February 14, 2011 11:27 PM UTC

GOP Chairman Job Pays Well, Apply Within

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• by: Colorado Pols

A potentially changing field in the newly energized race for the next chairman of the Colorado Republican Party–as the Colorado Statesman’s Ernest Luning reports:

Jefferson County GOP Chairman Don Ytterberg, his Larimer County counterpart Larry Carillo, and Cleve Tidwell, the international businessman who failed to make the ballot in last year’s U.S. Senate Primary, all told The Statesman they have spent the last week pondering whether to run for the state Republican Party’s top job at the March 26 central committee meeting.

Three candidates are already in the running: state Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, state party legal counsel Ryan Call, and recent Michigan transplant Barton Baron, who is running on a ticket with Tidwell’s former campaign manager as a vice chair candidate. Call – who chaired the Denver GOP until last weekend’s local party elections, when he declined to seek a second term – jumped into the race a day after Wadhams dropped out…

Ytterberg could offer an alternative to Republicans who want a fresh face leading the party but who have qualms about supporting Harvey because of the lawmaker’s endorsement of third-party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo in last fall’s election.

What we understand of the race today suggests that GOP attorney Ryan Call’s star is fading. He’s looked on by too many Republican activists as beholden to Denver plutocrats, and represents a perceived continuation of insider-dominated Republican politics and primaries. On the other hand, concerns about “Tea Party” favorite Ted Harvey from more moderate elements in the GOP are very real, which does create an opening for a mutually acceptable alternative like Don Ytterberg.

If it’s not too late. There are a lot of people who tell us that Harvey, as much as he may repel moderates, and divisively casts his lot with the hardcore ideologues in his party, has it all sewn up.