November 17, 2025 03:06 PM UTC

If Brita Horn Falls in a Forest, Does Anyone Hear It?

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Republican Party is nothing if not utterly and hopelessly predictable.

As Ernest Luning reports for the publication formerly known as the Colorado Statesman, the state party that POLITICO once said “would rather lose than change” is once again wrapped around its own axle:

For the second time in as many years, a group of Colorado Republicans are planning to convene a meeting of the party’s state central committee despite the state GOP insisting that the proposed meeting would be “illegal” because its organizers haven’t complied with the party’s bylaws.

Critics of state Republican Party Chair Brita Horn say they intend to hold a meeting on Dec. 13 to consider several items, including a “no confidence” vote in Horn’s leadership and a motion to freeze party spending until fundraising improves.

Also on the agenda is a measure to prohibit the state party from pursuing protracted legal action against a group of Republicans who sued Horn and others last year amid a lengthy dispute over control of the state GOP.

The Republicans who want to oust State Party Chair Brita Horn appear to have met a roadblock that is State Party Chair Brita Horn. As Luning continues:

Horn, however, said in an email to Republicans this week that the petition submitted last month by organizers of the proposed meeting doesn’t comply with party requirements, since it wasn’t gathered using the proper form.

Additionally, she noted, a number of central committee members have challenged the petition’s validity, postponing any action related to its demands until the challenge is resolved at an upcoming meeting of another committee later this month.

Raymond Garcia, chairman of the Colorado Hispanic Republicans, sent out an email last week that he phrased as a “formal call” for a meeting on Dec. 13 in which a vote of no confidence would be held against Horn. Or not, because Horn responded with her own email to party officers:

“I write to inform you that this purported call is null and void, which will also be true of any result of this meeting,” Horn said in the email to party officials. Later in the email, she added: “The purported meeting call issued by Mr. Garcia is (to be extra redundant) unauthorized, invalid, null and void.”

Garcia claims that GOP Party Vice Chairman Richard Holtorf might be willing to oversee the Dec. 13 meeting depending on what happens first at a meeting on Nov. 20, which will supposedly address with the State Party Executive Committee whether or not the Dec. 13 meeting is official…or something. Honestly, it’s virtually impossible to follow this nonsense.

This latest standoff is similar to the silliness that overwhelmed the Colorado GOP in 2023-24, when one group of activists tried to find legal avenues for getting rid of then-Party Chair Dave Williams but kept running into the same questions about what really constitutes an “official” meeting — one of which was literally held under an actual bridge somewhere near Bayfield, Colorado. Williams eventually prevailed after much legal maneuvering and remained Chair through the remainder of his term (which ended in March 2025). This is what Colorado Republicans were spending most of their time doing in the final months of the 2024 election instead of, you know, focusing on the actual election.

Any hope that the State GOP would get less ridiculous under Horn’s leadership was short lived. In fact, this is already the second “is this a real meeting or not a real meeting” conundrum for Colorado Republicans in 2025. In September, a group of Colorado Republicans got together to vote on opting out of the state’s “open primary” system, though nobody seemed to know how to actually do this. Supporters of “opting out” claimed victory, but the State Republican Party argued that the vote was illegal because of…hell, it doesn’t really matter.

The clowns may change, but the circus never ends.