The Colorado GOP this week sent out a transphobic email attacking the Democratic opponent of state Sen. Cleave Simpson, R-Alamosa, who is running for reelection in the toss-up Senate District 6 — a race that could have big implications on the trajectory of policy at the Capitol.

The email Thursday repeatedly used male pronouns to refer to Vivian Smotherman, a transgender Durango farmer and Navy veteran. It also included a screenshot of a social media post from the far-right “Libs of TikTok” account saying Smotherman is “a man pretending to be a woman” and that “in Peru he would be considered mentally ill.”

“Given Senator Simpson’s commitment to improving prosperity in rural areas and his wide-ranging support across SD-6, there is not one good reason to vote for Smotherman,” the Colorado GOP email said. “However, we have seen several Colorado elections in which gender identity garners votes from people wanting to be progressive and fearing they’ll be labeled as ‘anti-trans’ for not supporting the media’s DEI candidate.”

The party said Democratic state Reps. Stephanie Vigil and Brianna Titone — referring to Titone by her dead name — benefited from diversity, equity and inclusion pushes to win their elections. Vigil identifies as gender fluid while Titone is the first transgender person elected to the legislature in Colorado.

Smotherman called the email a fear-mongering distraction.

Republican campaigns have been privately complaining about the emails the Colorado GOP has sent out recently in support of the party’s candidates running in toss-up districts. The missives have included offensive remarks and unsubstantiated allegations about their Democratic opponents.

The emails come as Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams has come under fire for not doing enough to support Republican campaigns across the state. But now some are wishing the party would just stay away altogether.

“I already called Vivian to let her know I did not have advance knowledge of this and the attacks do not align with my value system,” Simpson told The Colorado Sun, adding that he plans to voice his frustration to the party, too. 

He pointed out that he has sponsored a bill with Titone.

“I’ve been a Republican my entire life and largely a part of the calculus to run for reelection was to demonstrate you can be a conservative Republican under the gold dome and still be effective,” he said. “If you treat people with dignity and respect you can still build some small wins.”

Simpson called the state party’s email a “step backward” in his cause.

Williams or Colorado GOP Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Sun on Friday. Neither did Darcy Schoening, the director of special initiatives at the Colorado GOP, who sent out the email.  

In Senate District 6, the Colorado GOP’s decision to wade into the contest could be particularly damaging. 

A nonpartisan analysis of election results in the district between 2016 and 2020, completed as part of the state’s redistricting process, estimated it leans 1 percentage point in Democrats’ favor. But the 2022 election results tell another story. 

Gov. Jared Polis won the district by 11 points, while U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet won it by 8 points and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser won it by 5. Polis, Bennet and Weiser are Democrats.

Democrats hold a 23-12 majority in the Colorado Senate, one seat shy of a supermajority. That makes Simpson’s race critical.

Democrats will be defending two competitive Senate seats in November and trying to pick up three others. 

The state Senate districts with races this year will be up for grabs for the first time since their boundaries were redrawn in 2021 as part of the state’s once-a-decade redistricting process. When Simpson was first elected in 2020, his constituency was more conservative and his district included counties in southeastern Colorado. Now, the district has shifted westward and the electorate is more favorable to Democrats.

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Senate District 6 includes all or parts of Alamosa, Archuleta, Conejos, Costilla, Dolores, La Plata, Mineral, Montezuma, Montrose, Ouray, Rio Grande, Saguache, San Juan and San Miguel Counties. Major cities and towns in the district include Durango, Pagosa Springs, Cortez, Telluride and Alamosa.

Still, Simpson is known as a low-key moderate Republican who works across the aisle. He’s won the endorsement, for instance, of Democrat John Salazar, a former congressman who lives in District 6. His reputation means he is expected to have a solid chance of winning reelection. 

The Colorado GOP’s unwelcome approach to the district could jeopardize that. At the very least, the email is giving Democrats an easy line of attack.

“Dave Williams should be ashamed of himself,” Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Shad Murib said in a written statement. “Everyone from Cleave Simpson to Jeff Hurd to Gabe Evans has a responsibility to condemn this hatred and division.”

Hurd, a Grand Junction attorney, and Evans, a state representative from Fort Lupton, are Republicans running in competitive congressional districts this year.

Smotherman, in an interview with The Sun, said Simpson offered “a very sincere and genuine apology” when they talked. She said the Colorado GOP’s claims that she is focusing her campaign on her identity are false. 

“It’s something we’re not surprised at,” she said of the email. “We were hoping we could avoid it and stick to the issues.”

Smotherman said she and Simpson have agreed to keep their campaigns focused on the debate over how to improve the lives of people in Senate District 6.

Election Day is Nov. 5. Voters will begin receiving ballots in October.

For the second year in a row, Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday called lawmakers into a special legislative session to cut property taxes.

Only this time, lawmakers won’t reconvene just out of concern over rising property taxes; it’s also out of fear that without a special session, voters might enact tax cuts so deep that they decimate state and local budgets.

“It’s really a win-win, if we can save homeowners money and small businesses money on their property taxes and make sure that we’re not going to devastate our schools and other local entities,” Polis said in an interview with The Colorado Sun ahead of the announcement.

The session will start Aug. 26, and would have to last at least three days in order to send a bill to the governor’s desk to be signed into law. 

In exchange for a modest package of additional tax cuts and stronger limits on property tax growth, conservative groups said they would pull two measures off the November ballot — Initiatives 108 and 50 — that have created panic among state and local government officials, developers and bond investors over their wide-reaching impacts.

Initiative 50, which would amend the state constitution, might be the more consequential of the two. It would limit property tax revenue growth to 4% statewide, with no flexibility for local governments or their voters to opt out without a statewide referendum. 

Initiative 108 would cut property taxes for homeowners and businesses by an estimated $2.4 billion. That’s the equivalent of 15% of the $15.5 billion that schools and local governments collected this year. The state would be on the hook to reimburse schools and local governments for much of the revenue lost to the cuts.

Polis said to preserve the agreement, he won’t sign any bills passed during the special session until Initiatives 50 and 108 are pulled from the November ballot.

Legal interpretations vary on how much the state government would have to pay if the measures passed. But state budget officials say the measures could create a budget crisis on par with an economic recession, mandating deep cuts to essential public services like K-12, higher education and Medicaid.

The proponents of the measures — Colorado Concern, an alliance of state business executives, and Advance Colorado, a conservative political nonprofit — have argued those concerns are overblown.

