Colorado Republicans on Saturday elected former gubernatorial candidate Steve House as state party chair, ousting two-term chair Ryan Call by a comfortable margin at the party’s biennial reorganization meeting in Castle Rock.

Republicans were restless at the meeting, also replacing the party’s vice chair and secretary. Derrick Wilburn, the founder of American Conservatives of Color, defeated incumbent vice chair Mark Baisley, former El Paso County chair Eli Bremer and former Summit County chair Debra Irvine. Moffatt County chair Brandi Meek beat incumbent secretary Lana Fore.

At the end of an unusually divisive race for state party leadership – a Colorado Republican Party chair hasn’t been denied reelection since at least the late 1950s – House made a plea for the party’s factions to set aside their differences and concentrate on winning elections.

“The reality of it is, the promises of our platform will not be delivered unless we come together today,” House said on stage inside a sweltering auditorium at Douglas County High School. “I’m here today to listen and to lead, to learn and to respect all aspects of our party, because, you know what, no matter whether you’re an established Republican or a grassroots liberty person, I can find successes across the board. We need to honor those successes and bring them together.”

House won with 237 2/3 votes at the state Republican Party’s Central Committee meeting, over Call’s 179 1/3, prevailing by roughly 57 percent to 43 percent. The governing body of the state party counts party officers, elected officials and bonus members from larger counties assigned by how well the top-ticket Republican – in this case, gubernatorial nominee Bob Beauprez – did in the last election. (Fractional votes are cast because some counties split their votes among multiple officers.)

“Steve House is a dynamic leader with a progressive vision for our state party,” said Attorney General Cynthia Coffman – she reminded central committee members that she was the top Republican vote-getter on last fall’s ballot – placing his name into nomination. Noting that she got to know House when he was running for governor last year, she added, “He listened to people with diverse viewpoints, he respected their differences, and he moved us forward toward a shared goal, just as he’ll do as party chair.”

Reiterating many of the criticisms leveled at Call, Coffman continued: “We have the opportunity today to elect a party chair who will provide real support to local parties when a recall of an opponent is needed,” she said, poking at a wound festering since the unprecedented recall of Democratic state senators in 2013. “People, we have an opportunity today to elect a party chair who will support candidates at every level, not just those with national name recognition.”

Battling a nearly constant stream of cheers, Coffman concluded, “We have an opportunity to elect a party chair who still believes that we are the party of big ideas, that every voice counts, that every county matters. Join me in the fight for Steve.”

Nominating Call, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner – a Colorado Republican with national name recognition after unseating Democrat Mark Udall last year – revved up the crowd by reiterating a theme sounded all day by Call supporters.

“What’d we do in 2014?” Gardner asked. “We won!” the crowd shouted back.

“And what are we going to do in 2016?” he posed. “Win!” the crowd obliged.

“We will win by doing exactly what we did in 2014, by following the incredible path to victory that Ryan Call and the state party developed for every single one of us,” Gardner said, pointing to dramatically increased turnout, voter contact and fundraising. “Winning matters, and that’s exactly what we did with the Republican Party this year.”

“I wouldn’t be here but for Ryan Call,” Gardner added, thanking volunteers and officially placing Call’s name into nomination.

But winning, apparently, wasn’t enough for restive Republicans, even though the party won back the state Senate for the first time in a decade and defeated a sitting senator for the first time in 36 years.

It was a theme that House hammered throughout his brief campaign, launched at the start of the year while the afterglow of all that victory was still fresh, pointing repeatedly to the inconsequence of winning a few more seats while Democrats control the governor’s office and wield the gavel in the House of Representatives.”One thing that is absolutely clear to me as a simple, straightforward Republican is that what we are about is limited government, lower taxes, less regulation and free markets,” House told the crowd. “And our measure of success as a party – because we must deliver for the members who aren’t sitting here – is that we have the ability to give those things through government, not just simply win more seats.”

He also addressed charges that his campaign was overly divisive, pitting the more fervently conservative members of the party against the rest.

“Today is not about the Tea Party beating the establishment or the establishment beating the Tea Party. Today is about us coming together,” House said.

But Wilburn, the newly elected vice chair, had a different take.

“Here in Colorado, I think we’re seeing a wave of the liberty movement, the Tea Party movement – take your pick – that is realizing the establishment Republican Party is moving forward a little bit slowly and moving away, in some ways from constitutionalism. And we need to be constitutionalists,” Wilburn told The Colorado Statesman minutes after he had been declared the winner in his race.

Noting that his “passion and platform” was diversification of the party – Wilburn, who is African-American, got the crowd laughing when he acknowledged that he was “the true dark horse” in the race as he accepted his nomination – he vowed to spread the Republican message among populations that are only used to hearing from Democrats.

He told The Statesman he wasn’t concerned that Colorado voters lean independent and argued that the Tea Party offers an opportunity to reach swing voters.

“It depends upon framing the discussion, of course, but at its core, the Tea Party movement is about lowering taxation, a government that spends within its means, and increasing personal liberty – and who isn’t in favor of those things?” Wilburn said. “The principles of Tea Party work for everybody, it’s a matter of how it’s framed. And the way it’s been framed, particularly by the left, is a radical, racist movement. Nobody wants that. But everyone wants less government in their business, everyone wants the government to take home less of a chunk of their paycheck. Everyone wants those things, we just have to do a better job getting that message in front of people.”

While talk swirled in the wake of House’s election that he was clearing out vestiges of the Call regime – including supposedly hiring former state Sen. Ted Harvey as the GOP’s executive director, a rumor House swiftly debunked – a spokesman for the new chair said late this week that the party was operating on all cylinders just as it had been last week.

“I have no plans to change the executive director,” House said through a spokeswoman. “It has been a really nice transition. The staff is doing a good job. Financially, the party is where we expected this point in time,” adding that staff is focusing on fundraising.

A fundraising letter went out under House’s name to GOP donors on Thursday, taking a perhaps more pugnacious tone than Call had in past appeals, but driving home the same aggressive message.

“Despite the GOP’s courageous victory in November in taking control of the State Senate, the radical left still has an unrelenting strangle hold on the State Capitol,” House wrote, asking for contributions to help take the fight to what he termed the “Denver Democrats” holding the reins at the Capitol. “We are aggressively organizing our team, raising money and putting in place the tools necessary to restore Republican dominance in the next election cycle,” he wrote.

House worked in the health care industry for more than 30 years, including as an engineer, an executive and in sales, boasting the completion of multi-billion dollar contracts and stating that he managed budgets exceeding $200 million. He is married to Dona Petrocco House, a president of a bank in Brighton and a member of the Adams County 27J School Board. They have six grown children and two grandchildren.

– Ernest@coloradostatesman.com

See the March 20, 2015 print edition for full photo coverage.