The attendees at this year’s Leadership Program of the Rockies holiday party on Thursday at the Wellshire Event Center in Denver smiled and laughed and expounded readily on the philosophical and practical genius that launched the American republic. They also let out comic groans about the present state of national electoral politics generally and the 2016 presidential campaigns in particular.

“People say it’s frustrating to watch this election season unfold,” former U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer, LPR’s chairman, told The Colorado Statesman. “But for a trained LPR graduate, it’s not frustrating; there’s a clear logic to what’s going on. We’re seeing chaos filling the void of leadership as it has grown over the last 10 years. We’re seeing a confused electorate. It has been a long time since they have seen a legitimate national leader who cuts a historic national profile.”

Schaffer said the country has lacked a clear leader since President Ronald Reagan left office.

“People have no one to compare these people to today, not really. What they’re seeing is a phantom image of a leader — a phantom or a buffoon.”

Schaffer discussed the topic with a bubbly black humor.

“It’s almost worse when you look at global politics,” he said. “The strongest, most proficient leaders are all bad guys. Look at (President Vladimir) Putin in Russia. He has a vision and he acts on it. He puts points on the board for his country — granted in pernicious and evil ways — but if you’re a Russian and you share his vision, you love what he’s doing.”

The Leadership Program of the Rockies — or simply “the program,” as supporters refer to it — has been a factory of influence in Colorado for 26 years, seeding businesses with executives, state and local government with officeholders and the Republican Party with staffers and authority figures for more than a generation.

The organization boasts that it’s landed more than 20 Colorado candidates in office in 2012 and at least 27 Colorado candidates in office in 2014.

Students sign up for a year-long course that features study in Constitutional principles, free enterprise and limited government. Reading materials include the Federalist Papers, capitalist tracts and the Objectivist novels of Ayn Rand. Guest speakers give lectures and train students in public speaking and persuasion.

Schaffer said there has been a slight shift over the years away from electoral politics.

“The program is not about teaching people candidate skills. It’s about teaching the principles of the Founding Fathers. (LPR) compels people to think about what kind of people should lead across fields — in education, at nonprofits, in business, in the field of health care, you name it.”

Hunter Barnett is an analyst at health care company DaVita and a 2013 graduate of the program. He says the training “opens your eyes and ears.”

“You gain a much clearer vision of how things could be,” he said.

Barnett is also a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder and he seemed to lament the path taken by many university students. He organized a fundraiser that he said pulled in more than $8,000 to pay for LPR scholarships.

“I just feel we have to work to get the word out. People come out of college and find themselves searching for a job with a gender studies degree, wearing a ‘feel the Bern’ Sanders-for-president campaign button. I think they’ll find that freedom of choice as the Founders conceived is very attractive.”

Among the presidential candidates, Barnett likes Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

“There’s obviously a very practical political part to it, a realism about what it takes to win the presidency, but I also look for the ideal, for someone who is also a statesman. A great candidate has to have both. I think Rubio is the closest to that of the people who are running.”

Barry Farah, a Colorado Springs-based entrepreneur and husband to 2013 LPR graduate Tamra Farah, said he thought Texas Sen. Ted Cruz came off as “a little creepy.”

“I think people like him for his ideas, but I think he scares people,” Farah said, only half-joking. “I don’t think women are going to pull the lever for Ted Cruz.”

Conservative activist Laura Carno, a 2011 graduate of the program — she’s the founder of the I Am Created Equal advocacy group and helped spearhead the successful 2013 effort to recall Democratic state Senate President John Morse after he voted in favor of gun-control laws — said that, among the many groups on the political right, she feels she’s most in tune with the “pro-growth” LPR crowd.

“These are my people,” she said. “Small government. Personal responsibility. I think we have to be talking mostly about increasing opportunity.”

Current LPR student Aaron Gardner is a Colorado Springs-based political consultant. He’s also a tattooed, charismatic veteran who speaks with a southern lilt. He recently delivered on-the-ground reporting for his 10,000-plus Twitter followers from the shooting attack at the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, sending out tweets at a regular clip from the site, where he stayed for hours as the events unfolded.

Gardner said that day he had meant merely to dash to the grocery store near the clinic. On his way home, he learned of the attack and circled back. He was on a trail just beyond the mall when he heard a gunshot. He said wife wasn’t worried about him the whole time he was there.

“She knows I’m type-A all the way. I dive right in.”

Gardner later admitted, however, that he was worried he wasn’t prepared for the LPR class scheduled for the next day.

“I think Schaffer is going to call me out,” he said laughing.

—john@coloradostatesman.com

CORRECTION: Aaron Gardner was on a trail near the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs when he heard a shot ring out, not in the parking lot, as a previous version of this story reported.