The El Paso County Republican Party last week voted to remove two former state lawmakers and a longtime GOP volunteer from the Colorado county’s central committee for using the word “Republicans” to describe a voter-contact organization.

Former state Reps. Lois Landgraf and Kit Roupe, both Colorado Springs Republicans, and Candi Boyer, president of the El Paso County Republican Women, were stripped of their precinct leader positions by an “overwhelming” vote of the county party’s executive committee at a closed-door meeting on Oct. 23, county GOP Chairwoman Vickie Tonkins told Colorado Politics in an email.

Their offense: Continuing to operate a campaign group called Peak Republicans, according to a “Removal Notice” that cited county party bylaws and a state statute that gives Colorado’s political parties fiat over which “person, group of persons or organization” can use the party’s name.

“They committed malfeasance, based on presented evidence, therefore should lose all rights and privileges afforded members to the El Paso County Central Committee,” Tonkins said in an email.

“It’s her kangaroo court,” Landgraf said in a text message.

The former four-term state lawmaker noted that the county party met without notifying Landgraf or her fellow candidates for expulsion, though she acknowledged that the county’s vice chairman, Todd Watkins, detailed the charges in an earlier email.

Describing the move as “petty” and “kind of arbitrary,” Roupe told Colorado Politics earlier this month that she didn’t intend to respond to the allegations.

“But I guess it’s a punishment for having helped get Republicans elected,” she added.

In addition to being shown the door, the county party banned the three women from carrying proxies for fellow Republicans – a punishment Landgraf and Roupe said was tacked on at the last minute without any basis they could discern under GOP rules.

State GOP Chairman Dave Williams, a former three-term state lawmaker from El Paso County, told Colorado Politics that he wasn’t sure if party bylaws permitted a proxy prohibition and said he would “look into it further.” 

It’s the latest chapter in an ongoing dispute between the county party and the Peak Republicans, whose organizers said they established the group to fill a void left by the local GOP’s refusal to support some Republican candidates.

Nearly a year ago, just days before the 2022 general election, Tonkins convened the county party’s central committee to reprimand the group, its volunteers and local candidates who used the Peak Republicans’ office in Rockrimmon to distribute campaign material and launch canvasses.

The Colorado GOP censured Tonkins weeks later for spending time attacking fellow Republicans instead of helping get out the vote. In a strongly worded resolution, the state party said Tonkins had “flagrantly and intentionally violated her duty as county chairman and instead of supporting these seven Republican candidates in the general election, she actively opposed them.”

It didn’t end there.

The state party, led by its outgoing chairwoman, Kristi Burton Brown, told the Peak Republicans to apply to use the word “Republicans” in their name under a state law that grants political parties the authority to grant or withheld permission.

Just days before Burton Brown’s term ended and Williams took over in early March, the state party’s executive committee issued a ruling thanking the group for its “good work in El Paso County” but denied the application, citing concerns about “furthering the divide in El Paso among Republicans” and muddying the brand.

Landgraf told Colorado Politics that the group decided to continue using its name, adding that multiple civil rights attorneys have told her the law amounts to an unconstitutional infringement of their First Amendment rights.

Following the county party’s vote last week, Landgraf said she has no plans to hire an attorney.

“We would win, according to our advisors,” she said in a text message. “But who needs it.”

Roupe said she was discouraged that the county party is ousting officers rather than growing the party.

“I’m not going to mess with them,” she said. “You don’t want to disenfranchise the few Republicans you have. It’s not like they’re growing by leaps and bounds. It’s not like they’re finding candidates.”

Boyer said in an email that she intends to continue presiding over the Republican women’s group and won’t otherwise change what she’s doing.

“I also work with candidates as their treasurer and plan to continue that. I will continue to volunteer with and promote Peak Republicans. In short, I won’t be changing anything I do because of their actions,” she said, adding, “Our voices will continue to be heard in spite of their actions.”