Depending on what website you first saw the weekend news about Dick Wadhams’ new job, the former Colorado Republican Party chief is either a genius political puppet master/kingmaker or a bumbling GOP operative who badly botched the last few races in his home state.
It’s angry Tea Party town hall month in America and, in Arizona yesterday, Senator John McCain got a taste of the kind of crazy that colored Colorado’s gubernatorial race last year. The longtime public servant and one-time GOP presidential nominee was called out of touch by town hall Tea Partiers who were shocked McCain didn’t know about “Agenda 21,” an alleged United Nations plan that would see a world government take over the United States by wresting control of its farms.
Colorado House Majority Leader Amy Stephens is feeling the heat – not from sweltering summer temperatures but instead from the sizzling tempers of Republican “anarchists” who think the Monument legislator has violated conservative and constitutional values. They seem bent on anointing a warrior to defeat Stephens in 2012 – the frontrunner is Kanda Calef.
Republicans countered Democratic desires for drawing competitive districts Wednesday by refusing to use party registration as a factor in the Joint Select Committee on Redistricting’s effort to draw Congressional lines. The move led to another stalemate between the parties, leaving no map drawn and an ever increasing chance that Colorado courts will again draw the Congressional districts.
On Monday, Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams announced he was ending his bid for reelection. He said he didn’t want to lead a party dominated by inflexible Tea Party “nuts” who know little about how politics works. If new survey results are any measure, this may be Wadhams’ best political move in a long time. Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling reports Wednesday that the GOP civil war against “rinos” will kill the elephant in the Centennial state.
Declaring that he would have won, but just didn’t want to put up with all the second-guessing and back-stabbing, Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams today told Fox 31 he is not running for another term.
Dick Wadhams announced Tuesday that he will run for a third term as Colorado Republican Party chairman. The news comes as little surprise to watchers of the proud party boss, but Wadhams will surely face strong opposition among Republicans who view this past election year as a mostly missed opportunity to regain control in purple state Colorado.
As the nation’s political class wrestles with the violence in Arizona that killed and injured more than twenty people and landed Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the hospital with a bullet through the brain, leading national Latino conservative organization Somos Republicans is spotlighting the harsh backlash it drew from members of the Colorado GOP to a campaign it launched last week lauding former state Republican Muhammad Ali Hasan for speaking out about growing bigotry in the party.
Nonprofit watchdog group Colorado Ethics Watch on Tuesday brought out a list reviewing five of the most glaring high-profile breaches of public trust in Colorado in 2010. Ethics Watch is often described (or dismissed) as “left-leaning,” and it’s true that its list this year spotlights the actions of four well-known Republican political figures. But it’s also true that the names of three of the four men included on the list– Doug Bruce, Dan Maes and Scott McInnis– now mostly induce chortles and head shaking on the left and right in political circles across the nation.
“We were trying to pick [instances] where there was no redeeming side. These were cases where there was no way to give a positive spin,” Director Luis Toro told the Colorado Independent.
This was a year of surprises in Colorado politics, from the announcement that Governor Ritter would not seek re-election to the paper-thin victory of sitting Senator Michael Bennet over Tea Party favorite Ken Buck, Colorado went months without a dull…
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