Business groups insist the property tax relief passed by the legislature in recent years hasn’t gone far enough to serve as a true replacement for the Gallagher Amendment, the tax-limiting constitutional provision that voters repealed in 2020.

Even after the legislature passed a round of cuts in last year’s special session, property tax revenue still went up 21% statewide in the 2023 tax year, according to the Colorado Department of Local Affairs.

“This property tax cut and cap agreement provides the permanent tax relief that Coloradans have been demanding and will prevent future spikes in property tax bills going forward,” Advance Colorado President Michael Fields said in a statement.

Under a proposed deal presented to the state’s Property Tax Commission on Monday, the legislature would cut taxes by an additional $255 million next year, for taxes owed in 2026. That’s on top of $1 billion in tax cuts the legislature approved at the end of its regular legislative session, which ended in May.

The legislature would also put a new cap on school districts, limiting their property tax growth to 12% over a two-year period.

In exchange, lawmakers have demanded that the groups provide assurance that they won’t bring back similar ballot measures in the next 10 years.

Lawmakers are racing against the clock to get the deal finalized before a Sept. 6 deadline to remove initiatives from the November ballot. The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office has to certify the ballot by Sept. 9, as ballots must be mailed to military and overseas voters by Sept. 21.

The special session will be the third under Polis since he was sworn into office in 2019. 

The deal was negotiated behind closed doors in recent weeks among the governor’s office, Advance Colorado’s Michael Fields, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers. A special session seemed unthinkable until all the sides restarted negotiations that flamed out during the regular legislative session, which ended in May. 

The talks started up again after lawmakers and the conservative groups behind the ballot measures presented to the Colorado Forum in recent weeks. The forum is a decades-old public policy panel made up of state business and civic leaders that takes positions on pressing issues. Forum President Gail Klapper urged the power players to try to find a solution.

When the mayors of Colorado’s three largest cities and a long list of top civic and business groups from across the political spectrum separately issued letters saying they supported a special session to find a compromise, it was clear lawmakers would be returning to the Capitol.

“I think it’s a good compromise,” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican who was the first elected official to publicly call for a special session. “It reduces risk in the future, makes sure that Colorado has a viable future and still further reduces property taxes, which is what my aim is, is looking out for the property owners of the state.”

On Thursday, the top four Democrats in the legislature issued statements in support of the special session, saying it was needed to keep “reckless” measures off the ballot.

“It is a grave risk to our state that wealthy special interests have proceeded with ballot measures that would devastate our economy, cut funding for schools, and risk financing for critical infrastructure projects like affordable housing,” House Majority Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat, said in a written statement. “I’m proud to go back to work to help keep people in their homes, provide additional tax relief, and protect funding for our schools that we’ve fought so hard for.”

Top legislative Republicans issued statements of support as well.

But not everyone is happy about it. At the tax commission meeting this week, Rep. Cathy Kipp of Fort Collins said House Democrats were divided over whether it was worth taking the deal.

“There are some people who are risk averse and would like to proceed with a special session and there are others who don’t appreciate that this is the way things are moving forward,” she said.

Holding a special session isn’t free. Past sessions have cost taxpayers close to $25,000 a day to pay staff and lawmaker stipends as they trek to Denver from across the state. 

Polis said he would have preferred the deal to have been reached during the regular lawmaking term this year, but that the special session “de-risking the November ballot” is still better than nothing.

“It came close,” Polis said. “In fact, I now think we see how close by the fact that a lot of this is just refining the cap mechanism that already went in place and building off the work that was already done.”

The special session could also bring political intrigue beyond the property tax debate.

It’s an election year, and Republicans are trying to dismantle the Democratic supermajority in the House and prevent one from being secured in the Senate. The GOP could be tempted to force the issue with controversial amendments and floor speeches.

The session may also invite disruption from Democratic lawmakers who aren’t returning to the Capitol next year after losing their primary races in June or abandoning their reelection bids midcycle. There are also several term-limited Democratic and Republican representatives and senators who will be returning for the special session.

Finally, unions could push lawmakers to take up some pro-labor bills passed during the session this year that Polis vetoed. That’s part of why a special session wasn’t called to strip out a provision in a bill kneecapping a 2024 ballot measure that would overhaul the state’s election process.

The governor can limit what topics can be discussed in a special session, but lawmakers have some legal leeway to decide what qualifies within that scope. Polis said he’s happy to have discussions about those union measures next year, but that the special session is limited to property tax legislation in order to stop the measures from appearing on the November ballot.

“There’s only a small window of time before the ballot initiatives can be taken down,” Polis said.

Despite the risks, Polis is already pointing to the special session as another example of his ability to broker policy deals. During the regular lawmaking term this year, he helped shepherd agreements on oil and gas, medical malpractice lawsuits and Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights refunds.

The legislature’s next regular session begins in January, when newly elected representatives and senators will begin their terms.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, speaking Wednesday at a campaign fundraiser in Denver, encouraged Democrats to maintain a breakneck pace heading into the final three months of the 2024 presidential election. 

“Sleep when you’re dead,” Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ recently selected running mate, told a fired up crowd. 

Some $3 million was raised at the event, according to host Tim Gill, a Democratic megadonor who opened up his central Denver estate — known as the Phipps Mansion — to about 150 people for the occasion. The Denver visit was part of a five-state fundraising swing for Walz, who is making his first solo appearances since he and Harris became the presumptive Democratic ticket in the presidential race. 

In a speech just shy of 15 minutes, Walz attacked Republicans for supporting school vouchers, wavering on financial support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, and for restricting abortion access. 

“You need to make your own health care decisions, not us,” he said. “We don’t need their help deciding which books we’re going to read. We will decide that on our own.”

He also attacked former President Donald Trump for falsely claiming that photos showing large crowds at recent Harris-Walz events were generated by artificial intelligence.

“I assure you, in Detroit that wasn’t AI,” he said. “And I’ll also assure you every one of the ballots that they’re going to cast will not be AI.”

Walz said it’s been an “interesting” week since Harris named him on Aug. 6 as her vice president pick after President Joe Biden decided mid-election cycle not to seek reelection. 

“That’s a Minnesota word,” he said. “‘Interesting,’ Minnesotans know, has multiple meanings. They called me up, picked me up at my house last Tuesday, put me on a plane and flew me to Philadelphia and said ‘here, you’ve got 45 minutes. Give this speech off the teleprompter.’”

