In a flailing attempt to hold onto their power, Colorado GOP officers are wielding Democrat lawfare tactics to shut up the rebel Republicans who want them deposed. State GOP Chairman Dave Williams misrepresented Party rules to a judge to obtain a last-minute temporary restraining order (TRO) scuttling a perfectly legal meeting of the State Central Committee (SCC) planned for July 27 for a vote to oust him as state chair.

Williams’ suit named El Paso County GOP Vice Chair Todd Watkins and Jefferson County GOP Chair Nancy Pallozzi, his critics who organized the meeting and reportedly had over 250 SCC members coming. Watkins and Pallozzi strictly observed the Party bylaws in calling the meeting, yet Williams convinced the judge to declare it illegal. The rebel forces are appealing; a reckoning is coming.

Sparking a rebellion

The revolt against Williams, his Vice-Chair Hope Scheppelman and Secretary Anna Ferguson has been simmering ever since Williams, without permission from the 25-member Executive Committee, spent $60,000 or more of Party money on costly pre-primary ad mailers promoting himself as a congressional candidate and attacking his main primary opponent, Jeff Crank, in Congressional District 5 – the Colorado Springs area.

Williams knows that whoever wins the primary in the very Republican CD5 will very likely win the general election. Printing the “Paid for by the Colorado Republican Committee” line on his ad mailers gave Williams Republican voter credibility over the other candidates by implying the Party endorsement, which he didn’t have. And using the Party’s much cheaper bulk mail permit rate for his campaign ads gave him another significant unfair advantage. But according to several Republican officials familiar with campaign finance rules, Williams could be risking a charge of mail fraud by pirating the Party’s nonprofit mailing permit for his campaign. In mid-June, Williams made a $60,000 “donation” to the Party, presumably as pay-back for his raid of the Party coffers. But that too could be illegal in the eyes of the FEC; certainly it’s unethical.

Williams never would have gotten an opportunity for such skullduggery in the GOP of yesteryear. But the new chair convinced the 400-member State Central Committee to vote for his most ardent “grassroots” campaign promise: overturning the Party’s traditional pre-primary neutrality in favor of unprecedented new bylaws that let the state and county parties endorse or oppose Republican candidates before the primary.

That change enabled Williams to seize his chance to endorse only the candidates who passed the purity test of going through caucus and assembly to make the ballot. But he added yet another layer of squeaky-clean with a wide-ranging questionnaire that candidates had to pass for Party endorsement. Even Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan would have flunked many of the 22 questions demanding ideological conformity.

Williams went on to spend Republican Party funds to attack Republican primary candidates with deceitful mailers and emails, including Jeff Hurd (CD3), Gabe Evans (CD8), Jeff Crank (Williams’ rival in CD5) Kristi Burton Brown (State Board of Education and former state party chair) and Max Brooks (House District 45). Despite his most villainous efforts to discredit and undermine these good candidates, they all won their primaries, nearly all by double digits.

The GOP dumpster fire

What an embarrassment. In total, Williams’ attempt to control primary contests failed spectacularly.  Of the 18 contested races where the Party under his direction endorsed candidates, only four won – a humiliating 22% win rate. And Williams himself was thoroughly trounced in CD5, losing by almost 2-to-1 to winner Jeff Crank.

Williams faces even more ridicule as two candidates who overwhelmingly won their primaries against Party-endorsed opponents, Gabe Evans (CD8) and Jeff Hurd (CD3), were named by the National Republican Congressional Committee to the Young Guns program for top challengers in critical seats.

This means they’ll qualify for big campaign bucks to win these important House races, a very good thing since Williams’ highly suspect highjinks have scared away traditional deep-pockets Party donors. Even the RNC has put a screeching halt to their Colorado GOP donations.

Williams’ fortunes continue to crash as all but one of the eight winning Republican congressional nominees have called for him to resign or be ousted. Seems they don’t quite trust that the dear leader who so vigorously tried to destroy their primary campaigns will dole out funding for their general election campaigns, which is actually a legitimate Party function.

Williams’ disastrous focus on picking pre-primary winners and losers happens at a time when the number of Republicans in the Colorado legislature is at historic lows. Now is no time to purge the party of good candidates who Williams and his cabal disparage as moderates.

To win, the Republican chairman must put all Party resources toward electing more Republicans, rather than using state GOP funds as his own primary campaign slush fund and creating an exhausting endorsement gauntlet for candidates. Electing Republicans is, after all, the Party chair’s main job.  Instead, the Party’s own rules discriminate against excellent Republican candidates who appeal to the larger electorate and choose to petition onto the ballot rather than undergoing the caucus/assembly process the Party favors.

Neighborhood precinct caucuses where assembly delegate elections take place are very sparsely attended, yet the Party insists they are the sole acceptable route to the ballot.

Petition candidates face harsh Party restrictions. They aren’t allowed to speak at state assembly and are also banned from addressing county assemblies and monthly county Central Committee meetings to garner votes, even though petitioning is a perfectly legal route to the ballot. Muzzling certain candidates from making their case to the Party’s elected activists at these important meetings is neither fair nor just and betrays the Republican allegiance to free speech.

The rebellion continues

The July 27 meeting that was squelched by the TRO turned into an exuberant rally attended by over 120 Party dissenters, mostly SCC members, who heard campaign speeches from activists vying to replace Williams if he is deposed. Watkins and Pallozzi have appealed the TRO, schooling the judge on Party due process bylaws that let them take the controversy to the SCC, which Williams somehow failed to mention in his lawsuit.

A new meeting is being scheduled.

Sadly, the Colorado Republican Party is unrecognizable as the onetime bastion of fairness, equal opportunity for all, and free speech. All of these time-honored GOP fundamentals have been abandoned under Dave Williams’ reign. We need a new leader who puts our Party’s values and our beautiful state and nation before his own selfish interests.

The Dave Williams die-hards celebrating how their illegitimate lawfare cancelled a perfectly legal July 27 SCC meeting would do well to take a lesson from Star Wars, from Christian history, from the Revolutionary War, and from the saga of Donald Trump in the last eight years: the more the oppressors persecute the rebels, the stronger the rebel forces become.

Joy Overbeck is a Colorado journalist and Douglas County, Colorado, Republican Precinct Leader whose work has appeared at Townhall.com, Complete Colorado, Rocky Mountain Voice, American Thinker, The Washington Times, The Federalist and elsewhere. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter (X) @joyoverbeck1