Last Tuesday evening in Denver, about 40 young Democrats gathered in a brewery for an “airing of grievances.” It was not a “festivus.”

Sitting inside the backroom of the Diebolt Brewing Co., surrounded by fermentation tanks and the smell of yeast in this gentrified north Denver neighborhood, millennials sipped craft beer and sat on fold-out chairs at long banquet-style tables.

What they discussed resembled infighting on the national level that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump.

Last summer party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned before the Democratic National Convention over allegations that she conspired against U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders to award the party’s nomination to Clinton.

On Tuesday night in this Denver brew pub, rank-and-file members of the Denver Young Democrats heard a familiar story over procedure, in this case involving a botched intra-party election.

President Becca Sunshine-DeWitt was impeached, though her term was soon to expire. She and two other board members had handled an election that was riddled with problems.

As concerns were raised, these millennials started “adulting hard,” as they say, throwing around big-person words like “gross negligence” and “deception.”

The election panel did not keep accurate lists to reflect in-person voting and who was deemed ineligible to vote; it was impossible to verify who might have been qualified to vote but were blocked from participating; duplicate votes were identified; and in-person ballots could not be counted because of a lack of verifiability, to name a few grievances.

A voter deemed ineligible turned out to be eligible, which sparked a closer look at the election.

“I had some concerns of things I had seen earlier that night of people getting ballots,” said Emma Dubach-Donahue, who was running for president in the Feb. 13 election. She raised questions that led to the investigation.

“I just wanted to walk through the process now that it was over to make sure that everything was handled correctly,” she said

There was a sense of urgency with the election following Trump’s victory. Sixteen candidates ran for seven positions.

“We had a ton of great people running, which I think speaks to the excitement that there is within the Democratic Party, that so many people want to get involved,” Sunshine-DeWitt said. “They’re seeing the last election as something that scared them, that is encouraging them to participate in a way that they never have before. It speaks highly to the organization that we were able to draw so many candidates.”

But will these young Democrats, who represent the future of the party, be able to hold onto that excitement?

D.C.-style drama

In the race for board president, the difference was tight. It was alleged that dozens of ballots had been rejected online and others were rejected in person.

It made sense that Dubach-Donahue would want to ensure the election was accurate, given the tight results. What ensued was drama tantamount to a Washington, D.C.-style national Democratic Party implosion.

Dubach-Donahue’s boyfriend, Dave Sabados, chairman of Colorado Young Democrats, the statewide organization for young Democrats, interjected, speaking with election administrators about his girlfriend’s concerns. Sabados is running for vice-chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party.

The encounter was considered inappropriate by some. Sabados said he only asked once, and he said he never spoke as chair of Colorado Young Democrats. It was still enough to stoke the coals of a growing fire.

Objections over the election were taken to the Democratic Party of Denver, for which chairman Mike Cerbo, a former state lawmaker, convened a three-member review panel. That panel recommended a complete do-over on the election.

An impeachment surprise

While the election was under review, Sunshine-DeWitt was off to Barcelona on her honeymoon.

The couple went to bed that Saturday night in their hotel room. Sunshine-DeWitt was experiencing a bit of insomnia from the long journey from Denver to Spain. When she got up to use the bathroom, she checked her phone. A text message from a friend said, “I just saw the email, I’m so sorry. Let me know what I can do.”

Sunshine-DeWitt checked her email. Her board advised her that she had been impeached, citing “gross negligence” in how she handled the election.

She also was accused of favoring certain candidates lining up for next year’s primaries.

Sunshine-DeWitt was afforded no representation as the board moved to impeach her. She was not asked to join the discussion.

“I want to be clear that this was not a willy-nilly decision done out of any personal vendetta,” said Morgan Watters, a vice-presidential DYD candidate who spoke for much of the impeachment process. “We spent a lot of time talking through and debating that decision.”

But several members at the “airing of grievances” said the impeachment was unwarranted, especially in-absentia. Since Sunshine-DeWitt was not running for re-election her time on the board was ending, so impeachment was unnecessary, they said.

“I had decided that five years on the board was enough, that it was time for new people to pick up where I would be leaving off,” Sunshine-DeWitt explained.

Also, the other two board members who ran the election with Sunshine-DeWitt were not impeached. And when the board met, their charge was to discuss the recent election, not to examine impeachment proceedings.

The board appeared out for blood.

“What was the urgency of making that decision when she was out of the country, and why wasn’t she invited to defend herself?” asked one member in attendance.

Another added, “You’d already removed Becca before there were any findings whatsoever; before there were any recommendations whatsoever.”

Watters, a Sanders staffer last year, raised the issue of Sunshine-DeWitt favoring certain primary candidates. Sunshine-DeWitt had supported Clinton. Both Watters and Sunshine-DeWitt downplayed the impact the presidential primary had on the DYD dustup.

“We want to apologize for the lack of transparency …” Watters told members, explaining that the impeachment process was permissible under the organization’s constitution.

After the meeting, Watters added, “As young Democrats, there are hard conversations we need to have. This is one of those conversations.”

A loss of appetite for party politics 

Democrats drawn to politics for the first time by the Sanders revolution and following Trump’s victory are vital to rebuilding the party.

An appetite for political change, however, can be soured by a distasteful party process.

Laura “Pinky” Reinsch is someone who always volunteered with community organizations, though she has never been involved with the Democratic Party in Denver. Last year she decided to get involved more.

She paid her $10 membership to join Denver Young Democrats and cast her ballot online. A few days later Facebook blew up with vague accusations about an invalid election and impeaching the president.

“This whole ordeal has made me regret becoming a member of the Denver Young Democrats,” she said. “The only thing that is clear in this situation is that there has been a ton of questionable behavior by those involved, which appears to come from a candidate being upset they didn’t win and personal grudges playing out between some people in the organization.”

Reinsch will vote again in the do-over election for entirely new leadership “in the hopes that they can turn a new leaf.”

“I feel like the purpose of the Denver Young Democrats should be to support progressive candidates instead of fighting amongst themselves.”

As for Sunshine-DeWitt, she’s riding off into the sunset.

“It is going to be difficult to maintain the excitement and energy that those new individuals brought,” she said. “Their first experience with us as an organization is an audit of an election followed by an impeachment of a president while she was out of the country. It doesn’t make us look good.”