Republican Party Chair and member of Congress Ken Buck was persuaded to mount a defense of Colorado’s election integrity at the weekly Caucus Room discussion. He lassoed three Republican county clerks to join him in an upbeat argument that the state’s universal mail ballot procedures are both fair and undeserving of suspicion. This suggestion apparently didn’t go over well with many of the fringier conservatives listening online despite the fact most of the fail-safe precautions were built into the system by Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams.

The Twitterverse was attacking Buck as a RINO and deep state, anti-Trumper turncoat well before dawn. The congressman has announced he is still considering whether to run for a second term as Colorado’s Republican Party leader. His first term hasn’t gone well, with nasty intra-mural disputes breaking out in El Paso and Weld counties that pulled him into testy mediations that left lingering resentments. Looking forward, Colorado Republicans just lost the 2020 presidential contest by 440,000 votes, a 300% increase over their 2016 Clinton vs. Trump margin.

With the exception of soon-to-be former District Attorney George Brauchler, who has been cranking out frequent op/ed columns in an effort to remain visible and relevant, it’s hard to identify any talent on the Republican bench prepared and sufficiently skilled to take on either Gov. Jared Polis or U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in two years. Buck can’t say he wasn’t warned. Two years ago, I attended the Republican state convention out of journalistic curiosity where Buck was eventually tapped following multiple ballots. During a break when votes were being counted, I asked Ken why he wanted to be Chairman? “You must realize party offices are the worst jobs in politics, don’t you? You’ll be required to referee other people’s quarrels and end up with fewer friends every time than you have now.” I explained my own two years serving as chair of the Denver County Democrats taught me Republicans were my adversaries, while other Democrats were my real political enemies.

In his 2019 victory speech, Ken famously promised Republican delegates he would teach Colorado Democrats how to spell the word recall. That threat never amounted to much, but I suspect the congressman has learned something about the word recrimination. There is always irony floating just below the surface of politics when you take the time to look for it. Jenna Ellis, the “constitutional law expert” co-chairing President Trump’s effort to overturn his election defeats with COVID-positive Rudy Giuliani was hired into the Weld County District Attorney’s Office by none other than Ken Buck.

Gratitude for this career boost didn’t deter her from slapping down the congressman for his defense of Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems and then throwing shade across state election results. There is reason to suspect, despite her industrial-strength evangelical Christianity, which she wields as both a sword and shield, Ellis seems to have forgotten the ninth commandment that, “Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” She is learning the hard way that courts operate on the premise of evidence rather than faith.

In 2004 Democrats surprised Colorado pundits by electing Ken Salazar to the U. S. Senate as well as seizing a majority in the state House of Representatives for the first time in 30 years. In gratitude for this success, Democratic delegates dumped party Chair Chris Gates on his head the following February. After I was elected Denver chair in 1983, with support from mayoral candidates and personal friends Federico Peña and Wellington Webb, the entire staff that was operating the party’s bingo games resigned to protest my chairmanship, presumably in hopes of bankrupting the county party. It took six months calling bingo games with a handful of loyal supporters to rebuild a team that could keep our bingo earnings rolling in. Since bingo players could smoke in the hall then, I returned home each week smelling like an ashtray. Wondering why they quit? What sin had I committed? I won. They lost. That’s politics!

The notion that the national Democratic Party surreptitiously engineered a sophisticated theft of ballots fraud is ludicrous. Merely organizing a statewide convention every two years exhausts the volunteer capacities of either party. At the grassroots, there is no expertise, no money, no intention and no tolerance for stealing elections – no troops to execute silent fraud. Every vote constitutes an expression of faith in democracy. Nationally and in Colorado we established turnout records in 2020. That’s good news. Our republic remains healthy!

My final words of advice to Chairman Buck – there is no upside, only downside, in holding on to your weekend job. Rebuilding Colorado’s Republican Party will require a full-time commitment, and even that may not succeed. Better to step off the curb under your own power.