Colorado GOP committee removes Dave Williams as chairman after controversial vote

Dave Williams and other high-ranking officials of the Colorado Republican Party are “squatters” who are illegally occupying the party headquarters in Greenwood Village after they were removed from their leadership positions over the weekend.

This is what Eli Bremer, whom the party’s central committee elected as Williams’ successor as party chairman in a vote on Saturday, says.

“My job is to get this back on track as quickly as possible and make sure it is rebuilt properly to support the Republican candidates,” Bremer, former chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party and a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022, said Monday.

But Williams, in a text message to the Denver Post, called the claim that he is no longer chairman of the Colorado Republican Party “beyond absurd.” He said a “fringe faction of the party” that met in Brighton over the weekend should not “make decisions for over 400 members (of the Central Committee) at a sham meeting.”

More than 180 committee members were present or participating by proxy. All but a handful participated in the vote, with more than 90% of the votes cast for Williams’ removal, according to former Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams — who is not related to him and served as parliamentarian.

Like the two popes who ruled the Roman Catholic Church in the late 14th and early 15th centuries after the institution went through a major schism, the state Republican Party has no definitive leader. Ultimately, it may be up to a judge or the Republican National Committee to determine who is the legitimate head of Colorado Republicans.

“Because this has been in court three times, it’s now going in court a fourth time,” said Todd Watkins, vice chairman of the El Paso County Republicans, who chaired Saturday’s meeting at a Brighton church. “There’s obviously going to be litigation — we always knew that.”

Nevertheless, Saturday’s decision quickly gained influential recognition. The National Republican Congressional Committee, which supports Republican congressional candidates, announced that it would support the result, and prominent including former US Senator Cory Gardner congratulated Bremer.

The latest twists in the long-running skirmish between mainstream critics and Dave Williams, a far-right former state representative who rose to the party’s top spot last year, have shown that Colorado’s Republican Party is riven by dissent and bitter division just 10 weeks before the Nov. 5 election.

In recent months, calls for Williams’ ouster from within his own ranks have grown louder, centering on his unorthodox and controversial decision to favor certain GOP candidates during the primaries – including himself in his unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination in Colorado’s 5th Congressional District.

In April, Williams was criticized for kicking a political reporter out of the Pueblo convention because he said the reporter’s coverage of Republicans was “very unfair.” Around the same time, a Republican strategist filed an ethics complaint against Williams, alleging that he had misappropriated state party funds to support his congressional efforts.

In June, Williams came under fire from politicians from both parties after he sent an email under the party banner titled “God Hates Pride,” repeating anti-LGBTQ+ slurs and calling for the burning of Pride flags.

Late last month, a planned attempt to oust Williams from office was put on hold by a district judge, but it gained momentum again in early August when the judge ruled that his court did not have jurisdiction to block the attempt.

For this reason, the party’s Central Committee met for a special session in Brighton on Saturday.

The party’s constitution, which sets the minimum number for removing the chairman at 60 percent of the committee, leaves some room for interpretation. However, participants in Brighton voted to interpret the minimum number as a proportion of those present at the meeting.