Dick Wadhams, a long time GOP strategist, is joining me. He's got to call him. I don't know if it was yesterday or today.
I saw it today.
It is linked on the blog at mandy'sblog dot com and the headline bag Dad Bob lives on in state GOP's Oblivious Leadership, and in it he discusses his love and affection for the leadership of the Colorado Republican Party.
Now JK. Dick Wadhams, Welcome to the show. Hi, Hell you know, Dick, I feel like every time I talk to you like some new fresh hell has occurred.
And over the weekend I was chatting with some people that were well connected in party politics and they laid out a scenario that seems pretty realistic that Dave william Shenanigan, most recently in Well County, is going to allow him to lock up enough votes to vote themselves out of the primary. Do you know anything about this? Am I on the right track? Or please tell me I'm wrong.
I wish I could tell you you were wrong, Mandy, but just anecdotally, I've had enough conversations with people around the state that it seems like that supporters of Dave Williams have done very well in county officer elections, especially the large counties. No one exception to that has been Weld County, which elected a solid slate of Republican leaders
who do not favor him. But now he's trying to take over Weld County by essentially declaring those elections as nell and void and insisting and demanding that there be a new election for bonus members that he would run, the state Party would run. So it doesn't stretch the imagination to think that he wants to take over that because he thinks he is close to seventy five percent to cancel the primary on what grounds?
Did he decide to nullify the reorg meeting that Weldcunt just had.
Well, I'm not as familiar with the bylaws of the party is that as I used to be, obviously when I was state chairman a long time ago. But apparently there is some provision on some controversy a controversy exists.
That the.
State Central Committee can can settle that controversy. I think he's overstepping his bounds on this. They had an election in Nowell County as a very responsible group of people who ran and won up there. And it's just but it's typical Mandy. I mean, anybody who crosses him, he thinks he's at liberty to try to destroy I mean, look at what he did in the primary elections against
Republican candidates and spending party money against Republicans. This guy knows, he knows no ethics, he knows no bylaws, he knows no laws that he cannot use his advantage.
Well, I was shocked to find out Lauren Bobert's a rhino. Now that's fun and new because she dared to push back against him. I guess in the ridiculous meeting he had to have to try and change the rules now Dick for people who are not Republicans, who are not unaffiliated. At the beginning of the show, I went on quite a tear because I think that a couple of things could immediately happen. Right, if they vote themselves out of
the primary system. That means Republican candidates will be chosen at the sparsely attended by a tiny fraction of Republicans assembly process, right, and none of our Yeah, the only one of our current members of Congress that was supported by the Colorado GP is Lauren Bobert, and now she's out of favor. So in theory, they could nominate for completely different Republicans to go after those seats, even though
we are currently holding those seats. That's not a crazy thing to suppose at this point, is it?
No? It is not many intact I think that havopeden to his goal. He knows that the caucuses will be attended by, as you point out, a very small number of people. Rather than hundreds of thousands of people voting in a primary, You're going to have a few thousand people go to caucauses and in hate fields. And he's probably right that he would have a strong advantage there and he would want to knock off Jeff Heard in the Grand Junction, gave Evans in the eighth district, Jeff
Crank in Carter Springs. And I think that, and now that Bobert has challenged him, probably take on her in the fourth district.
What and I'm asking you to guest here.
I want you to try and put on your window into Dave William's head on this next question. When he and his chosen candidates could not even get out of the primary, what makes him think that they would have won a general election.
Bendy, That is the question I have won about for some time. Colorado has always been a competitive state. It's always been hard for Republicans to win congressional races and also state wide races. It's gotten harder because the electorate has become more has become or more liberal. And now I'm not sure it's going to permanently be that way,
but right now it is. I don't understand why they think that a Ron Hanks could win a congressional seat in Grand Junction and Group District or or doctor Joshi in the eighth that they but when it really comes down to it, Mandy, they really don't care about winning the general election. In many ways. They just care about making the party as pure as it can be in their image. That is their ultimately goal.
Well, I mean, Dick, what we're talking about here could be control of the House. And this is not a no repercussions. We should just let them crash and burn situation because the lead in the House, and you know that Republicans are going to lose seats in the midterms because that's what happens. Okay, the party in power loses seats in the midterms, this could contribute in a very significant way.
To losing the House.
And and that is something that I want people to be concerned about. And secondarily, but even more important in the grand scheme of.
My life, we would then.
Turn over even greater control in Colorado to the Democratic Party.
I feel like that would be a no brainer.
Mandy, there's no doubt. And and and I got to tell Gave Evans, who ran a magnificent campaign after being challenged and and and and and attacked by Dave Williams in the primary. Gave Evans went on to win a tough general election campaign because he's a great candidate who ran a great campaign. Same thing with Jeff ERDs in the third district. But both of those guys would be in danger if if we abolish the primary, and uh,
and we would lose those seats. Those two seats are roamed, Mandy could lose the entire control of the US counsel representatives.
And these are things.
And you know, we can talk about the fourth Congressional district. It is not nearly as Republicans safe as it used to be. But in the eighth that I talked about this in the beginning of the show. That district I think is going to be in play for either party for the foreseeable future. Right, that is going to be a toss up district. You cannot run a hard right carpetbagger and expect to win that district.
It's absurd on the face of it. Why don't they see that?
