A group of Colorado Republicans is moving ahead with a plan to boot party chairman Dave Williams after a judge ruled that his court lacked jurisdiction to block it.
Tuesday evening’s ruling reversed an earlier temporary order by the same judge that blocked the disaffected Republicans from conducting official business. El Paso County vice chair Todd Watkins and Jefferson County chair Nancy Pallozzi announced June 26 that they had enough signatures to force a vote to remove Williams.
The call for his ousting followed controversies within the party over its leadership marshalling GOP resources to play favorites in primary races across the state, including in favor of Williams in his own unsuccessful congressional primary run. They also decried an anti-LGBTQ+ email sent by the party calling for people to burn Pride flags at the start of Pride Month in June.
But Williams, as chair of the state party, sued to stop the meeting.
Arapahoe County District Court Judge Thomas W. Henderson granted a temporary restraining order on July 26, one day before the scheduled meeting. But not before a majority of the Republican slate of congressional candidates in the November election publicly urged Williams to resign and endorsed calls to oust him.
Henderson reversed that order Tuesday evening after conducting a hearing earlier in the day. He ruled that these “are clearly internal controversies within the jurisdiction of the (Colorado Republican State Central Committee) to make a final determination.”
Watkins, who is a member of the state central committee, said he intends to move ahead with an Aug. 24 meeting in Brighton that will include an attempt to remove Williams. Watkins’ group earlier collected signatures from a quarter of the committee’s 400-plus members, the threshold to call a special meeting.
He will need support from 60% of the committee’s 400-plus members to boot Williams from office, though Watkins’ meeting call suggests that threshold will apply only to the total members who are “credentialed or properly represented by proxy” at the meeting.
But the state party again has questioned the legality of the dissidents’ meeting. Reached for comment, Williams pointed to an unsigned state party email contending that Watkins’ meeting would be illegal and hurt party efforts so close to the election.
Instead, party officials said an already scheduled Aug. 31 meeting would be the proper venue for any vote.
“Watkins does not get to call illegal meetings and then expand the scope of those fraudulent meetings while stealing the authority of the already existing standing committees that draft the rules or properly credential members,” the party’s Tuesday night email states. “Your State Party will not sit idly by while Watkins violates proper process and procedure. If anyone wants a special meeting for whatever purpose then they must follow the rules to do so.”
Party officials similarly discouraged central committee members from attending the meeting called by Watkins on July 27. Colorado Politics reported that more than 100 Republicans attended what became — following the earlier ruling’s prohibition on conducting business — a five-hour rally by supporters of the move to remove Williams.
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Originally Published: August 7, 2024 at 12:22 p.m.
