKean was swift. The pro-Second Amendment group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners — which already opposed McKean’s leadership role — immediately put messages on social media about his quote “anti-gun” vote and asked him to step down.

“In my opinion, there’s two things that drove him to do this,” said the group’s head, Taylor Rhodes in a Facebook video. “Either A, it truly was a mistake and he’s incompetent or B, it was truly showing his true colors.”

Jim Pfaff, the former chief of staff for the Republican House Caucus who stepped down when McKean took over the leadership, called him a “gun-grabber” on Facebook, and said he sides with the radical left…

Not only has the vote caused McKean problems politically and within his fractured caucus, but he also said it hasn’t helped the already tense relationship between Republicans and Democrats in the House.

So if by this point you’re thinking to yourself that this is being milked for all it’s worth and then some, you’re not alone. By any objective measure the castigation of McKean over this immediately acknowledged mistake has absurdly exceeded the scope of the offense.

So what’s really happening here? Simple: it’s the Colorado Republican Party’s civil war raging on.

McKean took over as House Minority Leader last November after his predecessor Rep. Pat Neville declined to run again citing division in the caucus over his continued leadership. First in 2018 and recovering no ground in the 2020 elections, Neville led the GOP House Minority to historic defeat while managing to alienate just about everyone–from the press to many fellow Republicans–with self-immolating rhetorical grandstands and downright thuggishness.

Despite these failures, Neville retains considerable support on the hard right side of the House Minority, who remain as belligerent as ever and want nothing to do with Republicans proposing a change of course to win back independent voters who decide elections in this state. Incidents like Rep. Ron Hanks’ recent threat to break McKean’s neck for pulling the plug on parliamentary obstruction tactics signal the ongoing tension between the hard right faction of the caucus and McKean’s leadership. Neville personally joined in the opportunistic bashing of McKean over his mistaken vote on AM radio.

In the end, the vote McKean is reaping the proverbial whirlwind over is just a pretext. What this is really all about is internal frustration by Republicans over their severe losses in recent elections in Colorado. This deep dissatisfaction is very difficult for even new leadership to manage, especially when the old leadership doesn’t understand how they helped create the problem. At the same time, there’s really nothing McKean can do to energize Republicans after inheriting the smallest minority in decades.

And so the cycle of Colorado Republicans eating their own continues with no end in sight.