Walz said he had never used a teleprompter before.

“Politics is a means to an end, and that end is a better, fairer country for everyone,” he said. “You don’t get elected to office to bank political capital for the next election. You get elected to office to burn that capital” to make people’s lives better.

Walz also contrasted the life experiences of Trump and Harris, who as a kid worked part time at McDonalds.

“Can you picture Donald Trump working at a McDonalds?” Walz said. “You think he knows you? You think he knows who you are? You think he knows your family?”

Walz was accompanied at the event by his daughter, Hope. He was introduced by Gov. Jared Polis, the nation’s first openly gay governor. Polis attacked Trump for being a convicted felon and for “destroying voting rights, destroying LGBTQ rights.”

“The future is the bright future that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are going to bring for every American — no matter who they are,” said Polis, who has become a top Harris surrogate.

Gill made his fortune as a software entrepreneur and is a prominent LGBTQ activist.

“Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are ready to carry the torch of liberty forward, ensuring that the gains we’ve made aren’t lost,” Gill said, standing in the backyard of his 33,000 square foot home.

Gill said Walz’s “ability to reach across the aisle while staying true to our Democratic values makes Tim exactly who we need at this moment.”

Gill’s husband, Scott Miller, was nominated by Biden to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein and has held the job since 2021.

Tickets for the fundraiser started at $1,000. Donors who gave at least $50,000 received an opportunity to get their photo taken with Walz.

The money raised will go toward the Harris Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee benefiting Harris’ campaign, state Democratic parties across the country and the Democratic National Committee.

The fundraiser was attended by a list of top Colorado Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, Secretary of State Jena Griswold, and former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. Also in attendance were former U.S. Reps. John Salazar and Ed Perlmutter.

Walz served in Congress with Polis, Salazar and Perlmutter.

Walz, who didn’t take questions from a small group of reporters at the event, was headed to Boston after his stop in Colorado. 

By Will Weissert, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is branching out this week and holding his first solo events as Vice President Kamala Harris ’ running mate, making a five-state dash for campaign cash and addressing a key union gathering.

Walz will be in Colorado on Wednesday.

Walz will speak Tuesday at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees convention in Los Angeles before headlining a campaign fundraiser in Newport Beach, California. The 1.4-million-member union has endorsed Harris.

“With all the anxiety and uncertainty in the country, we have a responsibility to bring people together around common values,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in his convention keynote address on Monday. Then referring to top Republicans, he added, “Instead, antiworker forces have decided to double down on the most extreme, divisive agenda you can imagine.”

On Wednesday, Walz will address fundraisers in Denver and Boston, and he’ll do more of the same on Thursday in Newport, Rhode Island, and Southampton, New York.

The Denver fundraiser will be hosted by Democratic megadonor Tim Gill, who made his fortune as a software entrepreneur. Gov. Jared Polis is a featured guest.

Walz’s focus on fundraising this week comes after he stormed through a series of battleground states with Harris last week to introduce himself to voters nationally. The two held rallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who was announced as Republican Donald Trump ‘s running mate during the GOP convention in Milwaukee, had his own rollout largely overshadowed by unforeseen events. It came after an assassination attempt against the former president the previous weekend and before President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection bid and endorsed Harris during the following one.

Walz has salted his early campaign appearances with talk of joy and positivity, stressing that he and Harris are championing being kind and neighborly. But he has frequently laid into Trump’s policies and the former president’s 34 felony counts in a New York hush money case.

Vance, meanwhile, has leaned more heavily into the traditional No. 2 role of lobbing political attacks on the opposition. He spent much of last week holding his own events in the same states that Harris and Walz visited and arguing the Democratic ticket was too ultra-liberal for most Americans.

The senator has also suggested that Harris chose Walz over another contender for running mate, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, because Shapiro’s public support for Israel in its war with Hamas might have angered some progressives.

Vance said picking Walz meant that Harris took advice from the “Hamas wing of her party.” He also criticized Walz’s military record, arguing that his retirement ahead of his National Guard Unit’s deployment to Iraq and his implication that he had served in a combat zone suggested “stolen valor garbage.” Over the weekend, the Harris campaign said that Walz “misspoke” when he referenced “weapons of war that I carried in war.”

Orange County Republican Party Chairman Fred Whitaker, picked up on charges that Walz has been imprecise with his characterizations of his military service, saying in a statement Monday that the governor, “may walk away heavy with campaign cash from liberal donors but he will leave with the same empty and fake record he came in with.”

Vance has also faulted Harris and Walz for not sitting for media interviews. When his plane coincided with Harris’ on a tarmac in Wisconsin, where both sides held events last week, Vance began walking toward the vice president’s motorcade, saying he wanted to talk to reporters traveling with her since she’d not done it herself.

Harris has yet to sit for a major interview since Biden left the race but has said she wants to do that later in the month. She briefly took questions from the press traveling with her twice during her battleground travels last week — something Walz did not do, except for one session, answering questions off-the-record, which meant his answers couldn’t be publicly shared.

Vance has appeared on a variety of podcasts angling to appeal to a younger voter set. At age 40, he’s closer to that demographic than any of the other three top-of-the-ticket contenders. Trump is 78, Harris is 59 and Walz is 60.

Colorado Sun reporter Jesse Paul contributed to this report.

If opponents of embattled Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams fail to remove him from the party’s top post later this month, they may be unable to dislodge him for the rest of his term, which ends in March.

A major bylaw amendment being proposed by Williams’ allies would make it harder starting next year to call a special meeting to remove the Colorado GOP chairman or other party officers. 

Currently, it only takes a written request of 25% of the members of the central committee to force such a meeting and a vote. The amendment would require that request be made through a form developed and authorized by the party’s secretary, and that each member of the central committee who signs it disclose “sufficient identifying information so that the secretary can verify the requesters are voting members and that they do, in fact, desire that the requested meeting be held.”

Additionally, the amendment would create a seven-day challenge period after a request for a special meeting to remove a party officer is made. During that time, the Colorado GOP executive committee could postpone the gathering while the challenge is pending.

The bylaw amendment is scheduled to be considered at the central committee’s Aug. 31 meeting, which is about a week after Williams’ opponents on the committee are planning to take a vote on whether to oust the chairman. 

Getting the votes to remove Williams may not be easy. 

