Campaign consultant David Sabados announced late this week that he is challenging Colorado Democratic Party chairman Rick Palacio, who is seeking a third term as head of the state party at the Democrats’ reorganization meeting next month. Former congressional candidate Vic Meyers of Trinidad is also seeking the chairmanship.

Sabados says he’s unhappy with Palacio’s attention to national party activities at the expense of winning races in Colorado — Democrats lost a U.S. Senate seat and control of the state Senate in last fall’s election — and that it was a dispute over Palacio’s salary that persuaded him to jump into the race.

“Looking at the losses that our state party has suffered, I think it’s time we have someone with campaign experience at the helm of the state party,” Sabados told The Colorado Statesman on Thursday, before filing official notice for his run. “I think we need to do better outreach to our county parties and have a state party that serves as a backbone for our county parties instead of a state party that is distant and removed.”

Sabados, 32, is vice chairman of the Colorado Young Democrats and a principle at Compass Strategy Group, a campaign organization that has helmed races for metro-area candidates for the Legislature, Denver City Council, Denver Public Schools board and the State Board of Education. Compass worked during the 2014 election for NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado and is handling CU Regent Michael Carrigan’s run for Denver district attorney in 2016, though Sabados says he’s stepping aside in that race because it’s likely to be a contested Democratic primary with state Rep. Beth McCann so far among the candidates.

In December, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz named Palacio to a 10-member task force charged with analyzing the outcome of the 2014 election, when Democrats lost control of the U.S. Senate — Republicans won nearly every close race, including former U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner’s win over U.S. Sen. Mark Udall in Colorado, the first time an incumbent Colorado Senator has been defeated in 36 years — and lost seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, giving Republicans their biggest majority there since before the Great Depression.

Sabados acknowledges that Palacio has a national profile but questions whether that helps Colorado candidates.

“If he wasn’t so busy sitting on national task forces, maybe he could have been more focused that we didn’t lose the state Senate, that we didn’t take the losses we took in the state House and could have made sure Mark Udall won reelection,” Sabados said. “He’s completely neglected Colorado and hasn’t been focused on winning elections here.”

Palacio won reelection to a second term as state chairman without opposition after Democrats scored big wins in 2012, including carrying the state for President Barack Obama for the second time and taking back control of the state House by a wide margin.

But it was a revelation at a December meeting of the Democratic state executive committee meeting that sealed it for Sabados, he said.

“One of the final straws for me deciding we need a change was when the committee discovered that the chair had given himself approximately $25,000 in pay raises without the approval of the executive committee,” Sabados said.

Palacio had been paid $75,000 annually starting in 2011, when he was first elected chair, a member of the executive committee told The Statesman, but the pay was increased to $100,000 last year, as part of a budget item that also included salaries for the party’s executive director and other staff.

“The reaction,” said Sabados, “was complete shock and feelings that the — not so much the amount, but that the process completely neglected the state executive committee.” Sabados, who sits on the state executive committee, made the motion to break out the chair’s salary from the rest of the budget “to have more control over it going forward.”

The dispute echoes similar complaints by Republicans, who are facing their own race for state chairman between two-term incumbent Ryan Call and challenger Steve House, a former chairman of the Adams County Republicans and a former gubernatorial candidate. House has said he won’t take a salary and has questioned whether the state GOP ought to be raising money to pay Call’s salary, which is similar to Palacio’s.

Sabados said he plans to take a salary if elected chair but would cut it back by 25 percent and be transparent about it.

“If we expect a full time position out of the state party chair, the chair should be paid,” he said. “It’s not the amount, though I do think the amount is too high — it’s the process and the fact he ignored the executive committee and went around them to do this.”

Palacio didn’t return a call from The Statesman.

State Democrats will elect officers — also including vice chair positions, secretary and treasurer — on Feb. 28 prior to the annual Jefferson Jackson dinner in downtown Denver, in a vote of the state central committee including party officials, elected officials, county officers and bonus delegates awarded at the county level where Democrats did well in the November election.

Democratic National Committee member Mannie Rodriguez, who also chairs the state party’s Latino Initiative, is endorsing Sabados, he told The Statesman.

Denver Democratic Party chairman Ed Hall made it clear that he can’t make an endorsement in the state race — party rules forbid it — but said he wants it known that he plans to vote for Sabados. It was while working with Sabados on a race for DPS board, Hall said, that he saw what he terms the qualities the state party needs in a chair.

“David was calm, cool and collected, he had all his ducks in a row — he’s a good operator,” Hall said. “I think he’s got exactly what it takes to be a great party chair. He organizes well, he includes people, he communicates very well.”

Democrats hold their county reorganizations during the first half of February.

— Ernest@coloradostatesman.com