The Colorado Republican Party had arranged to hold a fundraising dinner and a slew of district assemblies at the Best Western hotel in Longmont on the eve of the party’s state assembly in Boulder next month.

But after party officials got wind that the hotel chain had ended its affiliation with the National Rifle Association in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the state GOP decided to move its operations to another hotel on the south side of Denver, nearly 50 miles away.

For a while, that was the official story.

The only problem? It turns out Best Western didn’t cut ties with the NRA in reaction to the Parkland shooting. The 4,000-hotel chain, in fact, hasn’t offered discounts to NRA members for years. What’s more, a source close to the state GOP tells Colorado Politics, the party decided to scrap its deal with Best Western because the hotel’s management wouldn’t allow Republicans to bring meals purchased from food trucks onto the premises – not over the stated concerns about respect for Second Amendment rights.

In an email sent to county GOP leadership late Thursday that was obtained by Colorado Politics, that’s how state Republicans described the move.

“We have had many voice their concern over the multi county assembly location due to the recent news of Best Western pulling their support from the NRA and our 2nd amendment rights,” the Colorado GOP wrote. “With this in mind, the CRC” – the Colorado Republican Committee – “has decided to pull our contract from the Best Western Event Center and have changed venues for the Friday, April 13th multi-county assembly meetings.”

Colorado Republicans are scheduled to convene on April 14 for the 2018 state assembly – where delegates will vote to nominate candidates for governor, attorney general and other statewide offices to the June primary ballot – at the Coors Event Center on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder. The day before, as is tradition, the party holds its annual Centennial Dinner fundraiser at a nearby hotel, along with assemblies for districts that cover more than one county, including as many as four congressional district meetings.

In the weeks that followed the Valentine’s Day school shooting that left 17 dead, numerous companies severed their alliances with the NRA, including the MetLife Insurance Company, Delta Air Lines and Allied Van Lines. Those announcements provoked angry reactions on social media from NRA supporters who said they’d be just as happy to boycott the companies that had quit doing business with the gun-rights organization.

As the pressure mounted from both sides, Phoenix-based Best Western found its name appearing on some lists of companies doing business with the NRA that were circulated online – erroneously putting the hotel chain in the thick of a controversy where it didn’t belong.

“Best Western Hotels & Resorts has been in the news media regarding a recent break from NRA,” the company posted online. “This is NOT TRUE as our only partnerships are with AAA, AARP and Harley Davidson.”

In a Feb. 28 email, the chain’s corporate office advised hotel owners and operators to be aware of the furor and had some suggestions for dealing with it.

“Unfortunately, the media has misrepresented that the brand has recently adopted a position as it relates to the NRA and is continuing to fuel the story and the misrepresentation. In fact, when our contract with the NRA expired in 2014, we ended our business relationship then,” the email said.

If owners saw related comments posted on their own social media platforms, the corporate office said, “we recommend at this time avoiding entering a debate or responding to posts as it can add more angry voices to either side of the issue.”

The general manager of the Best Western Plus Plaza Hotel in Longmont didn’t respond to a request for comment from Colorado Politics.

“Trying to punish the NRA has its own costs,” the Jefferson County GOP wrote Thursday in a Facebook post that was shared dozens of times on the social network, eliciting hundreds of reactions from Facebook users. “The CO GOP was scheduled to have multi-county assemblies the day before State Assembly at Best Western in Longmont. But Best Western decided to pull their sponsorship of the NRA. So, your State GOP had decided to move our business elsewhere, and will now hold those assemblies at the Hyatt Tech Center on Friday, April 13th.”

Several county parties and GOP officials posted similar messages on Facebook, though by Monday they had been deleted.

A spokesman for the state Republican Party declined to comment on the reasons for the switch from one hotel to the other.

A Republican familiar with the decision, who asked to remain anonymous because the GOP hadn’t authorized discussion of the matter, however, said the move was due to restrictions that would have prevented assembled Republicans from consuming food from visiting food trucks inside the hotel during the day’s events – a sensitive subject after complaints about the availability of concessions in 2014 at the last GOP state assembly in Boulder.