Colorado Republican Party Chairman Steve House says he expects a resolution after he meets with the embattled chair of the Delta County GOP on Monday as calls mounted for her ouster Friday in the wake of a racist post on her Facebook page.

“We fully expect that the meeting on Monday will yield a resolution on the future of the Republican Party leadership in Delta County,” House told The Colorado Statesman on Friday. “To be clear, we do not support any action that is racially insensitive by any member of the Colorado Republican Party.”

“Steve will be at the Delta County meeting with party and elected officials on Monday,” state GOP spokesman Kyle Kohli told The Statesman. “He was already planning on being in the area because of his June tour. He will not be asking anyone to resign.”

House embarks next week on a statewide tour to meet with Republicans, with stops scheduled in Montrose, Grand Junction and Frisco on Monday. Kohli said he plans to stop in at a meeting with Delta County Republicans that had already been scheduled.

As state GOP chair, House isn’t a county chair’s boss, a Republican official told The Statesman, stressing that the organizations are independent operations.

Earlier on Friday, the NAACP Colorado State Conference demanded that Delta County Republican Party Chair Linda Sorenson “resign – or be removed by party leaders” following revelations surrounding what the civil rights organization termed “a horrifically racist photo” on Sorenson’s personal Facebook page in late May.

Sorenson, who also serves as Republican chair for the 3rd Congressional District, didn’t respond to multiple attempts to reach her for comment on Friday.

A Delta County Republican official earlier this week blamed a computer hacker for the posting – “I’ll be damned … Reagan used to babysit Obama!” it reads over a movie still of a young Ronald Reagan bottle-feeding Bonzo, his chimpanzee co-star in a 1951 film – although Sorenson had previously told a blogger she intended the posting to be a joke.

“This whole thing is a hoax. Someone got into the Facebook somehow,” Delta County GOP vice chairman Vic Ullrey told The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “It was hacked and somebody got into it, definitely,” he added, insisting that Sorenson is “absolutely not” racist and that the posting was intended to make the party look bad.

But several days earlier, when asked by BigMedia.org blogger Jason Salzman whether the posting was meant as a joke, Sorenson responded, “Sure it is, Jesus,” according to a recording of the telephone interview posted online by Salzman.

“I really don’t care if people are offended by it,” Sorenson told Salzman. “Un-friend me. Stop looking at me on Facebook.”

Rosemary Lytle, president of the NAACP Colorado Montana Wyoming State Conference, wasn’t amused.

“There is no room in Colorado politics for the kind of blatant racism expressed by the chair of the Delta County Republican Party,” she said in a statement. “Linda Sorenson admitted what she did, and said she didn’t care who it offended. Now that it has made national news, her subordinates claim her account was ‘hacked’? It’s insulting, not only to the president but to those she serves in Delta County and even to the entire state of Colorado.”

“This isn’t the Mississippi Delta,” said state Rep. Angela Williams, D-Denver, who was among those signing the letter calling for Sorenson to resign. “Delta County, Colorado, is no place for racism – and blatant disrespect of our commander in chief. And, frankly, there should be no place in Colorado politics for this kind of behavior.”

Ullrey didn’t return a message from The Statesman seeking comment on Friday. Neither did the Delta County GOP’s secretary or treasurer.

A GOP officer from a neighboring county told The Statesman she thought Sorenson should step down, although she was more concerned that Sorenson quit as 3rd Congressional District chair, citing what she termed the “mishandling” of the 3rd Congressional District Assembly and Convention in April.

“It was an absolute mess from the start to the finish,” said Lori Riewaldt, the elected secretary of the Montrose County Republican Party.

Riewaldt also called Sorenson’s Facebook post “grossly inappropriate and not my cup of tea,” adding, “Linda’s in a position of trust and in a position of leadership – that was a bad call on her part.”

According to the GOP’s bylaws for the 3rd CD, congressional district officers must also be executive officers from their respective counties, Riewoldt pointed out, so if Sorenson resigns as county chair, she’d automatically lose her 3rd CD office.

U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, the Cortez Republican who represents the 3rd Congressional District, didn’t mince words.

“Racism has no place in the Republican Party,” he told The Statesman via a spokesman.

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com

This story has been updated to include comments from state GOP chair Steve House.