The Colorado GOP’s bylaws say a party officer can only be removed “by a vote of three-fifths of the entire membership of the (central committee) eligible to vote at a meeting called for that purpose.” There are two interpretations of the rule: It could mean 60% of those present at the meeting, or 60% of the entire central committee — which is made up of about 400 people. 

Passing a bylaw amendment is arguably easier. It requires the support of two-thirds “of those members present and voting” at a central committee meeting. 

There’s a scenario in which members of the central committee who dislike Williams show up to the Aug. 24 meeting organized by opponents of Williams to try to remove him and are unsuccessful, then skip the Aug. 31 meeting where the bylaw amendment is then adopted.

The bylaw change is particularly important because Wiliams’ opponents believe the party won’t take up a motion to remove him as chairman unless they run the meeting themselves. The bylaw change would be particularly impactful if Williams runs for reelection as chairman and wins.

The Colorado GOP executive committee has already ruled that the Aug. 24 meeting to remove Williams was improperly organized and that they won’t recognize the results of any action taken during the gathering. And it’s unclear if the party will take up the question of removing Williams at the Aug. 31 meeting if they don’t recognize the results of the Aug. 24 vote. 

“It is exactly designed to prevent him from being removed,” Todd Watkins, vice chair of the El Paso County GOP and the leader of the effort to remove Williams, said of the bylaw amendment. “Textbook despot.”

Watkins called Williams “Xi Jing Dave,” a nod to Xi Jinping, the authoritarian leader of China. 

Williams told The Colorado Sun “we are still deciding” if the amendment will be considered at the central committee’s Aug. 31 meeting. He argued that even though the change was borne out of the effort to remove him, it will have no effect on removing party officers, calling any claim to the contrary a “deceptive narrative.”

He also emphasized that the change wouldn’t take effect until next year to comply with a state law preventing political parties from altering their bylaws in election years.

“Our critics are free to continue doing what they wish for the rest of the year, regardless of any bylaw changes that may occur at the end of this month,” Williams said. 

The proposed amendment isn’t the first time Williams and his allies have tried to change the party’s bylaws to their benefit. Last year, they unsuccessfully tried to pass an amendment that would have made it easier for the GOP to block unaffiliated voters from participating in their primaries, a major objective of Williams and other ultra conservative Republicans in Colorado.

And the Colorado GOP isn’t exactly broadcasting that the amendment will be considered Aug. 31. 

In a notice about the gathering, the party said the principal purposes of the meeting will be to consider a bylaw change on fractional voting that wouldn’t be implemented until after the 2024 election. Also on the agenda are an update on the party’s open primary lawsuit and consideration of party officer removal requests “that were properly submitted and verified.”

The only way people would know about the bylaw amendment around removing party officers is if they read the entire report of the party’s bylaws committee.

Shoring up the effort to remove Williams

Williams’ opponents — led by Watkins and Jefferson County GOP Chairwoman Nancy Pallozzi — are taking steps to quash claims from current Colorado GOP leadership that the Aug. 24 meeting will be “invalid and illegal” because the legitimacy of the list of people who asked for it is unverifiable. 

Chris Murray, the former Colorado GOP lawyer now representing Watkins and Pallozzi, said in court last week, as the matter went before a judge, that he had collected nearly 50 declarations from people confirming they had requested the meeting to oust Williams. 

“We are in the process of gathering declarations from everybody who signed that petition,” Murray said. 

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But, he added, even if he can’t get declarations from everyone who signed the petition, if at least 25% of the central committee shows up to the Aug. 24 meeting, that will prove there is enough support for a gathering to vote on whether to oust Williams. 

Murray said Williams has been trying to prevent a quorum as a way to protect his position. “Tell people it’s a bogus meeting. Tell them not to show up. And if they don’t have a quorum, they can’t do anything,” he said in court, as he successfully asked for an order halting the special meeting to be lifted.

It takes a third of the committee to constitute a quorum to even hold a valid meeting — more than is required to request the gathering in the first place.

If Williams is removed, who will replace him?

If Williams is removed, any candidates vying to replace him would only have to win a majority of those present at a central committee meeting called to fill the vacancy to take over the party’s top leadership post.

Watkins has added filling any officer vacancies to the agenda of the Aug. 24 meeting.

The Republicans who are seeking to replace Williams so far include Eli Bremer, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2020 and formerly served as chair of the El Paso County GOP; state Rep. Richard Holtorf, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress this year; former Routt County Treasurer Brita Horn, who ran unsuccessfully to be state treasurer in 2018; and Douglas County GOP Chair Steve Peck.

Another special legislative session on Colorado’s property taxes appeared imminent Monday after a long list of top civic and business groups from across the political spectrum said they supported a deal to stop a pair of measures from appearing on the November ballot.

The deal would cut property taxes by an additional $255 million in 2025 for taxes owed in 2026 — on top of the $1 billion cut the legislature already passed this year during its regular legislative session.

In exchange, Michael Fields, who leads Advance Colorado, a conservative political nonprofit, said he would pull Initiatives 50 and 108 off the statewide ballot. Doing so would prevent even larger tax cuts that elected officials in both parties feared would lead to recession-like cuts to state and local services.

“This seems like a good path forward to end — hopefully — the property tax battles, and de-risk the budget,” Mark Ferrandino, the governor’s budget director, told the state’s Property Tax Commission on Monday.

A special session — the second one on property taxes in the last 10 months — seemed unthinkable a month ago. But after lawmakers and the conservative groups behind the ballot measures presented to the Colorado Forum in recent weeks, the two sides reignited negotiations that had stalled at the end of the legislative session, which ended in May. (The forum is a decades-old public policy panel made up of state business and civic leaders that takes positions on pressing issues.)

Initiative 50 would amend the state constitution to enact a strict cap on annual statewide property tax growth, while Initiative 108 would cut property taxes by $2.4 billion. The measures are being supported by Advance Colorado as well as Colorado Concern, a conservative-leaning nonprofit that represents state business leaders.

Fights over property taxes have become a fixture of the state’s politics in recent years, starting with the 2020 repeal of the tax-limiting Gallagher Amendment. Last tax year, residential tax assessments rose 27% even after lawmakers enacted multiple rounds of tax cuts, leading to ongoing pressure for additional relief.

When the negotiations started up again, a special session seemed unlikely given how poorly the ballot measures have been polling and because Democrats didn’t want to give in to the groups behind the initiatives. But attitudes started changing late last week.

On Monday, the dam burst when social justice groups, business interests, the state’s hospital association, schools, teachers unions and foundations — both liberal and conservative — joined together in a letter asking for a special session to be called.

