The Dave Williams era is over. Colorado Republicans elected three new officers, and while they are all very much MAGA, none are aligned with the former chair or his supporters. Newly elected Chairwoman Brita Horn defeated former legislator and Weld County commissioner Lori Saine, after the first round cleared out five other hopefuls.
Horn, a longtime conservative activist, volunteer fire chief, and public speaker really only differed from Saine on one major issue: she opposed Williams’ push for GOP leadership to opt-out of Colorado’s open primary system. That said, she still supports the party’s lawsuit to overturn the open primaries, which voters approved nearly a decade ago.
Reached via email, former state Sen. Kevin Lundberg, who has been spearheading the legal challenge, says the lawsuit will continue.
“My counsel to the committee was to stay the course and Chairwoman Horn assured me she was in agreement with that course of action,” said Lundberg. He added that he expects the trial to be scheduled for later this year.
Speaking of lawsuits, Horn was sued by the party she now leads earlier this year for her role in attempting to oust Williams last fall.
Her efforts, along with former Jeffco GOP Chair Nancy Pallozzi and former El Paso GOP Chair Eli Bremer and others, generated considerable antipathy from the pro-Williams Republicans — many of whom took to social media after Horn’s win to lament what they see as the wealthy establishment’s recapture of the party. This despite Horn being a proud Trump supporter who chose RNC Committeewoman Christy Fidura, an election denier who wants Tina Peters pardoned, to nominate her.
GOP Central Committee member Hugo Chavez-Rey, who served as chairman of the Colorado Hispanic Republicans (CHR) for over a decade, decried Horn’s win.
“We will be stuck with open primaries and a puppet Chair with Anschutz and his billionaire cronies like the Koch brothers back in control,” wrote Chavez-Rey on Facebook. “Brita will gleefully do their bidding.”
Horn, who emphasized the need for unity in her speech, also touted her extensive professional political experience, citing her job on Trump’s 2020 New Mexico campaign team.
More recently Horn worked running the volunteer team at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, where Steve Bannon spoke and concluded his remarks with a Nazi salute.
The current CHR Chair echoed Chavez-Rey, posting, “I see the events of the last couple months as a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum because they want to stick a fork in the electric socket. The parents try to tell them no it is not good… But they are crying so much that they can’t hear or understand what is bad for them. The next two years are going to be a huge awakening to both the puppets and the people that supported those puppets.”
Asked if he agrees with those activists saying Horn will be a “puppet” for the GOP establishment backed by billionaire Phil Anschutz and other wealthy donors, Arapahoe Tea Party Chair Weston Imer, who also serves on the RNC Youth Advisory Council Committee, concurred.
“That is exactly accurate,” said Imer. “Brita is part of the establishment, no matter what they tried to say. This is going back to business as usual, just like under KBB [Kristi Burton Brown] and Ken Buck where an executive director will get all the money and they will fill out the office with overpaid staff.”
Imer also offered a statement released by his Team Imer PAC that began, “Yesterday, the establishment uni-party of Colorado won the race for Colorado GOP Chair,” and featured a post by Colorado Democratic Chair Shad Mural who noted that Williams had been successful in energizing the MAGA base.
In another twist, none of the new officers live on the Front Range. Horn hails from just outside McCoy, in Routt County, Vice Chair Darrel Lee Phelan lives in Trinidad, and Secretary Russ Andrews is a Carbondale resident.
In an interview with Colorado Times Recorder contributor David O. Williams last week, Horn stressed the need for her party to have a big tent, but also emphasized her support of Trump, saying, “I was DOGE before DOGE was DOGE.” She also defended Trump’s plan to slash Medicaid by $880 billion as “just weeding out everything.”
