RNC boss to Colorado GOP: ‘We lost our minds,’ strayed from roots

Hard on the heels of the Republican Party’s third straight pasting at the hands of Colorado voters, GOP leaders agree on one thing: It’s time to dig in those heels. The reason Republicans keep losing elections, party members agreed at this weekend’s state GOP gathering, isn’t that voters reject the party’s approach; it’s that Republicans have strayed from their roots.

Wadhams clobbers challengers to win re-election as Colorado GOP chairman

On the heels of thumping losses in last fall’s election, Colorado Republicans decided Saturday to stick with the one that brung ‘em.

State GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams easily won re-election to a second two-year term with 85 percent of the vote at the party’s central committee meeting. Wadhams rebuffed challenges from former Eagle County Commissioner Tom Stone and party activist Christine Tucker, who threw her support to Stone at the end of her nomination speech.

State party showdown: Rush Limbaugh-wannabe vs Rove 2.0

While we’re introducing much of the state to little-known Colorado Republican Party chair candidate Tom Stone it makes sense to revisit our 2007 coverage of Dick Wadhams when he sought to ascend the GOP throne.

Now that Stone has been dubbed “Eagle County’s Rush Limbaugh” by a member of his own party, we’ll see how he matches up to Wadhams, the über-operative not-so-affectionately called “Karl Rove 2.0.”

GOP mayor: State party chairman candidate is Eagle County’s Rush Limbaugh

If you ask Ron Wolfe, the Republican mayor of Avon, Tom Stone has played a major role in marginalizing his party in Eagle County, where there was a Democratic sweep in November and the GOP trails in voter registration for the first time in recent memory.

And as Republicans continue to take stock of their defeats nationally and locally, there’s debate over whether Stone, a Realtor and former county commissioner, would be a better GOP party chairman than Dick Wadhams.

GOP chair candidate Tom Stone put his partisan brand on Eagle County

Before Republican Realtor Tom Stone rode into town in 1998, Eagle County was a largely nonpartisan place, leaning more to the right, but a difficult place to tell the Dems and the members of the GOP apart.

Stone throws in against Wadhams in contest for state GOP chairman

Former Eagle County Commissioner Tom Stone announced Friday morning he plans to challenge Dick Wadhams in next month’s election for chairman of the Colorado Republican Party. Running on a platform to modernize the state GOP and “work smarter and not just harder,” Stone unveiled a campaign Web site with a manifesto proposing to update the party’s message “while not changing our principles.”

Intact FASTER bill to raise vehicle registration fees passes House vote

SB 108, the so-called FASTER plan to fund road and bridge repairs, is just a couple of minor procedural steps from hitting Gov. Bill Ritter’s desk for a signature after the state House of Representatives passed it 34-31 on final reading Wednesday.

Religious group flays Renfroe over remarks on gays, murder as ‘hate speech’

A spokesman for the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado on Wednesday condemned remarks made Monday by state Sen. Scott Renfroe when he called homosexuality an “abomination” and an “offense to God” in a debate over a bill to extend health benefits to same-sex partners of state employees.

“As a Christian, I am profoundly saddened by the hate speech uttered by Sen. Renfroe in the name of God,” the Rev. Richard Craft, interim pastor at Family of Christ Presbyterian Church of Greeley, said in a statement.

Schultheis: HIV testing for pregnant moms rewards ‘sexual promiscuity’

Democrats were outraged Wednesday morning when Republican state Sen. Dave Schultheis said he planned to vote against a bill to require HIV tests for pregnant women because the disease “stems from sexual promiscuity” and he didn’t think the Legislature should “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.” The Colorado Springs lawmaker then proceeded to cast the lone vote against SB-179, which passed 32-1 and moves on to the House.

UPDATE: Schultheis restates his opposition to the bill by claiming HIV babies are punishment for promiscuous moms.

Jindal flame-out politics, Colorado-style

Colorado’s politics junkies were likely not surprised by Republican leading light Bobby Jindal’s flame-out on national TV, as he rushed through his ill-conceived response to Obama’s non-State of the Union.