CENTENNIAL — Republican Cole Wist, a lawyer at Holland & Hart, on Saturday won election to fill a vacancy representing House District 37, emerging from a crowded field of seven hopefuls that included former state Republican Party Chairman Ryan Call.

The vacancy was created by the resignation of state Rep. Jack Tate, who was tapped last month to fill a vacancy in the Senate District 27 seat created when former state Sen. David Balmer stepped down to take a job with the Humane Society Legislative Fund.

“Our federal government declared war on the fossil fuels industry,” declared Wist, who hails from a coal-mining family on the Western Slope, in remarks to the HD 37 Republican vacancy committee that met for more than four hours at Valley Country Club. “Bureaucrats have targeted the coal industry for annihilation and, my friends, they are coming after oil and gas next.”

Wist said his top legislative priorities would be to “bring a sane, jobs-focused energy policy to the state,” introduce a bill to mandate use of the E-Verify program for all public and private employers in the state, and tackle transportation needs. He also underlined his support for TABOR and added, “We can’t continue to wage war on business in this state.”

Wist was sworn into office Tuesday by House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, D-Gunbarrel, and was among the lawmakers filling House chambers Wednesday when the General Assembly started its 120-day session.

It took three rounds of balloting for the vacancy committee to pick a winner. Call led in the first two rounds but then Wist emerged victorious, with 39 votes, or 58 percent of the 67 committee members who were present voting. Call ran second with 21 votes, or 31 percent.

“I would put a challenge to any district in the state, on the Republican or Democratic side, to present a slate of candidates that are of the quality of the people we have right here,” said Republican House District 37 Chairman Scott Graves.

The other candidates vying for the seat included attorney Dagny Van Der Jagt — she came in fourth in the first two rounds of voting and then dropped out and endorsed Wist — and businessman David Schlatter, management consultant Thomas Kim, radio talk show host Jimmy Sengenberger and political activist Patrick Shamblin.

Shamblin, who said he was encouraged to run for the seat by state Rep. Gordon Klingenshmitt, R-Colorado Springs, and former state Sen. David Schultheis, R-Monument, didn’t receive any votes in the last two rounds of balloting but did have the distinction of uttering a phrase hailed by vacancy committee members as emblematic of the group’s sentiments.

“Send me to the Capitol, your constitutional janitor, to clean the mess up,” he said in a speech full of warnings about “just how far off course our state and our country have gone.”

Call, who was denied a bid for a third term as state Republican chairman last March, spent his nominating speech swinging back at an anonymous email that had been sent to vacancy committee members charging him with mishandling the party’s financial affairs. He said he’d gotten a message that morning from Colorado Republican Party Chairman Steve House saying that every charge in the attack was incorrect.

“My response to him is what I share with all of you,” Call said. “It comes with the territory.” Being in the thick of the fight, he added, it’s easy to make enemies. “What we saw last night, we have to call it for what it is — it’s cowardice. But you respond to that cowardice with courage and conviction and the willingness to take the fight back to advance the cause and the principles that we, as Republicans, believe in.”

— ernest@coloradostatesman.com