DENVER — The race to run the Colorado Republican Party is getting crowded.
Three former elected officials on Friday announced they're running for state GOP chair, nearly doubling the number of candidates campaigning for the top party position just three weeks before Republicans meet to elect officers to two-year terms.
Throwing their hats in the ring are former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, former state Rep. Dave Williams of Colorado Springs and former state Sen. Kevin Lundberg of Berthoud. All three had earlier said they were considering bids for state chair.
They join State Board of Education member Stephen Varela, a former Democrat who lost a legislative race in Pueblo in November before winning a vacancy appointment last month to his current post; Casper Stockham, a political consultant who ran four unsuccessful campaigns in three U.S. House districts in the last decade; Erik Aadland, who lost a run for Congress last year; and Aaron Wood, founder of the Douglas County-based Freedom Fathers group, which describes itself as a defender of conservative Christian values.
Incumbent Republican state chair Kristi Burton Brown announced in December that she wouldn't seek a second term running the party.
The GOP's upcoming leadership election — set for March 11 at a hotel in Loveland — comes as state Republicans grapple with the party's direction on the heels of losing ground in a third consecutive general election. Last fall, Democrats swept every statewide race and won Colorado's new congressional seat on top of gaining historic majorities in the General Assembly, leaving state Republicans in their weakest position in nearly a century.
>Read the full story at Colorado Politics.
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