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“These initiatives present a very significant and real threat to all communities in Colorado,” the groups wrote. “For those reasons, we are supportive of a compromise and a special session.”

The organizations asked that the special session be narrow in scope and limited to one bill implementing an agreed-upon deal. The signatories included labor groups like the Colorado Education Association and the Working Families Party; K-12 school district and university leaders; and business groups like Club 20, the Colorado Contractors Association and the Colorado Hospital Association.

The mayors of Denver, Aurora and Colorado Springs also signed a letter to lawmakers Monday calling for a special session to prevent the ballot measures from passing.

“If passed, these two initiatives will drastically defund K-12 schools statewide, deplete local public safety resources and demand crippling cuts to local fire districts and special districts,” wrote Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade. “These are very real impacts that will negatively impact every resident’s quality of life. We are depending on our legislature to ensure this does not happen.”

The mayors said a special session would give the legislature the opportunity to find a “compromise that would avoid such negative impacts white still providing tax relief to our residents.”

Support for a special session isn’t universal. Some think any further cuts to property taxes are unnecessary and ill advised. And they question whether conservative groups could be trusted not to bring back similar initiatives for the next 10 years, per the terms of the proposed agreement.

State Rep. Cathy Kipp, a Democrat from Fort Collins, said her caucus was divided over whether a special session was a good idea.

“There are some people who are risk averse and would like to proceed with a special session and there are others who don’t appreciate that this is the way things are moving forward,” she said.

“I’m less agreeable, personally, to letting the deal be continually revised to the detriment of our state and our citizens,” she added.

On Monday, some members of the state’s bipartisan Property Tax Commission bristled at being asked to weigh in on yet another tax cut that had been negotiated behind closed doors — just months after the legislature passed a property tax measure in Senate Bill 233 that many believed was supposed to put the matter to rest. 

“If it wasn’t a deal (back) then, why did you pass 233?” said Mayor Guyleen Castriotta of Broomfield, who serves on the commission.

“The decision to have a special session has probably already been made by people who have a lot more power than me,” she complained.

Others, though, said further tax cuts were warranted. State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican who helped negotiate Senate Bill 233 as well as the new proposal, said Advance Colorado never agreed to drop the ballot measures the first time around.

“(My constituents’) number one issue is property taxes,” said state Rep. Lisa Frizell, a Republican from Castle Rock. “Their number one pain point is how much their mortgage has gone up on a monthly basis, and how really worried they are about how they can put groceries on the table.”

In exchange for dropping Initiatives 50 and 108, here is the framework for the deal that would be considered during the special session, according to Ferrandino:

• In the 2025 tax year for taxes owed in 2026, the residential assessment rate for local government taxes would drop an additional 0.15% to 6.25%. Today the rate is 6.7%, but under Senate Bill 233, which was passed by the legislature this year with bipartisan support, it is scheduled to fall to 6.4% in the 2025 tax year for taxes paid in 2026. Residential assessments for schools would remain separate from those of local governments, and would fall to 7.05% from 7.15%. (Both cuts could be larger if property values grow faster than expected next year.)
• In the 2026 tax year, the residential assessment rate for local governments would rise to 6.8%, but the increase is offset by a tax break that kicks in that year, exempting up to $70,000 of a home’s value from taxation. Under current law, it is scheduled to rise to 6.95%. The school assessment rate would remain at 7.05%.
• Nonresidential assessment rates would drop to 25% in the 2027 tax year. Under Senate Bill 233, only commercial and agricultural property assessment rates fall to that level, while the rates for industrial and some other properties increase to 29%. The oil and gas industry, which pays much higher property taxes, would not benefit from the cuts.
• Local government revenue would be limited to 10.5% growth over two years, instead of 5.5% annually under Senate Bill 233. School districts would be limited to 12% growth over two years, a new cap that doesn’t exist in current law.

Fields also confirmed the details of the proposal to The Colorado Sun.

The session will likely happen the last week of August, since several Democratic legislators are traveling to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention next week.

Logistically speaking, either Gov. Jared Polis can call for a special session or the legislature can summon itself back to the Capitol by a two-thirds vote.

To meet the demands of conservatives, the deal would have to be completed before Sept. 9, when the November ballot is required to be certified by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. It takes at least three days to pass a bill at the Capitol. 

Holding a special session brings political risks beyond the property tax debate.

It’s an election year, and Republicans are trying to dismantle the Democratic supermajority in the House and prevent one from being secured in the Senate. The GOP could be tempted to force the issue with controversial amendments and floor speeches.

The session may also invite disruption from lawmakers who aren’t returning to the Capitol next year after losing their primary races in June or abandoning their reelection bids mid cycle. 

For instance, state Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a Denver Democrat who was unseated in the June 25 primary, has already been critical on social media of the tax debate. During the last special session on property taxes in 2023, she used the occasion to disrupt proceedings in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza. 

Finally, unions will likely push lawmakers to take up some pro-labor bills passed during the session this year that Polis vetoed. That’s part of why a special session wasn’t called to strip out a provision in a bill kneecapping a 2024 ballot measure that would overhaul the state’s election process. 

Polis can call a special session for a specific purpose, but can’t limit the legislature to only consider a specific bill. Courts have said the legislature has some leeway to introduce measures beyond the narrow scope of a governor’s call, as long as it has a “rational” connection to the session’s stated purpose, according to a legislative legal memo.

So far, much of the planning for the special session has happened behind closed doors. 

Last week, the House and Senate Democratic caucuses met to discuss the situation, but reporters were kept out.

The Senate Democratic caucus met Thursday evening on Zoom to discuss “what would even be possible with schedules/logistics” around property taxes and the state budget, a spokesperson said.

The Sun tried to attend the meeting, but was barred because legislation wasn’t going to be discussed and nothing is currently pending before the legislature, the spokesperson said.

A similar situation played out when The Denver Post tried to attend the House Democrats’ gathering, according to a reporter for the newspaper.

The new open meetings law for the General Assembly that was passed by the legislature this year says the public does not have a right to attend meetings about subjects that “are by nature interpersonal, administrative or logistical.” Previously, an open meeting was broadly defined as “any kind of gathering, convened to discuss public business, in person, by telephone, electronically, or by other means of communication.”

Jillaire McMillan was selected by a Democratic vacancy committee Thursday night to be the party’s nominee in the toss-up House District 19, which may decide whether Democrats keep their supermajority in the House next year.

