January 14, 2025 10:01 AM UTC

Battle for GOP Chair, Sans Dave Williams, Gets Underway

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: As The Colorado Sun reports in its “Unaffiliated” newsletter, State Party Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman is also hoping for a job in the Trump administration and is surely hoping nobody fact checks her application for employment:

Scheppelman is taking credit for Republican gains in the state House and in the 8th Congressional District in an application for a job in the new Trump administration.

“I worked alongside over 220 Republican candidates to flip three Colorado House districts and the 8th Congressional District,” Scheppelman wrote in her application.

That’s a stretch. [Pols emphasis]

In the 8th District, the Colorado GOP endorsed Gabe Evans’ unsuccessful primary opponent, former state Rep. Janak Joshi. The party didn’t report any direct spending to help Evans beat Democratic incumbent Yadira Caraveo in the general election.

Evans was so fed up with party leadership that he actually called on Colorado GOP Chair Dave Williams to resign in July as part of a push to remove the organization’s entire leadership slate, including Scheppelman.

As for the three state House seats Republicans flipped last year, the party didn’t report spending any money on those races either. It was the state House Republican caucus campaign arm and independent expenditure committees that were responsible for the bulk of the activity in those contests.

“State party was about as helpful as a screen door in a submarine when it came to House races,” said Tyler Sandberg, who ran the state House GOP campaign arm. “They did literally nothing. They were nowhere to be found except when it came time to claim credit.”

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The fight is on for the right to be the next person “in charge” of the dumpster fire that is the State Republican Party.

Current GOP Chairman Dave Williams, who all but killed the State Republican Party while lining his own pockets, has not announced that he will seek re-election in March. Rumor has it that Williams is expecting to get some sort of lower-tier appointment in the new administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

As Ernest Luning reports for the publication formerly known as the Colorado Statesman, the Williams Wing of the Party will nevertheless have plenty of representation on the ballot:

Darcy Schoening, the Colorado Republican Party’s director of special initiatives, on Monday declared that she’s running for state GOP chair in the party’s upcoming reorganization election.

The state Republicans’ incumbent chair, former state Rep. Dave Williams, hasn’t announced whether he plans to seek a second term running the party. Williams didn’t respond to an inquiry from Colorado Politics on Monday.

Schoening, a longtime Williams ally — he appointed her to her current party role — told Colorado Politics that she doesn’t know for sure whether Williams is running but couldn’t wait any longer to make her candidacy official…

…The state GOP’s incumbent vice chair, Hope Scheppelman, has let it be known she intends to run for the top job if Williams winds up not running, multiple Republican party officials have told Colorado Politics. Scheppelman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

As readers of Colorado Pols are well aware, Schoening is nuttier than a bag of squirrels. Schoening collected a few thousand dollars over the course of the last two years while serving in a made-up role of “director of special initiatives,” a position that seemed mostly to consist of sending out bizarre emails that were either complaining about disloyal Republicans or focused on her obsession with the idea that Democrats are trying to “transgender” kids with help from the teacher’s union (Schoening is a former co-chair of the batshit crazy El Paso County chapter of “Moms for Liberty”).

Schoening joins former Routt County Treasurer Brita Horn as a declared candidate for State GOP Chair. Horn represents the anti-Williams wing of the GOP that tried — repeatedly — to oust Williams over the course of the first 18 months of his term as Chair.

As Luning reports, current State GOP Vice-Chair Hope Scheppelman has also told anyone who will listen that she plans to seek the top job if Williams doesn’t run again. Former State Rep. and CO-04 congressional candidate Richard Holtorf has also talked about running for State Party Chair, which will be decided in a vote among Republicans on March 29.

Whoever serves as the next State Republican Party Chair will inherit a mess of an operation that has long been running on financial fumes and was divided over legal battles to oust Williams. In the 2024 election cycle, the State GOP was so incompetent that the Arizona Republican Party had to take on the job of sending direct mail pieces on behalf of congressional candidates Jeff “Bread Sandwich” Hurd (CO-03) and Gabe Evans (CO-08). The outcome of this race will also tell us a lot about whether the Colorado Republican Party can start to turn away from its recent lurch toward lunacy and focus on its job of trying to elect more Republicans in an increasingly-blue state.

If we had to place a bet on how things shake out, it wouldn’t be in favor of sanity.