Photo by Dan Pancamo.
Saturday, Aug. 24 is shaping up to be an eventful day for those monitoring the infighting of the Colorado Republican Party and the death spiral of the El Paso County Republican Party. Not only will the state central committee meet to decide if Chair Dave Williams will be the latest Colorado GOP leader to be removed, but the El Paso County Central Committee will also meeting to decide if Vice Chair Todd Watkins, who has supported the effort to remove Williams, will be removed from his El Paso County position.
“I can tell you that there are a lot of upset people here in El Paso County with what he’s doing,” said El Paso County GOP Chair Vickie Tonkins during a Friday appearance on the Chuck and Julie Show. “I don’t understand it. It makes no sense to me. It has saddened many of us because we were such supporters of Todd. He’s speaking for me, of things I’ve never said. I don’t get that kind of behavior. You know, a lot of people have asked me, ‘Was he just this all along and just deceived us? Did this happen because he’s so angry?’ You know, and I can’t answer that. All I can answer is that he has decided to check out.”
On Aug. 8, Tonkins called for a special meeting of the El Paso County Central Committee on Aug. 24, “Due to a large number of Central Committee members who are concerned about what is happening in our county, as well as our state, this call is specifically for the removal of Vice Chair – Todd Watkins, pursuant to the El Paso County Republican Central Committee Bylaws.” Last month Tonkins pushed for the county party to censure Watkins and urge him to resign.
Watkins, alongside Jefferson County GOP Chair Nancy Pallozzi, will be part of their own meeting in Brighton to vote on the removal of Williams. Watkins has been critical of Williams’ use of party resources to support primary races across the state, noting that Williams, as the Colorado GOP Chair, was able to access the delegate data through the Colorado Republican Caucus and Assembly System before other candidates in the 5th Congressional District primary, leading to a criminal complaint filed by candidate Joshua Griffin in March.
This isn’t the first time Tonkins has moved to take action against fellow Republicans. In 2022, during the run-up to midterm elections, the El Paso County Republican Party held a special central committee meeting to censure 33 party members, many of whom were current elected officials and candidates, whom Tonkins accused of organizing with Peak Republicans and “disparaging” the El Paso County Republican Party. Tonkins was in turn censured by then-Chair Kristi Burton Brown.
Following the Aug. 24 El Paso County Central Committee meeting, the El Paso GOP will host their annual Lincoln Day Dinner with guest speaker Mike Lindell.
“The crowd that runs the El Paso County Republican Party is the same crowd that runs the state Republican Party,” said former Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams during a Saturday appearance on the Peter Boyles Show. “The chair down in El Paso County, Vickie Tonkins, is a strong ally of Dave Williams. They still continue to contend that the 2020 election was stolen. They stand behind Tina Peters in that trial going on in Grand Junction right now, and, frankly, Mike Lindell is a folk hero to them.”
Tonkins has long been a supporter of Colorado’s election denial movement. The 2021 Lincoln Day Dinner, which featured Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA), resulted in two campaign finance complaints, one for a $1,000 donation made, in error, to Douglas County podcaster Joe Oltmann’s FEC United, instead of the militia group United American Defense Force, an armed wing of FEC United, for security services. Lindell has been a close ally of Peters, Oltmann, and other prominent Colorado Republicans who claim the 2020 election was rigged.
“What’s interesting to me is again, and again, and again, and again, Lindell has been proven — I’ll use the rough term — to be a ‘liar,’” said Boyles. “He has never been able — he’s John Eastman. He has never been able to produce anything that would show anyone with a room temperature, IQ, ‘Gee, this election was stolen.’ But it doesn’t matter. This is why these people are cultists.”
Wadhams blamed Tonkins, Williams, and the “grassroots” wing of the Colorado Republican party for recent electoral losses in the state.
“That whole Williams crowd, they really think that the reason why Republicans are losing in Colorado is because we need to be strongly behind Donald Trump and the stolen election conspiracy,” said Wadhams. “If we just double down on that, we will win elections. I mean, look at Ron Hanks, who recently lost that primary in the 3rd Congressional District. If you look at, well, Dave Williams himself, when he ran for Congress in the 5th [Congressional District] and he got beat 2 to 1. Look at the guy that Gabe Evans beat [Janak Joshi] in the 8th Congressional District. They continue to contend that Donald Trump had the election stolen from him and that that needs to be a pivotal part of the Republican campaign overall in 2024.”
While Wadhams’ examples hold true for both Williams and Hanks, his inclusion of the CD8 primary between Evans and Joshi isn’t as clean, given that neither candidate was willing to say the 2020 election results were legitimate.
