February 01, 2022 10:34 AM UTC

Watch Out Hugh McKean: The Nevilles Bite Back

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• by: Colorado Pols

9NEWS’ Marshall Zelinger takes note this morning of a potentially major development in the ongoing intra-party power struggle between the Republican Party’s corporate wing and the hard-charging conservatives who have either wrecked the party or kept the MAGA flame alive depending on who you talk to:

This is…unusual. A party leader getting a primary challenge. Republican Colorado House Minority Leader @hmckean, who is eligible for one more term, is getting a primary challenge from the former comms director for previous minority leader @PatrickForCO. #copolitics https://t.co/vYZ2nKi5Ni

— Marshall Zelinger (@Marshall9News) February 1, 2022

No peace among the clans–Austin Hein, the previous communications director for Rep. Pat Neville, the former House Minority Leader who stepped aside in disgrace in 2020 for his successor Hugh McKean while leading the House GOP caucus to its smallest minority since the 1950s, has filed to challenge McKean in House District 51 rather than let McKean serve out his last term in peace.

This open challenge from a close ally of the Neville political clan–and by extension the Colorado Republican Party’s conservative wing, which has evolved from single-issue gun rights politics to a more generalized “America First” Donald Trump personality cult faction–shows that the bad blood between McKean and this faction of the party that manifested in a failed attempt to unseat McKean as Minority Leader last year has not in any ebbed.

Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, the “no compromise” gun rights advocacy group which has long been the principal organizing entity for this faction of Colorado Republicans, has always exercised the most power in Republican primaries–at key moments in the last decade, weighing in decisively in favor of candidates who go on to lose their seats in the general election. Rather than being a team player for the Republican coalition, RMGO relishes its role in Republican primaries, valuing ideological purity on their single issue even over winning itself.

The rub here, of course, is that House Republicans need their Minority Leader focused on a strategy to win back seats in the upcoming midterms, and he can’t do that–or at least can’t do it as well–while fighting off a primary challenge of his own. Not to mention that when McKean conceded on the House floor last month that “Joe Biden won the 2020 election,” he committed an unpardonable offense in the minds of a majority of Republican primary voters.

Now we’ll find if, having won a few battles on his right flank, Hugh McKean loses the war.