I really wish I could just ignore the Colorado Republican Party. The state electorate has; they have been putting Democrats in power for more than a decade and swept them into historic majorities last year despite an election cycle that should have favored the red side of the aisle.
After that bloodbath, I declared the Colorado GOP officially dead.
But like a zombie, they rose from the grave, brainless and bloody with no sense of direction. Similar to the gory terrors that inhabit the world of “Night of the Living Dead” — while “The Last of Us” seems timelier, its monsters are too threatening and purposeful for an apt comparison — the Colorado Republican Party simply lurches about in jerky motions looking to feed on red meat.
They initially stumbled through the conspiracy-fueled Boot Barn shout-fest and more recently staggered alone with the election of former Rep. Dave Williams as Colorado GOP Chair. Williams is a fire-and-brimstone politico who has a history of vehemently anti-LGBTQ+ stances.
He ran against U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn last year and sued to have his name printed on the ballot as David “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams, a ploy so simple only a rotted, undead brain could have come up with it.
Watch enough post-apocalyptic television series or movies and you realize that zombies or walkers or rotters or biters aren’t often wandering alone. They travel in packs and herds. The GOP chair election was no different.
Six candidates put forward their name and all six prattled on to varying degrees about stolen elections and voter fraud. The uniformity caused former GOP Chair Dick Wadhams, who actually oversaw several successful campaigns before the state party flatlined, to decry the race was lost before it ever began.
Ironically, Williams has claimed that 5,600 dead voters took part in the 2020 election in Colorado. Maybe he was talking about the Republican zombies supporting his candidacy?
Notably, after Williams won, he reached out to several other walking political corpses to take leadership positions under his guidance. Most prominently, he asked indicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to join his leadership team. If this were a video game, she would be one of the ultimate big boss zombies with special powers seeking to undermine elections across the state.
Plus, given the number of felonies still pending against her, Peters may have to do it from a jail cell.
The thing about mindless hoards of zombies is that they lack the brain power or mental capacity to mount an effective assault against people whose hearts are still beating. They make easy targets that heroines and heroes typically have little trouble hacking through.
In this state, that means Democratic candidates will make short work of their Republican counterparts during each election. Even in areas where the Republican walking dead have had significant numerical advantages, the steady decline of their numbers means more areas will be claimed by Democratic elected officials. Look no further than the 3rd and 7th congressional districts.
What was supposed to be a “competitive” race in CD7 turned into massacre when Brittany Pettersen beat Erik Aadland by more than 15 points. Naturally, Aadland ended up being the last challenger to Williams for the Colorado Reanimated Party.
In CD3, Lauren Boebert nearly lost a race heavily weighted to her advantage. It turns out there were just enough walkers to overcome a closest-in-the-nation challenge from Adam Frisch. Yet after retreating briefly, he has rallied and is already running against her in 2024, when the presidential election cycle will make it far more likely the Democratic voters he needs actually show up at the polls.
The Colorado Republican Party has been dead for some time. It is never coming back to life. Instead, it is doomed to wander aimlessly until put out of its misery. It is a horror show I just cannot seem to stop watching.
