As one of only four states where the No Labels Party has made the 2024 presidential ballot, Colorado is a hotbed of debate over the potential impact of this largely Republican-funded political party, which bills itself as a centrist alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties.
When it came to choosing which minor parties he wanted to negotiate with, Colorado GOP Chair Dave Williams only had one question: would they “adversely affect the Republican nominee?”
Republican Party chairs aren’t supposed to show a preference for candidates within their own party. Yesterday, however, Colorado Chair Dave Williams flat-out warned state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, who lost a nailbiter in last year’s race for Colorado’s new 8th Congressional District (CD8), that if she runs again, she’ll face not only incumbent Democrat Yadira Caraveo but a Libertarian Party candidate as well. That could lead to a repeat of the scenario from 2022 in which Libertarian Richard Ward earned several thousand more votes than the 1,500 vote difference between Caraveo and Kirkmeyer.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Republicans are hiring conservative attorney John Eastman to attempt to overturn the will of the voters. Any déja vu you may be experiencing is understandable. The difference is instead of Trump hiring him to flip a presidential election, now the Colorado GOP wants Eastman to sue the state to overturn Proposition 108, the ballot initiative passed by a wide margin in 2016 that opened our major party primary elections to independent voters.
When Asa Hutchinson took the stage at the Western Conservative Summit (WCS)on Saturday, the circumstances seemed primed for the presidential hopeful to really make a splash. His top rival, former President Trump, had just been indicted on 37 felonies. Now the former Arkansas governor, who just the day before had publicly demanded Trump’s resignation, now had an audience (and a livestream) of several hundred die-hard Republican activists, most of whom will vote in Colorado’s Republican primary next year. This was his chance to let them know just how much better a candidate he would be. Yet Hutchinson didn’t mention Trump at all. Instead, soon after leaving the stage to moderate applause, Hutchinson gave a remote interview to CNN where he once again called on Trump to drop out of the race “for the good of the country.”
When Phil Anschutz’s media company decided to add a Denver version of its Gazette newspaper, it presumably did so, at least in part, assuming that the added endorsement capacity would help its preferred candidates.
Denver Republicans and conservative-leaning independents may be surprised to find canvassers knocking on their doors this week as the city’s mayoral race comes down to its final days.
UPDATE: Rep. DeGraaf spoke extensively with the Colorado Times Recorder soon after publication, clarifying his concept of sovereign citizens as opposed to the broadly understood term. This piece has been updated with his comments.
Despite telling a radio host that he used a “group chat” to direct his House Republican colleagues to walk out on the Legislature’s final day, state Rep. Matt Soper (R-Delta) now claims he has no record of that chat message. The same goes for all members of the House Republican leadership, who jointly responded to the Colorado Times Recorder’s open records request by saying they have “no responsive records.”
Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO) joined many of her Freedom Caucus colleagues in a full-blown “globalist” conspiracy press conference yesterday.