McMillan, who lives in Weld County and runs a small business with her husband, beat out three other candidates in two rounds of voting to win the vacancy election. There were 31 voting members of the vacancy committee.

“I know it will take hard work to win this seat,” she said. “I’ll put in the time to knock doors and connect with voters.”

McMillan will replace state Rep. Jennifer Parenti of Erie as the Democratic nominee on the November ballot. Parenti dropped her reelection bid on July 19, about a month after she ran uncontested in the primary, saying she “cannot continue to serve while maintaining my own sense of integrity.”

“The two are simply incompatible,” she wrote in a statement, blaming personal agendas and special interests for making the job too difficult.

Parenti beat then-state Rep. Dan Woog, a Republican, in 2022 by 1,467 votes, or 3 percentage points. Woog is running again in the district, which straddles Boulder and Weld counties.

The district is estimated to lean 1.5 percentage points in the GOP’s favor, according to a nonpartisan analysis of past election results conducted as part of Colorado’s 2021 redistricting process.

McMillan said the time she spends at church means she frequently interacts with Republicans.

“I’ve been actively practicing what it takes to be a Democrat in a swing district for years, by building relationships and actively listening while never straying from my progressive values,” she said.

McMillan said school funding, public transportation and housing affordability are top issues for her.

Democrats have a 46-19 supermajority in the House. That means they can only afford to lose two seats to keep their two-thirds advantage in the chamber, which, among other things, gives Democrats the ability to override vetoes by Gov. Jared Polis.

There are six districts, including House District 19, in which Democrats won by fewer than 1,500 votes in 2022. All but two of them lean in Republicans’ favor, meaning they will be difficult to defend in November.

Democrats are pursuing a supermajority in the Senate — they are one seat shy now — and the odds are stacked in their favor, according to past election results.

If Democrats have supermajorities in both chambers next year, they would be able to refer constitutional amendments to the ballot without Republican support and ask voters to make lasting changes to the tax system and around social issues. Supermajorities would also give Democrats in the legislature the ability to override vetoes by Gov. Jared Polis, who has been a persistent roadblock to progressive bills.

McMillan is months behind Woog in fundraising and campaigning. 

If McMillan wins in November, she will join a long list of state legislators who at some point secured a position at the Capitol via vacancy appointment.

The 31 members of the vacancy committee who participated in the election Tuesday night represent just 0.06% of the Democratic and unaffiliated voters in House District 19.

The candidates McMillan beat were former Boulder Valley School District Richard Garcia,  former Boulder Valley School District Board President Jim Reed and entrepreneur Anil Pesaramelli.

Garcia is the father of Democratic state Rep. Lorena Garcia of Adams County. Lorena Garcia also first entered the legislature through a vacancy appointment. 

In the second and final round of voting, McMillan won 53% of the vote to Garcia’s 47%. Candidates had to win a majority of the vacancy committee members’ support to win the appointment. The lowest vote-getters were dropped after the first round.

The proponents of eight measures being pursued for Colorado’s November ballot failed by a deadline Monday to turn in the signatures they gathered to try to get their questions before voters.

That means voters this fall won’t weigh in on whether to ban children assigned male at birth from participating in girl’s youth sports and whether the state should require voter approval for fees raising money for public transportation projects.

Many of the measures that failed Monday were being pursued by conservative activists. Supporters of the initiatives needed to collect roughly 125,000 voter signatures to get their initiatives on the November ballot.

The eight measures that failed to make the ballot by default on Monday were:

• Initiative 142, which would have required public schools to notify parents within 48 hours if their child is experiencing “gender incongruence,” which the initiative would have defined as a “difference between a child’s biological sex and the child’s perceived or desired gender.” The initiative was being pursued by conservative activists.
• Initiative 144, which would have let veterinarians offer telehealth to patients in Colorado. The governor this year signed a bill passed by the legislature that will have a similar effect.
• Initiative 147, which would have prohibited sheriffs from denying a concealed carry permit to someone who lawfully uses marijuana.
• Initiative 160, which would have banned children assigned the male at birth from participating in girl’s youth sports. The initiative was being pursued by the same conservative activists who were working on Initiative 142.
• Initiative 201, which would have amended the state constitution to prohibit the use of ranked choice voting in Colorado. It was meant to combat Initiative 310, which, if its signatures are approved, will ask voters to change most of Colorado’s primaries so candidates from all parties run against each other, followed by a ranked choice general election. 
• Initiative 202, which would have amended the state constitution to enshrine the ability of political candidates to make the ballot through the caucus and assembly process, in addition to gathering petition signatures.
• Initiative 278, which would have amended the state constitution to prohibit unaffiliated voters from casting ballots in partisan primaries. The same conservative activists behind this proposed measure were also behind Initiatives 201 and 202 and they came in large part in response to the campaign behind Initiative 310.
• Initiative 284, which would have amended the state constitution to require that any government fees assessed for the purpose of funding mass transportation be collected only in areas served by that mass transportation and only after the fees are approved by voters. The measure was pursued by the rental car industry in response to a rental car fee hike imposed by the legislature this year that will generate millions for transit projects, including passenger rail.

The eight measures that failed Monday were approved for signature gathering among hundreds proposed for the November 2024 election. Most were either rejected by the state’s Title Board or abandoned by their proponents.

Already on the November ballot are initiatives asking voters to impose an excise tax on firearms, prohibit mountain lion hunting and enshrine unfettered access to abortion in the state constitution. 

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There are also likely to be two property tax measures on the ballot that would cap the annual increase in property tax bills, as well as Initiative 310 and a measure creating a new mid-tier veterinary professional position in Colorado.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office has until Sept. 4 to review signatures turned in on time for measures being pursued for the November ballot. The ballot will be set by Sept. 9.

To see a full list of the measures that have been approved for the ballot, are awaiting signature verification or that have failed, visit this website: https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Initiatives/titleBoard/.

A proposed ballot measure pushed by conservative political nonprofit Advance Colorado Action aims to protect the right to school choice in Colorado’s constitution, cementing parents’ ability to send their children to any public school, charter school, private school or homeschooling program they want. 

But some education advocates and policy experts see a hidden motive, saying Initiative 138 could lead to a statewide voucher program that uses public dollars to send children to private schools, including those with a religious affiliation.

