It’d be hard to find someone with more solid credentials as a Republican than Wayne Williams.

A former El Paso County Republican Party chairman, county commissioner and county clerk, Williams ran on the GOP ticket twice statewide for secretary of state, winning once.

In years past, that resumé would almost certainly have made Williams a shoo-in to defeat unaffiliated rival Yemi Mobolade in the May 16 runoff for mayor of Colorado Springs, but an ongoing rift between various factions of the city’s Republicans and bruises still lingering from a bitterly fought first round in the nonpartisan election threaten to upend expectations.

Different from previous mayoral runoffs – like when incumbent Mayor John Suthers defeated challenger Mary Louise Makepeace in 2015 and when Suthers’ predecessor Steve Bach defeated City Council veteran Richard Skorman in 2011 – longtime local political observers say this year’s race isn’t resolving as cleanly along traditional partisan lines, and that poses a unique challenge for Williams.

Since Mobolade and Williams qualified for the runoff by finishing in first and second place, respectively, in last month’s municipal election, Williams has been going to great lengths to convince voters that he’s the Republican and conservative in the race, even as his opponent wins endorsements from former GOP officials and prominent local right-leaning figures.

Among Mobolade’s Republican backers are former county sheriff Bill Elder and former councilwoman and county commissioner Sallie Clark, who finished a close third in the April mayoral election.

Eli Bremer, a former county GOP chair, told Colorado Politics that the days when the Republican mayoral candidate could count on cleaning up in the Colorado Springs runoff are over.

In part, he added, that’s because the city’s electorate has shifted in recent years from overwhelmingly Republican to a more even playing field, noting that Democratic Gov. Jared Polis barely edged past Republican gubernatorial nominee Heidi Ganahl within city limits last fall, a result that would have been unheard-of in decades past.

The lines in this year’s runoff are more muddled than in earlier elections, too, he said.

“People are trying to simplify this down to liberal-conservative, but it’s not eight years ago, it’s not John Suthers and Mary Lou Makepeace,” Bremer said. “It’s a completely different dynamic.”

In the 2015 runoff, Suthers, a former Republican attorney general, defeated Makepeace by roughly 2-1 after he failed to achieve a majority in the first round.

Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dave Williams – no relation to the mayoral candidate – said the state GOP has been working to drum up support for Wayne Williams after learning that a sizable share of the city’s Republican voters were considering casting ballots for Mobolade. 

“Wayne and his campaign team contacted me to see if we could help to make sure our Republican voters can turn out and know Wayne is the only registered Republican running,” Dave Williams told Colorado Politics, adding that the state party has sent multiple emails to its lists of GOP voters in the city.

The state GOP chair, who represented a portion of Colorado Springs during his three terms as a state lawmaker, said he understands why Williams’ campaign is reaching out aggressively to Republicans. 

“Wayne’s people expressed to me that they believe that as much as 30% of Republicans who were thinking about voting for Yemi,” Dave Williams said. “If that’s the case, Wayne’s got a little bit of trouble he’s got to handle.”

Wayne Williams’ campaign manager, Ryan Lynch, told Colorado Politics on Friday that he was pleased that fresh polling numbers show that Republican voters are “coming home.”

“There were 11-some-odd Republicans in the first round of the race, and a lot of (the voters) supported Republicans other than Wayne Williams,” Lynch said. “Certainly in the last few weeks, we’ve seen them consolidating around Wayne. We’re grateful for that. We’re getting support from folks all throughout the city.”

Dave Williams, however, speculated that persistent tensions within the local Republican Party could ultimately cost Wayne Williams votes.

“As I look at it, I’m kind of wondering whether Wayne regrets doing a commercial with Jena Griswold,” he said, referring to a public service ad Wayne Williams recorded last with his Democratic successor as secretary of state to reassure voters that Colorado’s election system is safe and secure. The ad provoked outrage from local Republicans, including a group that cited the ad when they launched a failed recall campaign against Wayne Williams.

“That type of stuff certainly feeds into the attacks he had to deal with during the normal campaign against Sallie and the rest,” Dave Williams added. “Now he’s got to consolidate Republican support, and it might come back to hurt him.

Dave Williams, who was often at odds in recent years with Wayne Williams in local, internal Republican Party disputes, said the battles could have left scars.  

“There are a lot of folks I’m hearing from from the more grassroots wing of the party that just don’t want to vote at all, they want to stay home,” he said. “And you’ve got people like Bill Elder (endorsing Mobolade) – that tells me that even other factions within the party that aren’t necessarily the grassroots but aren’t the traditional establishment types, they aren’t really warming up to Wayne.”

Added Williams: “If Yemi’s going to win – he’s certainly making all the right moves – the fact that he’s getting Republicans to endorse his campaign and talk about a new vision for the city, that stuff is appealing.”

Lynch countered that he’s seeing the opposite.

“This is the first time in a while we’re seeing Republicans on both sides of the intraparty divide coming together,” he said

He dismissed the significance of Mobolade’s endorsements from Republicans and conservatives, including former councilmen Tom Strand, Don Knight and Scott Hente and former Colorado Springs Rescue Mission CEO Larry Yonker. The four are featured along with Clark and Elder in recent Mobolade digital ads proclaiming his support from “conservative leaders.” 

“Just because a small number of former elected officials have endorsed Yemi doesn’t mean that Yemi has some bloc of conservative support,” Lynch said. “He doesn’t. And the more that the voters learn about his left-wing ideologies, they are coming back to our camp.”

Dave Williams said he expects Wayne Williams will pull it out in the end.

“I do think there’s a realization that it’s either Wayne or Yemi, so if you’re a Republican and you’ve had some misgivings about Wayne, you kind of have to get over that,” he said. “If you’re afraid that Yemi is going to institute policies that are more like Denver, you have no choice, you’re going to have to support Wayne. I don’t think it’s an all-is-forgiven scenario, but we can’t re-adjudicate the sins of the past.”