The Colorado Libertarian Party is asking Republicans who want the third party to stand down in competitive congressional districts next year to sign a pledge agreeing to oppose American defense aid to Ukraine and work to abolish U.S. intelligence agencies.

Republicans running for toss-up legislative seats can avoid worrying about potentially splitting the vote with Libertarian nominees if they agree to vote to eliminate the state income tax and support the legal right of Coloradans to purchase unpasteurized milk.

The state Libertarians this month released lengthy pledges for Republican candidates to sign as part of a plan announced in June between the Colorado GOP and the state’s Libertarians.

The unprecedented pact is part of the Colorado Republicans’ attempts to regain ground the party has lost in recent elections, which have left Democrats holding every statewide office and historic majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.

Republicans in Colorado have long maintained that Libertarian candidates divert votes from GOP nominees – allowing Democrats to win with pluralities in extremely close races – but Libertarians have also long warned against assuming that votes for Libertarians would have automatically gone to Republicans.

The Libertarian Party is the largest of Colorado’s officially recognized minor political parties, with 39,875 active, registered members as of Aug. 1. Although the party’s members account for just over 1% of the state’s 3.8 million active voters, its nominees routinely garner 2-3% of the vote, which sometimes exceeds the difference between the two major party candidates in tight races.

Under the agreement, negotiated between Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams and his Libertarian counterpart, Hannah Goodman, the Libertarians will refrain from nominating candidates in races where a right-leaning, third-party candidate could siphon off votes from the Republican, potentially throwing the election to the Democrats.

In order for the Libertarians to stand down, however, the party wants assurances from the candidates the GOP puts forward.

“If the Republican Party runs candidates who support individual liberties, we will not run competing candidates in those races,” Goodman said of the agreement.

That’s where the pledges come in.

“If you were to ask the average Republican voter what issues they believed the GOP stood for, most of them would list truly libertarian values,” Goodman said in a statement. “This could be support of the Second Amendment, lower taxes, parental rights, and school choice to name a few. However, many elected Republicans fall short or abandon these values entirely.”

She added that the Libertarians intend to run candidates “against any Republican candidates who do not sign this pledge.”

Williams said Republicans had some suggestions for what to include “so both parties can focus on our common interests.”

“Their questionnaire represents what they were willing to have us align with them on to not run spoiler candidates,” Williams told Colorado Politics in a text message. “The ball is in our court now, and I don’t think any serious candidate seeking our nomination in any competitive seat can ignore this.”

The questionnaires – one for federal candidates, one for state-level candidates – list more than a dozen points the Libertarians contend “are the best way to make America a freer and more prosperous country” and to make Colorado “a freer, more prosperous state,” respectively.

While the pledge for state-level candidates hews mostly to established conservative principles – defend the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, stand up for parents, increase government transparency and even support for “food freedom, such as raw milk and local meat processing” – the pledge for federal candidates includes numerous items that could put Colorado’s GOP candidates at odds with congressional leadership and national Republicans.

“I will immediately work to pull funding for Ukrainian aid and push aggressively for peace negotiations with Russia,” the congressional pledge begins.

Another entry asks candidates to “recognize the egregious abuses by the US intelligence agencies, and work towards reducing their power with the end goal of abolishing them entirely.”

Republican candidates are also asked to agree to reduce foreign aid, audit the Federal Reserve, make it a priority to cut funding for “all three letter agencies” and to “abolish the Department of Education, returning education back to local control.”

In addition, the Libertarians want Republican congressional candidates to agree not to to object if the next president pardons Julian Assange, the fugitive founder of WikiLeaks; Edward Snowden, a computer consultant who defected to Russia after leaking highly classified U.S. intelligence; or Ross Ulbrich, who is serving a life sentence for creating the Silk Road marketplace on the dark web, which was used to sell illegal goods and services.

Colorado Springs Republican Eli Bremer, a former El Paso County GOP chairman and a 2022 candidate for the U.S. Senate, said he wouldn’t sign the pledge, calling some of the items on the congressional candidates’ questionnaire obvious deal-breakers.

“This is what happens when you turn your candidate vetting over to minor and fringe political parties – they try to force you to extreme and untenable positions,” Bremer told Colorado Politics in a text message. “As a federal candidate, I would never have signed this pledge as it undermines America’s military and national security positions. For instance, while I believe in reforming our intelligence agencies, it’s nothing short of irresponsible to say they should be disbanded.”

Added Bremer: “The Colorado GOP needs to get back to the fundamentals of winning elections and get out of business of trying to remake the Republican Party in the image of fringe elements who are continually rejected by Colorado voters.”

Author Ari Armstrong, a noted advocate for a small-l libertarian approach to government, on Tuesday took issue with the questionnaire’s item on the U.S. response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“This is insane,” Armstrong wrote in News Miner, his Substack newsletter. “Russia under Putin has waged a genocidal war against Ukraine. Russia is the obvious aggressor. Negotiating ‘peace’ with Russia means welcoming Russia’s mass murder in Ukraine.”

Jordan Marinovich, the Colorado Libertarians’ communications director, told Colorado Politics that the questionnaires aren’t necessarily all-or-nothing propositions, noting that candidates can decline to take the pledge on individual items.

“If a candidate does decline to initial by one point, but agrees to all other points, this is an opportunity for the candidate to explain their position,” Marinovich said in an email. “Ultimately, it is up to our delegation whether to step aside for said candidate, and we wanted to give the delegation more nuance vs a yes or no to the entire pledge.”

It’s unclear whether the Libertarian party leadership will be able to prevent candidates who want to run under their banner from winning the party’s nomination, though Williams said he’s confident that giving delegates to the minor party’s nominating assembly a “none of the above” choice will yield the desired results.

Williams said he has forwarded the applicable pledges to Republican legislative leadership and the National Republican Congressional Committee, as well as to a handful of Republicans who have either declared or shown interest in challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo in the toss-up 8th Congressional District.

A spokesperson for the NRCC didn’t respond to a request for comment on the questionnaire. Neither did a spokesperson for Scott James, the only Republican who is so far running in the 8th CD.

Colorado Democrat Party Chairman Shad Murib, who dismissed the GOP’s pact with the Libertarians and said it misdiagnosed why Republicans keep losing elections, told Colorado Politics that the pledges only underscore his earlier point.

“The Colorado Democrats have reached out to over 4,000 voters across the state in the past few weeks and, frankly, no one cares about any of this,” Murib said in a text message. “We’re focused on addressing the biggest challenges facing working people of all parties, and the leadership of the Republican Party is focused on trending on Twitter. It’s just weird nonsense.”