“I think it’s a steppingstone,” Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center and a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, told The Colorado Sun. “If the initiative passed, it could be a central part of a larger campaign, political and legal, that could ultimately result in a voucher program in the state. But I think that strategy looks to a five- to 10-year window or even longer and would have to have a lot of dominoes fall.”

Proponents say the measure simply strengthens school choice protections already found in state law — and they deny that the proposal is a school voucher play in disguise.

The proposed ballot measure is the latest salvo in a long political fight over what role school choice should play in Colorado’s education system and the degree of accountability and transparency charter schools in particular must uphold. Charter schools have been a regular subject of contention at the state Capitol, where lawmakers have repeatedly jousted over how tightly the state should regulate them, with charter school advocates calling state regulations an obstacle to innovation in the classroom.

Critics of charter schools say they take too much funding from traditional public schools, without being required to meet the same level of quality. 

Last year, a bill introduced by a group of liberal Colorado Democrats sought to impose sweeping reforms on charter schools in the interest of making them more transparent and accountable. That legislation, which charter school advocates called “a blatant attack on charter schools and charter school families,” failed.

Previous attempts to launch a voucher program in Colorado have likewise failed. The few school voucher programs that did manage to move forward were legally challenged and ultimately dissolved, including a school voucher law rejected by a Denver judge in 2003 on the grounds that it violated local control provisions in the state Constitution.

Debates over funneling public dollars to religious schools — both private and charter schools — have also swirled in other states in recent years. The Oklahoma Supreme Court in June struck down a school poised to become the country’s first publicly funded religious charter school. Another effort to benefit private religious schools with public funding through a tuition assistance program in Maine prevailed in 2022. 

Proponents say Initiative 138 is needed to protect school choice from repeated attacks

Initiative 138 in Colorado would add another layer of protection beyond state law by reinforcing in the state Constitution the right for parents to choose whether to enroll their child in a public school, charter school, private school; homeschool them; or send them to another district through open enrollment. The measure has not made it onto the November ballot yet. Sponsors submitted about 201,000 signatures in support of the initiative to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office last week.

State elections officials have until Aug. 22 to review signatures. The ballot measure would need 55% of voters to approve it in order to pass.

Michael Fields, president of Advance Colorado Action, said the proposed ballot measure is necessary because Colorado school choice laws are statutory, meaning “they could change at any point.”

“We’ve had broad bipartisan support of school choice for decades here, but I feel like that might not be the case in the future,” he said. “We’ve seen legislation this year going after charter schools. I think that will continue in the future from some legislators.”

Fields, who previously taught at a charter school and whose children attend district neighborhood schools in Douglas County, said Initiative 138 is not paving the way for a voucher program in Colorado, particularly since there is no cost associated with the measure.

“This is strictly locking in what we already have in place,” said Fields, who describes himself as a proponent of Education Savings Account programs, which give families government subsidies to fund tuition at private schools as well as pursue private tutoring, online classes and extracurricular activities.

“I just think that parents should be in charge of education,” he said. “I think it’s easier when they have resources to send their kid to the school that they want to. I believe that there’s good fits for kids in all different types of education. I just think that the options should be available for everybody.”

Fields said his organization’s lawyer submitted multiple possible measures to the Title Board to see which ones the Title Board would accept, which ones would abide by the mandate to address a single subject in a ballot measure and what the formal language of different versions would look like.

One submitted measure included text reflecting a voucher program: “Parents and guardians have the right to direct per-pupil funding for their child to the schooling of their choice.”

That language is not part of Initiative 138.

House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, a Colorado Springs Republican, wrote in an email that preserving the right to school choice in the state Constitution “would provide essential protection against ongoing attacks on this fundamental principle.”

The measure “is a vital step in securing the ability of parents to make the best educational decisions for their children, regardless of future political pressures,” Pugliese wrote.The Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, opposes the potential ballot measure, according to President Kevin Vick.

Vick labeled the proposal “extremely troubling” with concerns that it would take a lot of taxpayer funding needed by Colorado students “and put it in the hands of a small number of private school people who could already afford to pay tuition themselves.”

He doesn’t see a need for the measure because Colorado already has “a pretty robust” school choice system.

Fighting “one battle at a time”

The possible ballot measure could open up “new policy ground” in establishing “a legal right to access private schools” in the state Constitution, said Van Schoales, a former teacher and school leader who is also senior policy director of the Keystone Policy Center. 

Schoales did not speak on behalf of the Keystone Policy Center. The nonprofit does not take a stance on political issues.

A new legal right to access private schools could then enable legislation or a court case pursuing the start of a voucher program, Schoales said.

Welner, of the National Education Policy Center, said many more political puzzle pieces would have to fall into place to actually introduce a voucher program in the state. If Republicans win federal elections, gaining control of the presidency and Congress, and then open up federal funding or incentives for states to adopt voucher policies, that could create more momentum for voucher programs. If Republicans also gained more power in Colorado and voters elected a conservative governor, that could usher the state close to adopting its own voucher program, Welner said.

Those circumstances could set the stage for a voucher policy, Welner said. But right now, Colorado parents’ appetite for public schools presents another hurdle to a voucher program, he added.

“Colorado families overwhelmingly like their public schools so voucher supporters face a steep uphill battle,” Welner said. “They have to fight one battle at a time, and this is one battle or one steppingstone.”

Welner said it would be hard to persuade voters or politicians that Colorado should join the ranks of states that provide taxpayer subsidies for private schools or homeschooling.

Other education advocates and organizations are waiting to take a position on Initiative 138 until it becomes an official ballot measure, including the Colorado League of Charter Schools. President Dan Schaller said if it becomes an official ballot measure, the nonprofit organization will conduct a deeper legal analysis of its potential impacts to present to its board.

Beyond the political battle over voucher programs is the question of whether they lead to better academic outcomes for students. Schoales said there is no strong evidence to suggest that kids in voucher programs perform significantly better or worse than other students. 

Giving public funding to private schools, including religious schools, “is not a strategy to improve outcomes,” Schoales said. “It’s just a different way of delivering education.”

Republicans running in tight races across the state this year don’t expect to get the kind of help from the Colorado GOP that the party has offered in the past, a big deficit as conservatives try to claw their way back to political relevance. 

They have good reasons for that assumption.

Fourteen of the 18 candidates the party endorsed this year in contested Republican primaries lost. Chairman Dave Williams used the party’s limited funds to pay for mailers to benefit his own failed congressional primary bid. And Williams hasn’t been seen much since his primary loss even as a movement to remove him as chair is underway. 

