Speaking at a GOP assembly on Saturday, former state lawmaker Justin Everett, who’s the chair of the Trump campaign in Colorado, said Colorado’s 23 Trump delegates to the Republican National Convention (RNC) must sign affidavits pledging their support for the former president. Colorado Republicans will send a total of 37 delegates to the RNC.
Trump chose each of Colorado’s 23 delegates personally, Everett told the crowd, based on an eight-page application submitted by all who applied for the RNC position. Part of that application is the affidavit requirement, he said.
A spokeswoman for the Colorado Democratic Party stated that Democrats are not required to sign an affidavit, but the Biden campaign “has a right to review and reject delegates who were not Biden supporters.”
The Trump campaign is likely trying to prevent delegates from bolting from Trump at the RNC — an unlikely scenario but not without precedent.
At the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, some Colorado delegates with ties to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) tried to force a vote on a rule change that would have allowed Trump delegates to jump to Cruz. The effort failed but upended the Trump Campaign’s efforts to display complete GOP unity at the convention.
Everett referenced the GOP’s application process Saturday at the Colorado Republicans’ 8th Congressional District (CD8) assembly at Northglenn High School in Greeley.
Three RNC delegates, plus three alternates, chosen at the assembly were: Secretary of the Colorado Republican Party Anna Ferguson; Kaarl Hoopes, GOP congressional District 8 vice chair; Weld County Commissioner Lori Saine; businessman Greg Yielding, who’s part of the National Onion Federation; Ryan McBride, a tech company executive; and Wendy McBride, a “Christian conservative momma bear.”
Saine was one of a handful of Colorado’s Trump delegates who didn’t take part in the revolt against Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention, she’s said, which could explain in part why she’d been chosen to be Colorado’s first 2024 official Trump surrogate speaker.
Ferguson is an election denier who also has pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, which in 2019 was labeled a domestic terror threat by the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice.
After the RNC delegates were chosen, GOP delegates at the assembly chose two CD8 congressional candidates, state Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Ft. Lupton) and former state lawmaker Janak Joshi, to advance to the June 25 primary. The winner will take on Democratic Congresswoman Yadira Caraveao in what’s expected to be one of the most competitive congressional races in the country.
7/15/24 — The spelling of Kaarl Hoopes’ name was corrected.
