The embattled leader of the Colorado Republican Party will remain at the GOP’s helm after an El Paso County District Court judge ruled that a vote to remove Dave Williams in August was “void and of no effect.”
The vote taken to oust Williams at an Aug. 24 meeting of the central committee in Brighton failed to meet the proper supermajority threshold required, Judge Eric Bentley wrote in a ruling issued Wednesday evening. That ruling renders a subsequent vote to replace Williams moot.
And the judgment effectively settles the leadership question for the party during the final stretch of the election season, pending any appeal. The party is at a historic low point in the state, with no Republican holding statewide office. Party members occupy a superminority of seats in the state House of Representatives and have a one-seat buffer against superminority status in the state Senate.
Reached for comment via text message, Williams responded with a link to a party email sent Thursday morning celebrating the ruling — and vowing vengeance against the leaders of the “fringe majority faction” that sought his ouster.
“Please know that your true State Party Officers will seek all legal accountability, in and out of court, against (Todd) Watkins, (Eli) Bremer, and those who worked in the shadows to sow chaos and orchestrate an unlawful coup against the majority will,” the email from Williams stated.
Watkins, the vice chair of the El Paso County GOP, called last month’s meeting to oust Williams. Attendees elected Bremer, an Olympian and former U.S. Senate candidate, to replace Williams.
“While we will seek legal accountability against these failed usurpers, the rest of our State Party must unite to defeat the radical Democrats with the remaining time we have left before November,” Williams’ email continued.
In an interview, Bremer said he was “very surprised” with the decision, though he also called it thoughtfully written. He said his team will decide its next steps in coming days.
“We’re still trying to digest it and we’ll see what our position is going forward,” Bremer said.
The GOP faction seeking to oust Williams called the Aug. 24 meeting after months of infighting and division over Williams’ leadership, including when the party sent an anti-LGBTQ+ message to the GOP email list during Pride Month. Party leaders also endorsed Republican candidates during the primary campaign and used party resources to bolster a few of those campaigns — including Williams’ own campaign in his failed bid for the 5th Congressional District nomination.
According to court documents, 182.6 central committee members or their proxies attended the Aug. 24 meeting, out of 414 total members. (GOP bylaws allow fractional representation.) The anti-Williams faction needed a three-fifths vote to oust him as party chair.
Organizers thought the party bylaws were ambiguous on whether the three-fifths requirement applied to all committee members or just those present.
The meeting attendees voted to interpret it as the latter. The judge disagreed.
The judge’s interpretation meant about 250 votes would be needed to oust Williams and the rest of his leadership team — or more votes than were even available at the Aug. 24 meeting.
“A minority of members did not have the authority to eliminate the requirement of a supermajority vote and thus give themselves the power to do what the Bylaws forbade them from doing,” Bentley wrote in his decision. The subsequent vote thus did not comply with GOP bylaws and was “void and of no effect.”
Bremer said he had planned to argue for their interpretation of the bylaws in court. The bylaws are decades old and were written at a time when it was harder to gather everyone, he said. In that context, it made sense to read the bylaws as requiring a certain threshold of people present, not the entire central committee.
Williams, a former three-term member of the Colorado House of Representatives, was elected to lead the party for a two-year term in March 2023.
By the time the vote to oust him arrived, he had faced calls to step down from nearly all of Colorado’s Republican candidates for Congress. After the vote, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which helps GOP congressional candidates, said it would recognize Bremer as the chair.
A spokesperson for that committee did not immediately return a request for comment about the ruling. Bremer said he had not spoken with the NRCC yet and was waiting to plot his side’s path forward first.
The committee typically acts as a conduit for national money going to local races, but Bremer said he was confident that the most competitive races — the 8th Congressional District just north of Denver and the 3rd Congressional District, mostly on the Western Slope — had enough “resilience” built into them to weather the state party’s uncertainty. But he sees Williams’ retention of the party reins as an extra hurdle to campaigns.
“If this is the end of the road for our legal efforts, it could be bad for (GOP candidates) because Dave Williams has made it fairly clear he’s antagonistic toward our candidates,” Bremer said.
Bremer, in claiming chairmanship of the party, had sought to settle the matter proactively by filing the lawsuit that opened the case. While the judge dismissed the meat of the claims in Williams’ favor, there are still some secondary matters that could head to court in October if the suit remains in play.
Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.
Originally Published:
