Colorado GOP elects Holtorf as vice chair: ‘We’re standing at a crossroads’

By Ernest Luning | Colorado Politics

A sharply divided Colorado Republican Party elected former House Minority Whip Richard Holtorf to fill the state GOP’s vacant vice chair position Monday night during an online meeting that laid bare ongoing disputes that have consumed the state party for more than a year.

Roughly 400 Republican state central committee members cast their votes for the party’s No. 2 job nearly two hours into a special meeting held on the Zoom teleconference platform to replace Darrel Phelan, the state GOP’s previous vice chair, who attributed his abrupt resignation last month to his frustration over state chair Brita Horn’s refusal to let him help run the party.

Horn, Phelan and Russ Andrews, the state party secretary, won election to their positions in March after running as members of a slate that explicitly pledged to reverse party policies put in place by their predecessors, including former state GOP chair Dave Williams, who attended Monday night’s meeting.

The online meeting — streamed live by the party on YouTube — included multiple calls to postpone the vote and instead fill the vacant vice chair position at an upcoming, in-person meeting. Attendees also complained that the meeting’s organizers were ignoring attempts by committee members to participate in the disjointed and sometimes testy discussions.

Holtorf, a cattle rancher from Sterling and one-time congressional candidate, narrowly defeated Mark Hampton, founder of Parker Conservatives and a self-identified voice of the party’s grassroots, with 204 votes to Hampton’s 193, or 52% to 48%.

“We need to be a big tent party, not a puritan party chasing away fellow Republican Party members,” Holtorf said before the vote. “Building bridges between our divided factions is critical. Mending fences, not cutting fences, is essential.”

Holtorf, who ran against state party-endorsed U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in last year’s crowded 4th Congressional District primary, said the state GOP has to return to its longstanding practice of staying neutral in primaries.

“We have a unique opportunity, if we choose to seize the moment unified around a strategic pathway that leads us to victory in this cycle,” Holtorf said. “This includes supporting all Republican candidates, not just the ones we like as state GOP leaders, or we think are Republican enough. Districts are different. Every candidate who follows the rules should have a fair and equal opportunity to gain the vote of the electorate.”

Holtorf, a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the Army, said he hoped to bring “strategic leadership” to the role, outlining plans to recruit candidates and help them win with financial support and coordination across races.

“Imagine the idea of working together instead of being in silos and working, perhaps, against each other,” he said. “This is called synchronized operations in the military, and I know how to do it.”

Added Holtorf: “We need to focus on our candidates, not our bickering and infighting.”

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