(Colorado Newsline) Nobody in Colorado lost harder on Tuesday than Dave Williams.

The former state representative, who chairs the Colorado Republican Party, lost his primary election bid by a staggering margin, according to preliminary results. But that only begins to describe what happened.

Other Williams-backed candidates, up and down the ballot across the state, also went down Tuesday. And it wasn’t just his campaign to represent the state’s 5th District in Congress that was at stake. The election was in part a referendum on his divisive leadership style, and it was an indicator of whether he can survive a call from within his party to resign. Within 24 hours after the polls closed, the Republican organizers of an effort to oust Williams submitted a petition and request for a vote on removing him as head of the party.

Williams’ losses might only have just begun. But his losses could be the party’s gain.

Williams was polarizing from the beginning. He won the party chairmanship in 2023 with a combative MAGA message that castigated those he saw as weak Republicans as much as it attacked “fake news” and liberals. But he really started offending fellow party members when in January he entered the race to succeed U.S. Representative Doug Lamborn in the 5th District. That’s what prompted Todd Watkins, a former ally and member of the party’s State Central Committee, to help lead the formal effort to boot Williams.

“I’d known since he announced his run for CD5 and refused to step down from the chair that we’d have to do this,” Watkins said during an interview Wednesday.

Many Republicans were aghast at this and other behavior by the party under Williams, including the way it eliminated a tradition of neutrality in primary races and instead endorsed Williams and other favored candidates, its expenditures on behalf of Williams in his primary race against a fellow Republican, its anti-LGBTQ messaging, and its call for parents to remove their kids from public schools.

“Yeah, there’s some bad public schools out there, but there’s a lot of people in rural Colorado who don’t have any choice,” said Dave Peters, a Republican who serves the party as the 3rd Congressional District chair.

Peters, who is also chair of the La Plata County Republicans, objected to an official GOP email from Williams earlier this month that said “God Hates Pride” and featured an image with the words “God Hates Flags.”

“I think a lot of counties, that are trying to get local elected officials, thought, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ You don’t go out there and alienate voters. And that, I think a lot of counties felt it did not help them at all in having to claw back and distance themselves from his statements,” Peters said.

In April, Republican political strategist Kelly Maher filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Williams violated campaign finance law by using party resources to promote his candidacy.

“Dave Williams has clearly and obviously used (state party funds) as a slush fund for his congressional race,” Maher said at the time.

We have to fix this now.

– Todd Watkins, member of the Republican Party's State Central Committe, on Dave Williams' role as chair

Apart from Williams’ style, he proved terrible at picking winners Tuesday, and getting Republicans elected is kind of his one job. Nevermind that he tried to get himself elected and lost by 30 percentage points. The vast majority of party-endorsed Republicans in contested primary elections lost. Moreover, how can anyone trust that the party will now make a good-faith effort to support Jeff Crank, who beat Williams in the 5th District primary, after the bad blood of the campaign?

“I come from decades of military and federal law enforcement,” Watkins said. “You cannot let this go. Otherwise you set a precedent, and say, ‘Hey, you let Dave get away with it.’ You have to take action on this.”

Newsline contacted Williams with a request for comment but did not receive a reply.

Earlier this month, a press release from Nancy Pallozzi, chair of the Jefferson County Republicans, said that a petition in favor of a special meeting on Williams’ role as state chairman had attracted the signatures of more than 25 percent of the GOP’s State Central Committee, which comprises more than 400 elected officeholders and local organizers. The petition, along with a formal request for Williams to “call a special meeting for the purpose of a vote on the removal of Chairman of the State Republican Party,” was delivered to Williams on Wednesday, Watkins said.

Hope Scheppelman, the party’s vice chair, responded to the request, telling Watkins that the petition will be forwarded to the State Executive Committee for “controversy review” and that a meeting had been scheduled for August 31, according to a copy of the message that Watkins shared with Newsline.

Writing back to Scheppelman, Watkins argued that the matter was not a “controversy” but rather a request for a special meeting to remove the chairman. Party rules required the meeting to be held within 30 days of the call for the meeting, and the call must be made within 10 days of the request — well before August 31.

What if Williams just doesn’t call the meeting? “If he was sensible, clearly he would. I mean clearly the winds are not blowing in his favor,” Watkins said. But parliamentary procedure would permit another member of the committee to call a special meeting, Watkins said. Then the group could dethrone Williams with a 60 percent vote among the whole committee, which Watkins is confident the group can achieve: “I think it’s comfortably over 60.”

He does not want Williams leading the party into November’s general election.

“We have to fix this now,” Watkins said. “Those of us who feel committed and honest about what our purpose is as a political party, as the Republican Party, we have to make a concerted effort to demonstrate that, no, there are some who are very serious about running a professional and sober and competent party to actually get conservatives elected, and we’re not here to be inflammatory, incendiary, and we don’t think that using the organs of the party to run your campaign is a reliable image. We have to be trustworthy.”

Republican state Representative Matt Soper said the election results Tuesday sent a clear message. Voters in a primary, even those who are not affiliated with a party, tend to be more partisan and “have much more of a pulse on where things should go politically.” They chose to vote against Williams himself and almost every Williams-backed candidate across the state.

“I think this is a pivotal moment,” Soper said. “It is hopefully a time when the Colorado Republican Party can wake up and say, ‘OK, this new strategy under Dave Williams and this new direction under Dave Williams clearly did not work, and it didn’t resonate with the average conservative voter.'”

Soper said Republicans have opportunities to make gains in November in the state’s congressional delegation, at the statehouse and in local offices around the state. But the potential for election wins could be compromised if Williams and his allies in state party offices dig in.

“The ability for the Republicans in Colorado to show that we hit bottom and are rebounding is very real, and I don’t want to see the rebound disrupted by Dave Williams,” Soper said.

Wednesday morning, the Colorado Republican Party sent out an email to congratulate Republican candidates who won their primaries. It was a perfectly anodyne message that contained none of the spit and venom of some previous party emails.

“Together, we can turn Colorado around,” it said.

But when it comes to Williams, many Republicans are in no mood for togetherness.

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and X.