“When you can get everybody in a boat, rowing in the same direction, that’s an ideal circumstance,” said Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican who is trying to prevent Democrats from expanding their already historic power in the legislature.

The Colorado GOP is “not even in the boat,” Lundeen said, so he is “moving on without them.”

“You’ve got to work with what you’ve got,” said Lundeen, who has called on Williams to resign. 

The power of state parties across the nation has waned in recent decades as the flow of campaign dollars has shifted to political action committees. But parties still play an important role on the campaign trail. They help organize volunteers among multiple overlapping races, steer candidates to potential donors and amplify candidates’ messaging wherever possible. 

“Not all candidates can afford a consultant and a team and all those things,” said Kristi Burton Brown, the former chairwoman of the Colorado GOP. “You sort of fill that gap as a state party.”

And Colorado Republicans could use all the help they can get in an election year where Republicans are trying to win back some power at the state and federal levels after years of defeat. The GOP almost certainly can’t win back majorities in Colorado, but it can bolster its ranks to be a more effective check on the Democratic juggernaut. 

“Without a state party, a campaign is significantly harder to run,” said Nick Bayer, the campaign manager for Grand Junction attorney Jeff Hurd, a Republican running in a tight race in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. “There are no ifs, ands or buts about it.”

Bayer said Hurd’s campaign has received little help from the state party since Hurd won the six-way primary in the 3rd District. The Colorado GOP endorsed one of Hurd’s primary opponents — former state Rep. Ron Hanks, an election denier. Hurd joined Lundeen last week in a letter calling on Williams to resign.

Bayer said a functioning state party would be hiring staffers in the 3rd District to organize canvassers, sharing voter data, helping overlapping campaigns in the district coordinate volunteers and setting up joint fundraising committees. 

“None of that’s happening,” said Bayer, who previously worked for the Massachusetts GOP.

Bayer said Hurd’s campaign is finding ways to fill the void on its own. Lundeen said the same. 

“Of course I would prefer that every cylinder of the engine be firing perfectly,” Lundeen said. “But it doesn’t always work that way. And so what you do is you tune your engine so the cylinders you have are doing the best job they can, and you go out and win with that.”

Some Republican operatives told The Sun that even if the Colorado GOP were to offer fundraising help, they likely wouldn’t work with the party given how it spent money to benefit Williams’ candidacy. They’re also worried about being associated with the GOP’s controversies, including a homophobic email it sent out during Pride month calling for people to burn Pride flags. 

Burton Brown, for instance, is running for a Colorado Board of Education seat this year. She says she hasn’t heard from the party and wouldn’t accept its help if it was offered.

“I have no interest in working with them whatsoever,” she said.

Even U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican firebrand who appeared to be an ally of Williams, has criticized Williams and the Colorado GOP for not being engaged enough in Republican campaigns. 

“This isn’t about competing policies or ideologies,” she wrote on Facebook last week. “This is about a failure from chairman Williams to lead after our primary election and simply reach out to candidates and organizations throughout Colorado and beyond to offer support, mend bridges and present a clear game plan of how we can win together in November.”

Colorado House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, a Colorado Springs Republican working to flip a list of House seats in November, didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

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Instead, Tyler Sandberg, a Republican consultant leading the House GOP caucus campaign arm, sent The Sun a statement saying “House Republicans are singularly focused on holding House Democrats accountable” and that “nothing will distract us.”

A spokesman for state Rep. Gabe Evans, a Fort Lupton Republican running in Colorado’s battleground 8th Congressional District, also declined to comment for this story. The race in the 8th District, which spans Denver’s northeast suburbs along U.S. 85 into Greeley, may decide which party controls Congress next year. 

The Colorado GOP endorsed Evans’ opponent, former state Rep. Janak Joshi, in the 8th District Republican primary, and sent a mailer on Joshi’s behalf. Joshi lost to Evans, who also signed the letter last week calling on Williams to resign, by about 55 percentage points.

When the National Republican Congressional Committee last month held a celebration marking the opening of a campaign office in the district to help Evans, Williams was absent.

It was the kind of event that in the past, someone like Williams would almost certainly have attended — and even spoken at. But an NRCC spokeswoman said the organization didn’t even invite Williams to the gathering.

Williams didn’t respond to a message seeking comment this week. But Colorado GOP Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman forwarded The Sun two congratulatory emails she sent in early July to the campaigns of Republicans who won in the primaries and offering access to party data, donor contacts and volunteer training. 

Scheppelman also shared an email Tuesday from Williams to Colorado GOP leaders calling efforts to oust him “shortsighted” and claimed many of the movement’s organizers have a personal vendetta against him.

“We are supporting ALL of our nominees with infrastructure, volunteers, get out the vote/data platforms, and even direct financial support in key targeted races,” Williams wrote. “Those saying otherwise are either lying or are ignorant to the facts.”

But the only direct spending reflected in the Colorado GOP’s campaign finance reports thus far have been to help Williams’ campaign and a $1,000 donation to Republican Greg Lopez’s special election campaign in the 4th Congressional District. 

The reports filed thus far only reflect spending through June. The next report, for spending in July, isn’t due until Aug. 20. Party Treasurer Tom Bjorklund said the party’s filing for July would reflect money spent to help Joshi. He also highlighted how the party has signed a joint fundraising agreement with Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee that allows donors to write a single check to be distributed among participants. 

Bjorklund said the party has no such joint fundraising agreements with any Colorado candidates yet.

“But we are reaching out,” he said.

Finally, Scheppelman said Williams was invited to the NRCC office opening but was out of state when it happened. Asked twice to provide evidence of that invitation, she stopped responding to The Sun.

The party did this week use its email list to distribute a flyer advertising a fundraiser for Evans and conservative commentator and activist Jeff Crank, the Republican who beat Williams in the 5th Congressional District primary. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, was a featured guest.

But the fundraiser was organized by a joint committee set up by Evans and Crank, not the Colorado GOP. And the gathering was supposed to be private. 

The flyer shared by the party included the personal email addresses of the candidates’ fundraising consultants, as well as the exact time and location of the gathering. That prompted security concerns given that Scalise was gravely wounded in a shooting a few years ago in which members of the GOP congressional baseball team were targeted.

An Arapahoe County judge has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday morning to reconsider the temporary restraining order she issued preventing members of the Colorado GOP state central committee from holding a vote to oust Williams.