Opinion: Colorado Republican Party officials keep digging deeper hole with bylaw change

Leaders of the Colorado Republican Party on Saturday, Sept. 30, voted against a proposal that could have dramatically altered how the party chooses candidates.

The proposal was for the party to opt out of primary elections in Colorado, and because the move would have transferred a massive amount of influence to hard-right candidates it justifiably garnered plenty of attention.

But another proposal that will give the party’s far-right members a huge advantage did win approval Saturday. It has gotten little notice, but it potentially could recast how the party nominates candidates.

Colorado has “open” primaries — unaffiliated voters can participate in one or the other major party’s non-presidential primary elections. This system was established in 2016, when Colorado voters passed Proposition 108. Some Republicans detest the law. Party purists don’t want voters they view as outsiders meddling in the process of choosing their candidates, and they believe openness leaves the process vulnerable to mischief by Democrats. They prefer a strict caucus-assembly system, which is more likely to produce candidates with far-right credentials.

Proposition 108 came with a clause that said a state party can opt out of primaries altogether if 75% of the party’s central committee votes to use an assembly or convention nominating process. That’s what the 400-plus members of the central committee Saturday, under opt-out proponent Dave Williams, the election-denying new party chair, voted on. A clear majority — 65% — favored opting out, but the three-fourths bar proved too high to achieve.

However, the day’s agenda also included a vote on an arcane party bylaw amendment. Previously the party had a rule that said its officers couldn’t endorse or oppose individual Republican candidates before a primary election. They had to stay neutral. The idea was that their job was to promote the party’s interests and support Republican campaigns over Democratic and other candidates. Their preference for one Republican or another was not supposed to get in the way of their duty to serve the party.

Not anymore.

Now the state’s top Republican party officers are free to attack Republican candidates. The bylaw as of Saturday says the party has no obligation to support, and may oppose, any candidate who makes it onto a primary ballot without going through the assembly process.

In Colorado, candidates can access the primary ballot by one of two ways, or both: by earning enough party-member support during the caucus and assembly process or by collecting enough petition signatures from voters in their party.

Purge-minded purists like Williams disdain the petition route as the way of RINOs — “Republicans in name only.” They hold up the example of Joe O’Dea — the unsuccessful Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Colorado last year, who accessed the ballot by petition and angered the far right when he supported limited abortion rights — as a candidate the hardcore GOP “grassroots” at assembly would never have allowed to appear on the ballot.

That’s why some see the amended bylaw as a “soft opt-out.” Williams might not have got to cancel the GOP primary, but he and his acolytes gained some control over who wins by canceling neutrality.

“It’s a very significant change,” Duncan Bremer, an El Paso County attorney and former chair of the state GOP’s bylaws committee, said. “It’s a big break with the traditional open access to the ballot that the Republicans have traditionally stood for … They’re breaking that process totally apart, and it’s now much more similar to a traditional communist party, in a communist country, kind of approach: ‘My way or the highway, once I get the position of being a party boss.’”

The party was in desperate need of leaders who could improve its standing after its dismal performance in recent elections. Instead the party looks increasingly hopeless.

Bremer said it should be easier to access the ballot by petition, and the bylaw amendment will backfire on the Williams faction, since “it’s an indication of how far they are willing to go to make sure that the party bosses are the ones who determine who gets on the primary ballot” and will drive more candidates to the petition route.

Kevin McCarney, former chair of the Mesa County Republican Party and a member of the party central committee that met Saturday, spoke out against both the opt-out and bylaw amendment proposals.

“As a party chairman, the hardest stuff that I had was being neutral. Hardest thing to do. But I did it for four years,” McCarney told Newsline this week. “And it comes with the job. And if you can’t do the primary role of your job, don’t take on the responsibility.”

The amendment undercuts any pretense Williams, a 2020 election denier, promotes “election integrity,” when in fact the change serves to fix elections, McCarney said.

“This group of people on the executive board have never cared about neutrality anyway,” McCarney said. “This is all power play. ‘We want our types of people to run.’ So if you’re not one of their type of people running for office, you’re in trouble.”

The amendment is just the latest in a series of moves by the Williams faction to promote ideologues and punish dissenters. They’re also suing the state to get Proposition 108 ruled unconstitutional. They view their efforts as cleansing the party of the disloyal and the unprincipled, but the effect has been to alienate would-be members and isolate those who remain. The party was in desperate need of leaders who could improve its standing after its dismal performance in recent elections. Instead the party looks increasingly hopeless.

As Bremer put it, “The net effect seems to be that, under their leadership, the Republican Party is self-destructing.”

Editor’s note: This opinion column first appeared on Colorado Newsline, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.