If you’ve been following the race to be the new leader of the Colorado Republican Party, you know there’s plenty to drop your jaw over: the fight among the candidates over who’s closest to convicted election conspiracist Tina Peters; the competition over who can hate trans kids the most; the culty Trump love fest. And more.
But, in reality, the issue that matters most is whether the next GOP leader will continue the current chair’s crazy obsession with pulling the Colorado Republican Party out of Colorado’s open primary elections, creating enemies of the state’s independent voters and cementing the Colorado GOP indefinitely into its current state of irrelevancy — where it doesn’t matter all that much what they say about Tina Peters, trans kids, Trump, and such because they have no power.
Does cemented into irrelevancy sound extreme? Well, how would you feel if you were an Unaffiliated voter and Republicans blocked you from voting for them in the primary election? And Democrats welcomed you to do so? Human nature says you’d be like, “What the fuck?” And you’d feel connected to Democratic candidates because you could choose to vote for them. And they would be wooing you as well.
Maybe not all independent voters would run away from you, but plenty would, more than enough to cement the GOP into oblivion. That’s because nearly half of Colorado’s voters are Unaffiliated. Democrats and Republicans are only about a quarter of the electorate each.
Also, if you’re a Republican in Colorado, you don’t want to risk making independent voters even more mad at you than they are already (As it is, sixty percent cast ballots for Democrats.).
Yet, the top candidates fighting (nastily) to be the next GOP chair are frantic to make it clear they want the Republican Party to opt out of Colorado’s open primaries as soon as possible, whether it be via a lawsuit or a vote of party leaders. They want to run their own private primaries; Republicans only.
This was affirmed in answers to question number one at a March 14 debate among some of the candidates running to be the Colorado GOP.
“Do you support open primary elections, yes or no?” asked the debate moderator.
Republican Party official Darcy Schoening: “Absolutely not.”
El Paso Country GOP activist Jeremy Goodall: “Noooooo.”
Former lawmaker Lori Saine: “Hell no.”
“If we are going to continue allowing non-Republicans to vote in our candidate elections and Democrats to fund and throw money around in our primary elections, and then have the whole thing counted by a Democrat secretary of state, why even call ourselves Republicans?” said Goodall, who was wearing an “Opt Out” button, at the debate, hosted by the Colorado Hispanic Republicans.
Another GOP state-chair candidate, state Rep. Richard Holtorf (R-Akron), has stated he’d put the question “up for a vote” of leaders of the Republican Party.
But there’s hope for neurofiring Republicans. Longtime GOP organizer Brita Horn, another candidate to lead the state GOP, has taken the opposite view, stating in a candidate questionnaire, “I do not support the party to opt out of the state primary system.”
Why?
“Since Unaffiliateds make up nearly 48% of the electorate, opting out would exclude approximately 750,000 potential Republicans from directly voting in the primary,” wrote Horn in the questionnaire. “Unaffiliateds would only get the Democrat ballot instead of a choice between our party and theirs, wouldn’t the Democrats love that free advertising!
She continued, “We rely on Republican-leaning Unaffiliateds to win, and need to bring over another 300,000 or so Democrat-leaning Unaffiliateds to win statewide again. Our approach should be to get every Republican registered voter, every Unaffiliated Republican-leaning voter to turn out, and then persuade with good messaging and a clear vision the 300,000 or so Unaffiliated Democrat voters we need to win by inviting them into our party, not pushing them away.”
That’s an example of GOP logic that’s actually logical.
But it’s lost on leaders of the Colorado Republican Party. And Democrats couldn’t be happier.
