February 23, 2026 02:51 PM UTC

Colorado Republicans In Deja Vu Disarray

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Ernest Luning reports for the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog formerly known as the Colorado Statesman, over the weekend Colorado Republicans–some of them, anyway–held a meeting to express their displeasure at the current state party leadership, while the duly elected leaders of the Colorado Republican Party insist that the meeting and the vote of no confidence in the chair of the party was invalid, illegal, void, groundless, and (checks notes) in very poor taste.

If this sounds like a story from 2024, not 2026, you’re both right and wrong:

Roughly half the membership of the Colorado Republican Party’s state central committee on Saturday voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution expressing “no confidence” in state GOP Chairman Brita Horn’s leadership and calling for her immediate resignation in an online meeting Horn says wasn’t authorized and will have “zero impact.”

The 250 Republican party officials who convened Saturday also approved resolutions freezing Horn’s spending authority and ordering her to bring an end to all legal activities surrounding prolonged litigation stemming from attempts nearly two years ago to depose her predecessor.

“Brita, in her own weird way, found a way to unite our party,” said state Republican Party Secretary Russ Andrews, who organized and chaired Saturday’s central committee meeting, which was held on the Zoom teleconference platform.

It’s a dispute not just similar but more or less identical to the meetings held by a faction of Colorado Republicans seeking the ouster of then-Colorado GOP chairman Dave Williams two years ago, after Williams turned the state party into a vehicle to promote Williams’ own congressional primary along with several other losing candidates (and Rep. Lauren Boebert) and mismanaged the party’s finances so badly that national Republicans turned to other state parties to run mail programs in support of Colorado GOP candidates.

Although Williams’ successor in the party chair Brita Horn isn’t shamelessly co-opting the party for her own personal advancement, there’s little evidence that she is accomplishing anything productive ahead of the 2026 election, facing severe financial problems and with only a single individual on the party’s full-time payroll. Nonetheless, in eerie similarity to the divided opposition Williams faced, Brita Horn’s detractors are split on how to even proceed with trying to oust her:

Andrews and others at Saturday’s meeting urged Republicans in attendance to show up for the other meeting and “vote the same way.” That sentiment, however, wasn’t unanimous, with one central committee member calling on Republicans to skip the meeting because he didn’t want to “legitimize anything Brita does.” [Pols emphasis]

Although the meeting this weekend voted on disputed authority to strip Horn of her authority to spend money on the party’s behalf, without money in the bank or employees to pay it’s kind of a moot issue. What we have when you get past all the acrimonious finger-pointing is a state Republican Party entering yet another election cycle completely distracted from their core purpose, which is to support Republican candidates. They’re too busy fighting among themselves and with their former chairman to be bothered. Just like with Dave Williams, the only real opportunity to prevent disaster was before incompetent actors were allowed to take control. Once they’re in charge, dislodging them is its own ordeal.

No donor in their right mind should underwrite this. It was true when Williams was in charge of the Colorado GOP, and Brita Horn has reaffirmed it for 2026.