They don't believe it. They think. You know what's interesting, Mandy, I don't know how many times I've heard people say, well, we would win elections that we just nominated people more like Trump. Well, let's see here. Trump lost to Kamala Harris by eleven, he lost by fourteen, the Biden he lost by ford to Hillary Clinton. You can't get more Trump like than Trump himself. And he has never come
close to winning Colorado. And yet the Dave Williams crowd once Republican candidates to emulate him in the state, saying, we need to nominate a bunch of liberal Republicans. But why don't we nominate it, like we need to nominate smart Republicans by Jeff Hurt, Yeah, Gate Evans, like Jeff Crank, like Bill Owens was right, Wayne Albert was I thank round, what like Corey Gardner. What Corey went down because of
the anti Trump sentiment. But I mean, you look at the kind of Republicans who have won in the state. They were conservatives, but they were smart conservatives. Yeah, it didn't go off on a bunch of crap that the un affiliated voters didn't like.
Well, let me ask you this question because somebody asked this earlier when I was going on my tear that people can go back and listen to the podcasting here, because I got.
To say it was a good one.
But somebody said, is there any way for rank and file Republicans who are not involved in this party nonsense, but are in the party? Can they reach out to the national RNC and what if anything could be done by the national organization.
That's a good question, Mandy. The the RNC doesn't like to get involved in in state Republican Party issues, I mean, because you know the fact is that every state elects of their own leadership, and uh, the RNC is reluctant to do that. Now there is a precedent for it. However, in Michigan two or three years ago, there was a very incompetent person elected Michigan state chairman and then she was challenged and was defeated when she ran for re
election and there was she refused to step down. In that case, the rn C did step in and they actually replaced her with the with the person who beat her. This was not comparable exactly. But I don't know. I don't know that the rn C would get involved. But they've got to be concerned, Mandy, because they know the call REDA will never be competitive again as long as we have this kind of stuff going on.
Amen that Dick Wadhams is my guest. Dick, you know I'm not a registered Republican now. I left the party when a day if Williams was elected chair because I just don't want to have to explain it. I don't want to have to explain him. I don't want to have to explain any of it. There are a lot of people like me out there, because I get text
messages from them all the time. What can the Republican Party in Colorado do, aside from a place in the leadership, What needs to happen to get this party focused on the messaging? I mean, Dick, you could look at the landscape just like I can. There are so many winnable arguments when it comes to policy in Colorado, where you can make the argument that the Republicans have a better
answer to high crime, affordability for housing. I mean, there's a lot of free market solutions, and we're not talking about any of that.
We're just talking about this infighting. How do we bring Republicans like me back to the party.
Well, that brings us, Mandy to an example of optimism that we should have, and that is the vote in the twenty twenty three on Proposition AH that would have
raised property taxes. That went down not by one or two points, it went down by twenty points, Which tells me that these unaffiliated voters who have voted voted for Democrats for the last several election cycles, when they're confronted with a fundamental economic question in front of them, that they're not they're not confusing their votes with how they feel about Donald Trump, that they they will say, Okay, we don't want a property tax increase, which tells me
that if we had Republicans we were talking about the real issues like the economy, like immigration, like like the the education, all the issues you and I thought would talk about, we can win their votes. But when we start talking about these incessant debates on whether the election was still in twenty twenty or I mean, it's just and and and. Frankly, I will tell Mandy the the the pardoning of all the J six defendants or that hurt.
That hurts because I think a lot of people were willing to give the benefit of the doubt, the people who are just kind of caught up in the moment and were wandering around the Capitol. I think that Poland shows more than eighty percent of the American people say that we should not have he should not have pardoned anybody who attacked the police officer or did damage to the Capitol. And that's that's gonna that's gonna hurt for a while.
I think so too.
But I also think Dick, that you and me and people like us, we still talk about January sixth, But I think most Americans don't care anymore.
They've moved on. Well, I'll take that back.
Left wing Americans are still clinging to it like the you know, the Titanic, and I think most center people they don't they don't care anymore.
They've moved on.
That's like me still being upset that they put a man who was clearly addled into the White House, like who cares now that Joe Biden was completely out.
Of his faculties? Like move on.
I think a lot of people are like, bring the price of eggs down, you know, maybe can you help me.
Get to where I can afford a house in Colorado? I mean, those are the.
Kind of issues that I think that if we just if we were focusing, to your point, solely on those issues, then we have a winning argument.
Yeah, I do think that, went man. I do, And and we're going to have an opportunity in twenty twenty sixth to see if that, if the candidates can emerge for governor and US Senator and Secretary of State and attorney general and treasurer and then the Congress again, I mean, if that, if those times candidates can emerge, we'll see how they do. But that's the only way we're going to get back. That's once again, I keep going back.
That's how we won in Colorado in the past, nominating smart conservatives who ran on the right issues, and we haven't had that sometimes.
Yeah, that's that is such a gross understatement. I'm just going to let that be the punseruation. Mark, Dick Watams, I appreciate you, and you know. The reason I keep and I keep calling it beating the dead horse on the show is because I'm hoping that those members of the Central Committee will listen to anything, just a snippet, a moment, a brief whatever, and think twice about making what I think would be a suicidal decision for the
Colorado Party to leave the primary system. I think it is the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen, and if it happens, I think the party has a really hard time coming.
Back after that.
I agree.
All right, that's Sick Wadhams. Thanks Sick. We'll talk to you again soon. Sorry,