September 29, 2025 01:01 PM UTC

Ain't No Party Like a Colorado Republican Party

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• by: Colorado Pols

As we’ve long documented in this space, the Colorado Republican Party may theoretically exist for the purpose of defeating Democrats, but its members truly love nothing more than a messy internal fight.

The latest bout of nonsense (pun intended) took place in Aurora on Saturday. As Ernest Luning reports for the publication formerly known as the Colorado Statesman:

Colorado Republicans voted Saturday to force the state party to cancel next year’s party primary and instead pick GOP nominees via party assemblies, but state party officers say the vote at a chaotic state central committee meeting in Aurora didn’t meet the legally required threshold, so the party will hold a primary election in 2026.

Supporters of “opting out” of the primary, however, insist that the vote was binding and say they’ll see the state party in court.

Confusion reigned after results were announced at 2 p.m. in the final moments of a five-hour meeting held inside a lecture hall at the University of Colorado Anschutz health sciences campus as campus police ordered Republicans to vacate the premises because they hadn’t rented the building past 1 p.m.

Immediately, both sides declared victory while also decrying an oftentimes tense meeting that featured booing, shouting and heated arguments over the sincerity of calls for party unity. [Pols emphasis]

It is completely on-brand for the State GOP that police officers were needed to end the discussion; in the conservative hub of El Paso County, Colorado Springs police and El Paso County sheriff’s deputies are often called to break up meetings that devolve into violent threats — assuming that anyone can figure out which meeting is the real one.

It is also no surprise to see that a Republican Party meeting ended without reaching any sort of conclusion on the topic at hand. As Luning continues:

At issue is whether state Republicans will participate in next year’s semi-open primary, which allows unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in either major parties’ nominating election, under Proposition 108, a state ballot measure passed by voters in 2016. The law contains a provision that lets the parties opt out of the primary if 75% of their state central committee membership votes to do so.

The state GOP, however, has voted on the question every two years since Proposition 108 became law and is currently challenging the measure in court, claiming it infringes on multiple constitutional rights. The party’s central committee has fallen short of the required threshold each time, though when roughly 65% of its membership voted in favor of opting out in 2023, supporters expressed optimism that the tide was turning.

That isn’t what happened at the Republicans’ meeting on Saturday. Instead, 226 of the GOP’s 507-member state central committee — about 45% of the total membership — voted for a motion to abide by a previous resolution in favor of opting out that was overwhelmingly adopted at the party’s 2024 state assembly.

While those 226 votes amounted to a majority at the meeting, with 196 voting against the motion, Republicans opposed to canceling the primary said the vote doesn’t satisfy the clear legal requirement, so has no effect. [Pols emphasis]

Um…what?

El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen, who opposes canceling the Primary, summed up the events on Saturday with a statement that could have been written ahead of time:

“Essentially, they ran out the clock on themselves. And they did this on purpose. Confusion resulted from the voting results … but the substance and outcome are absolutely clear. They knew going in they didn’t have the 75% required to actually opt out. So instead of allowing a vote on that question, they sowed confusion and forced a vote on a separate question. Now, they will use that confusion to sow further dissent and division.”

Sounds like a fun time was had by all! See you at the next lawsuit announcement!

Over the last decade, Colorado’s changing demographics have turned the state from a vibrant shade of purple into a solid blue. Republicans would have a hard time winning in Colorado even if the Party apparatus weren’t completely dysfunctional. We examined the various problems faced by the Colorado Republican Party in a three-part series from 2023 titled “The Circle of Strife,” and little has changed in the two years since.

Following a 2022 election cycle in which the State GOP was essentially operating out of two separate offices, Republicans began the 2024 election cycle with a litany of Primary challengers. As Election Day neared, Republicans were spending most of their time suing the crap out of each other. Violent threats didn’t stop with the November election, either.

Any hopes that former Routt County Treasurer Brita Horn would be a more stabilizing Party Chair than Dave Williams have already evaporated, which is no surprise given her, um, curious viewpoints on a variety of issues. It’s not just State Party leadership that is to blame, either; new House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell seems more interested in continuing silly insider battles than on forming a real legislative strategy for his caucus.

The Colorado GOP culture is chaos, and it is fully entrenched.