{"id":35928,"date":"2023-02-06T09:46:03","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T16:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-democratic-party-gop-prepare-for-reorganizations-key-to-their-future\/"},"modified":"2023-02-06T16:46:03","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T16:46:03","slug":"colorado-democratic-party-gop-prepare-for-reorganizations-key-to-their-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-democratic-party-gop-prepare-for-reorganizations-key-to-their-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Democratic Party, GOP prepare for reorganizations key to their future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The podium of the Colorado Republican Party stands bare following a watch party of 2022 candidates at the Doubletree By Hilton in Greenwood Village. (Olivia Sun\/The Colorado Sun via Report for America)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Change is coming for Colorado Democrats and Republicans as they elect new, internal party leadership at the state, county, congressional and legislative levels by April 1.<\/p>\n

The leaders are pivotal because they will help their respective parties recruit candidates and volunteers through the 2024 election. State- and county-level chairs are often the local face of the state party, as well, serving as on-the-ground spokespeople for Democrats or Republicans.<\/p>\n

This year, both Democrats and the GOP will also elect new leaders at the chair level, with Democratic chairwoman Morgan Carroll<\/a>, who has held her post for six years, and GOP chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown<\/a>, who has held her post for two years, stepping aside.<\/p>\n

Most of the focus on intraparty leadership elections this year is on those top jobs, which often pay $100,000 or more annually. There are multiple candidates in both parties. Republicans will select a new chair March 11, while Democrats will select their leader April 1, the last day allowed by law.<\/p>\n

But the outcome of Democratic and GOP chair elections will depend to some extent on who wins county and district party leadership elections, which began Feb. 1.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the Republicans and Democratic Party central committees are made up of party officers at the county, congressional district and legislative district levels. The state parties\u2019 central committees typically include about 500 people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re the ones who implement a lot of decisions,\u201d said Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, where he leads the school\u2019s Center on American Politics. \u201cThey can make decisions about who ends up participating in primaries and what those primaries look like and they certainly can be influential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grassroots leaders elected in 2022 will select new party leaders<\/div>\n

Precinct organizers elected at caucuses in March 2022 are responsible for choosing new county, congressional district and legislative district party leadership this year.<\/p>\n

Many of those grassroots precinct leaders for the Republican Party also nominated candidates through the 2022 caucus and assembly process who proved to be unpopular with Colorado\u2019s unaffiliated voters in the November election.<\/p>\n

Republicans lost by larger-than-expected margins in many offices last fall, with little hope of electoral success until 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most active people end up running parties at the local level,\u201d Masket said. \u201cThat\u2019s been particularly true since (former President Donald) Trump first started running for office, where he\u2019s brought a lot of people into the party and into the party organization who really hadn\u2019t been involved at that level in the past and now they\u2019re kind of running it in a lot of states and a lot of local levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

The election for Republican Party state chair is crowded, with several candidates who don\u2019t want unaffiliated voters to participate in Colorado\u2019s GOP primary elections and who have or continue to spread conspiracy theories about election results.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s already controversy over the election of a new county chair in El Paso County, where Vickie Tonkins, the current chairwoman, was censured by the state GOP central committee in December for opposing several of the party\u2019s candidates in the general election.<\/p>\n

The state GOP central committee voted Tuesday at Burton Brown\u2019s recommendation to appoint a neutral party to run the El Paso County reorganization meeting. Tonkins and others in El Paso County filed a lawsuit to try to stop that action.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think that there\u2019s an even bigger existential question for Republicans going through reorganization,\u201d said Carroll, the outgoing Colorado Democratic Party chairwoman. \u201cWhat they think they\u2019re doing to help the party is actually making it irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burton Brown noted that state law governs party organization<\/a>, with the structure designed from the ground up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very much a local-district-controls (the) party,\u201d she said. \u201cSo the state party doesn\u2019t tell county parties, \u2018Oh, you have to let this person run.\u2019 Obviously we\u2019ll put people in touch if they reach out to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

How it works<\/div>\n

Here\u2019s how the process will work:<\/p>\n

Counties must elect new officers \u2013 typically chairperson, vice-chairperson, secretary and treasurer \u2013 by Feb. 15. Those officers all serve on the state party central committee. Extra central committee delegates are awarded to many counties based on the number of ballots cast for the party\u2019s candidates in the most recent election.<\/div>\n
Precinct leaders from each congressional, legislative and judicial district will also select new districtwide leaders who will serve on the state parties\u2019 central committees. At the state legislative level, those district officers and precinct organizers also serve on vacancy committees if a lawmaker must be replaced in the middle of their term.<\/div>\n
Elected officials at the state, legislative and congressional levels, as well as elected district attorneys, also serve on their respective parties\u2019 state central committees.<\/div>\n

Burton Brown and Carroll both suggested that those interested in running for party-level positions at the county level on up, or those interested in volunteering, reach out to their county parties. A list for Democratic county parties can be found here<\/a>, and a list for Republican county parties can be found here<\/a>. The Democratic Party also has several<\/a> webpages on the process.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

parties will have new chairs, and how leadership elections go on the county and congressional and legislative district levels will play a big role<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[663,28,1126,1304],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-35928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-democratic-party","tag-headlines","tag-politics-general","tag-republican-party"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35928"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=35928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}