July 10, 2023 11:57 AM UTC

Homeless Too? Colorado GOP's Self-Destruction Accelerating

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Republican Party, as readers know, is currently in a state of existential crisis after years of punishing defeats at the polls have left the party with the least amount of influence in the lifetimes of most people now living. Instead of learning a lesson from defeat and attempting to field more mainstream candidates, the party instead lurched even further toward the extreme right by electing firebrand former Rep. Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams as chairman last March. Williams’ takeover of the party completed a backlash against the “corporate wing” of the party responsible for defeating fringe primary challengers in 2022 including U.S. Senate candidate Ron Hanks and Dave Williams personally.

Since taking control of the party in March, Williams has alternated between score-settling attacks on fellow Republicans like his 2022 primary opponent Rep. Doug Lamborn and increasingly scurrilous and lurid appeals on wedge issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Just before the July 4th holiday, Williams sent out an email blast so over-the-top homophobic that the Colorado Log Cabin Republicans took the exceedingly rare step of criticizing their own chairman in a statement today:

The recent email dated June 29, 2023, with subject line Pride is evil sent out by the Colorado GOP, was narrow-minded and pandered to the far right. This rhetoric is an irritating splinter to the greater Colorado Republican Party & other common-sense voters in the state.

The broad biblical offense on “pride” addressed only to the “LGBTQA+” community was catering to the game of identity politics—something most conservatives abhor. We pray it was indeed short-sighted and unintentional. As Colorado Republicans, we are better than that.

Addressing these issues with care and refinement could have been an opportunity to reach out to young people, women, swing voters and moderate democrats growing weary of progressive politics. Instead, the presentation left many Coloradans feeling alienated.

The LCRs go on to say they support the policy goals of Republicans with respect to “sexualization of children,” which strikes us as an unnecessary accommodation of Williams’ wild allegations even while they try to condemn them. We’ve never really grasped the inherently contradictory reasoning necessary to be a Log Cabin Republican, and it doesn’t look like today will be the day we start. But it’s at least something.

Willliams’ bordering-on-NSFW email blasts are meant to shock reporters into covering his statements and like-minded Republicans into opening their wallets. The latter objective is particularly important since Williams has been unable to raise even enough money to cover payroll expenses, let alone plan for 2024. But in another discourteous exchange with fellow Republicans using the Colorado GOP’s official account, we learn the party’s financial problems may be coming to a head:

That’s Roger Hudson, a staffer for Colorado House Minority Leader Mike Lynch who was one of those recently attacked by the Colorado GOP, breaking the news that the Colorado Republican Party has been “asked to vacate” their longtime offices in Greenwood Village. If the party can’t make its payroll expenses, it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn they can’t pay their rent, either–though we obviously can’t confirm Hudson’s report and another Republican, Williams ally Weston Imer, denies it. If it is true that the Colorado GOP can’t even afford their office space anymore, it’s sign that the party is organizationally breaking down–unlike anything we’ve seen since Dan Maes won the party’s nomination for governor in 2010 and got 11% of the vote in the general election.

Soon the Colorado GOP may be Williams on a street corner with a file cabinet, and that’s it.