Colorado’s far-right was destroyed in the 2020 GOP primary
The civil war that has been brewing inside the Colorado Republican Party seems to finally have a decisive winner. The battle lines are fuzzy, with alliances and divisions forming and shifting due to: a landslide loss in 2018, the botched recall attempts against several Democrats in 2019, a collapsing political environment, and the heavy albatross of Donald Trump weighing them all down.
Ultimately, the red team in Colorado is caught between two poles that have moved further and further apart, each so obsessed with cleansing their party of the other that they can’t form a strategic coalition to win any competitive election in the state. So instead of recruiting and training agreedupon candidates who can win general elections, the Colorado GOP’S civil war racked up more than $1 million in spending against one another in just five state legislative races, entirely during the months of May and June.
In one corner was Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, the “no compromise” group of gun enthusiasts that had been run by rightwing gadfly Dudley Brown who Republicans secretly joke should win Democrat of the Year every year for torpedoing fellow Republicans instead of uniting with other conservative interests to beat Democrats. Brown stepped down as executive director Wednesday.
In the other corner are groups representing real estate professionals, the education reform group Stand for Children, the insurance industry imprint COPIC, provoucher education group READY Colorado, the Better Jobs Coalition run by Colorado toffee magnate Rick Enstrom, and Coloradans for Constitutional Values whose lone donor is Unite Colorado, a group formerly known as the Centrist Project, which changed missions from recruiting unsuccessful unaffiliated candidates in 2018 to recruiting moderates to ward off ideological extremists from both sides of the aisle this cycle. A group called Weld Strong funded by 12 businesses and individuals was the sole group to take on RMGO in northern Colorado by backing Weld County Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer against Rmgo-backed Rupert Parchment.
When the votes were all counted, Rmgo-backed candidates for Colorado state legislative offices Justin Everett, Grady Nouis, Vicki Marble, Patricia Miller and Parchment lost by double-digit margins to state Colin Larson, Tonya Van Beber, Michael Lynch, Dan Woog, and Kirkmeyer, respectively. It’s no surprise either because RMGO was outspent 14-to-1 by the other groups.
An important caveat: The way Colorado’s campaign finance system works is fairly confusing. Expenditures regularly appear to be double-reported, for instance, if a mailer has a positive message about
one candidate on one side and a negative message about another candidate on another side. Luckily, my friend Sandra Fish launched a project called #Followthemoneyco where she takes a fine-toothed comb to the data and disaggregates the expenditures. I would have not been able to give an accurate accounting of the spending in these races without her excellent work.
The once-powerful RMGO spent a mere $28,106 to advocate for their preferred candidates in these primaries. They were buttressed by the national Young Americans for Liberty who have supported both Ron and Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, as well as recent anti-trump turncoat Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan at the federal level. The total spending supporting the arch-conservative candidates barely topped $80,000.
This is astonishing, mostly because RMGO’S decade-long grip on Colorado Republicans was predicated on the fear that they could summon huge resources to defeat any Republican who dared to defy their “no compromise” position on guns. As it happened, when RMGO pulled the trigger, instead of a hail of cash, a little flag that said “BANG” sprung from their barrel.
Conversely, the groups who joined together to support the candidates running against the RMGO backed groups spent a shocking $1.1 million to win this latest iteration of the GOP civil war.
House District 22 was far and away the most expensive race for these deep-pocketed groups. State Rep. Colin Larson was the recipient of nearly $350,000 in independent support promoting his candidacy or trashing Everett.
Whereas Everett received a little over $26,000 in independent spending on his behalf.
Among these candidates, the closest race was Parchment vs. Kirkmeyer, a 10-point drubbing.the most disproportionate thumping being delivered to state Sen. Vicki Marble who was running for a seat in the Colorado House of Representatives after being termed out of her Senate seat. Marble, a controversial yet well-known entity infamous for racist statements about the alleged dietary habits of Black Americans and for berating a Boy Scout on film, lost by the widest margin, surprising for an incumbent senator, by a humiliating 34 points.
So now we know that RMGO’S specter of primarying any Republican who steps out of line was little more than bluster. Once they put their money where their mouths were, they lost in a landslide. I spoke with someone close to one of the heavier spending entities who told me, “The message to RMGO was ‘your days of being a bully are over.’ ”
But former Rep. Everett told me this race was “all about who will play ball with the lobbyists and who won’t. These primaries sent the message, ‘you get what you pay for.’ ”