As part of its chairman’s desire to close its primaries to all but registered Republican voters, the Colorado Republican Party filed a lawsuit against the Secretary of State Jena Griswold in federal court Monday, seeking to invalidate a ballot measure passed by voters in 2016.
The suit, filed on behalf of the party by the attorney who represented Donald Trump after his 2020 election loss, is the latest effort by some Colorado Republicans to push back against Proposition 108, which allows unaffiliated voters to participate in parties’ primary elections and help select general election candidates. The suit alleges that the ballot measure “harms (the party) and its members by infringing upon their rights of free speech and association.”
A similar suit, filed by a handful of Colorado Republican officials, was dismissed by a federal judge shortly after it was filed in 2022. The same attorney, John Eastman, represented those officials in that case, too. This latest effort comes with the fuller backing of the party as an institution, which is now under the direction of new party chairman Dave Williams. Williams, a former state legislator who lost a primary race against Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn in 2022, has criticized the system established by Prop 108 and said in a radio interview Tuesday that he “certainly want(s) a closed primary.”
The suit asks a federal judge to declare Prop 108 unconstitutional and to prevent Griswold’s office from enforcing it.
Williams referred comment to a statement released by the party Tuesday afternoon. In that statement, Williams wrote that the open-primary system has been “devastating” to the party and suggested the ballot measure — which Colorado voters approved in 2016 — was a “radical leftwing” effort to “further harm our election efforts.”
In a statement, Griswold said a federal court “dismissed the prior lawsuit and we continue to believe the new lawsuit has no merit. As Secretary of State, I will always stand up for voters to ensure that their constitutional right to cast a ballot is protected.”
The suit alleges that allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in party primaries hurts candidates “preferred by Republican Party voters.” Their argument is that non-Republican voters advance more moderate candidates to the general election. In its suit, the party pointed to the growth of unaffiliated voters participating in GOP primaries in recent years and alleged that unaffiliated voters may have swung primary victories for more moderate Republican candidates like Joe O’Dea, who beat Ron Hanks in a U.S. Senate primary in 2022, or Pam Anderson, who ended Tina Peters’ bid to challenge Griswold for secretary of state.
But other Republicans, like former state party chair Dick Wadhams, argue the attempt to close the primaries is nothing more than a “purge” by Williams and his supporters. In an interview Monday, shortly before the suit was filed, Wadhams said the party — fresh off a bruising November election that saw its power reduced to a historic low — should be appealing to more unaffiliated voters and expanding its outreach. He said he was “dumbfounded” that the party’s new leadership couldn’t see that the state’s electorate was shifting more liberal.
If the party successfully killed its open primaries, “what message does that send?” Wadhams asked. “So 10,000 people instead of 900,000 will be determining Colorado’s Republican nominees, everything from county commissioner up to congressional statewide office,” referring to elections on the local level.
In an interview with former district attorney George Brauchler published Tuesday morning, Williams said one option to replace the open primary — should the party successfully extricate itself from the current system — would be a “runoff-type system,” in which registered Republicans would vote, in person, in contested races through an event administered by the county parties.
As the litigation begins its path through the courts, Williams is moving forward with another, parallel attempt to extricate the party from the open-primary system. Proposition 108 allows parties to opt out of its open-primary system, should three-quarters of a party’s central committee vote to do so. The Colorado Republican Party plans to vote on opting out in September, Williams told Brauchler. And this weekend, the central committee will meet to consider making it easier to hit that 75% threshold come September: by counting all absent voters as yes votes.
Changing how votes are counted requires a change to the party’s bylaws, and the proposal has sparked criticism from other Republicans. Republican committees representing Weld, Morgan and Arapahoe counties have all released statements opposing it. Wadhams likened it to Soviet Union-style politicking. In a statement opposing the bylaw change, the Morgan County Republican Party said counting absent voters as yes votes was “morally and ethically wrong” and said it may violate both the state and U.S. Constitution.
The suit and the potentially turbulent bylaw change come amid broader internal turmoil within the Colorado Republican Party, which has been plagued by infighting and finds itself short on cash after lackluster fundraising this year. Williams told Brauchler on Tuesday that the party had raised enough money to file the suit and that it would likely cost “a couple hundred thousand dollars to get where we want to be at a minimum.”
Campaign finance records filed with the state in mid-July showed the party had just over $10,000 cash on hand. Williams told Brauchler the party had raised significantly more than that this year, but that it wasn’t yet paying any salaries and that “a lot of professionals” were working for the party for free.
Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.
