Tom Tancredo wants to participate in an upcoming gubernatorial candidate forum sponsored by the Colorado Hispanic Republicans, a campaign spokesman says, but the organization has said the event lineup is set and there’s no room for the former five-term congressman known for his hard-line positions on illegal immigration.

In response, the Tancredo campaign is reminding the Hispanic Republicans that the Colorado GOP can determine whether the group – which is loosely affiliated with the state party but not sanctioned by it – can continue its association with the Republicans if it treats some primary candidates differently than others.

GOP officials counter that the Colorado Hispanic Republicans, organized as a so-called 527 nonprofit, is under no obligation to remain neutral in a primary and is more akin to a “club” than any sort of official GOP organization.

Hugo Chavez-Rey, the longtime chairman of the group, didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment.

A spokesman for the state party told Colorado Politics Thursday that its chairman, Jeff Hays, is “reaching out to Hugo to gather facts and discuss the situation” but didn’t yet have a comment.

The forum, scheduled for Jan. 17 at an event center in Westminster, currently features six Republicans running for governor – Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, former Trump campaign organizer Steve Barlock, former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez, businessmen Victor Mitchell and Doug Robinson and Saguache County activist Jim Rundberg – but Tancredo, by some accounts the front-runner in the primary field, isn’t among them.

“Tom would like to go,” Tancredo’s campaign manager, Mike McAlpine, told Colorado Politics. “Tom feels that as a gubernatorial forum for Republicans, he should be able to attend.”

He added that he asked state party officials – including Hays and Colorado’s Republican National Committee members – to weigh in because Chavez-Rey hadn’t been responsive to the campaign’s inquiries.

“I have no interest in a fight with Hugo,” McAlpine said. “It would be wonderful if he treats all the candidates the same. All I’m aiming for is having Tom be able to attend the forum.”

In a Facebook thread announcing the event, the Colorado Hispanic Republicans bristled at questions about whether Tancredo had been invited to attend and admonished critics not to “spread innuendos.”

“Is Tom not invited?” asked Christy Rodriguez, executive director of the anti-abortion Colorado Campaign for Life.

“Everyone had a chance to accept,” the Hispanic Republicans replied. “We had to have a cutoff date so we could get announcements out. Please don’t spread innuendos.”

Rodriguez replied that she thought it “strange that a candidate who has a lot to say about an issue that would seem to be an issue for ‘Hispanic Republicans’ is not on the guest list” and asked if Tancredo’s campaign had received an invitation.

“We are not going to engage in a discussion on the merits of any candidate. This is not a place for a thread,” the Hispanic Republicans replied. “We are neutral through the primary. Thank you for respecting that.”

McAlpine told Colorado Politics no one at the campaign received an invitation or heard anything about the forum before an announcement was posted listing the six other candidates. What’s more, he said Chavez-Rey had been unable to produce a copy of the email he maintained had been sent to the Tancredo campaign by a staffer.

Chavez-Rey is no fan of Tancredo. In a Nov. 14 opinion article in the Gazette, he argued that Tancredo “is definitely not the right candidate for the Republican Party,” citing Tancredo’s history of leaving the Republican Party – once when he ran for governor on a third-party ticket and another time when he quit the GOP, saying he couldn’t “any longer defend this transparently dishonest charade called the Republican Party” – a record Chavez-Rey said makes Tancredo “untrustworthy” to activists.

“Would you accept a spouse with such commitment issues?” Chavez-Rey asked.

He suggested Democrats were “ecstatic” that Tancredo was running for governor because they could use his “hard-line position on immigration” as a wedge issue sufficient to prevent Republicans from attracting conservative Democrats and Hispanic voters.

Tancredo’s rhetoric might be heated, but his stated positions on immigration appear to align closely with those previously espoused by Chavez-Rey and his organization.

“I, and many other Latinos, find it insulting to suggest that common-sense approaches to immigration, calling for federal officials to enforce our nation s immigration laws, and placing a priority on our nation s security somehow translates into being anti-Hispanic,” Chavez-Rey told The Denver Post in 2014 when another Republican gubernatorial candidate, former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, came under fire for remarks he made about enforcing immigration laws.

This post has been updated to clarify that the Tancredo campaign has told Chavez-Rey the state Republicans can consider whether his group can continue its association with the Colorado Republicans, not that the Tancredo campaign has asked the state party to consider this.