March 10, 2017 04:03 PM UTC

You Don't Want This Endorsement, Jeff Hays

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• by: Colorado Pols

We couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at this story from the Colorado Springs Gazette about a new endorsement in the race for the next Chair of the State Republican Party:

Jeff Hays’s campaign for Colorado GOP chair circulated yet another letter from a Republican notable Thursday — state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman — in support of his bid. Hays’s rival for the state party’s top post, George Athanasopoulos, meanwhile dismissed Coffman’s gesture as coming from “the political class.”

Coffman’s letter, distributed to GOP state Central Committee members and other Republicans statewide, continues a full-court press being mounted by Hays’s team to dial in the party’s headliners. Coffman casts Hays as the one who can get things done.

Why is this so amusing? Because the last time Attorney General Cynthia Coffman endorsed a candidate for State Party Chair, things got weird in a hurry. Coffman backed Steve House for GOP Chair in early 2015, and just three months later, she was part of a ham-handed blackmail/extortion plot orchestrated to get House to resign as State Chair.

What came next was a long, confounding story stemming from a secret meeting at the Warwick Hotel in Denver, which ultimately led to Coffman having to state explicitly why her actions did not meet the legal definition of blackmail (when you have to explain yourself in that much detail, things have gone well off the rails). House remained on the job as GOP Chair, though several local party officials were forced to resign in shame as the State Republican Party was dragged through months of bad press that even drew national attention.

So, anyway, good luck with all that, Jeff Hays.