Rex Tonkins, the husband of El Paso County Republican chair Vickie Tonkins, has filed to challenge state Sen. Larry Liston in this year’s GOP primary.

It won’t be the first time the two have clashed.

Liston, who is seeking a second term in the solidly Republican, Colorado Springs-based Senate District 10, was formally censured by the state GOP last year for pursuing criminal charges against Rex Tonkins following an alleged altercation at a county party meeting presided over by Vickie Tonkins.

After a jury acquitted Rex Tonkins on misdemeanor harassment charges last summer, the state party voted in November to rebuke Liston for “using his political influence” to encourage the prosecution. The party also issued an apology to Rex Tonkins for the ordeal.

The 71-year-old Liston earlier alleged that Rex Tonkins “chest-bumped” him after the two exchanged words near the end of a tense 2021 party meeting at a Colorado Springs church, but Rex Tonkins denied he had acted aggressively in any way.

The veteran state lawmaker – he served six nonconsecutive terms in the state House before his 2020 election to the legislature’s upper chamber – told Colorado Politics after learning he’d been censured that he expected the resolution would lead to a primary challenge.

“Now that the local parties are not obligated to stay neutral during a primary, they will weaponize this if they can,” Liston said, adding that he was confident the district’s voters would return him to office.

On Tuesday, Liston questioned his primary opponent’s motives in a statement to Colorado Politics. 

“I find it interesting that the El Paso County Party chair is choosing to use her husband as an instrument in their long and infantile personal vendetta that they have against me,” Liston said in an email. “While Mr. Tonkins, like everyone else, has a right to run for any seat, I question whether he is doing so with the best interests of Senate District 10 at heart and not out of spite.”

Neither Rex nor Vickie Tonkins responded to a request for comment about his candidacy.

Liston and the local party – led by Vickie Tonkins since late 2019 – have been at odds for years.

Liston was among more than 30 El Paso County Republicans condemned by the county party just days before the 2022 General Election for supporting a voter-contact group organized by local Republicans who said Vickie Tonkins wasn’t supporting some GOP nominees.

A month later, the state Republican Party formally censured Vickie Tonkins for the move, saying she had failed in her duty as county party chair to help elect GOP candidates.

Voters in Senate District 10, which covers Northeast Colorado Springs, tend to prefer Republican candidates by a roughly 24 percentage point margin, according to an analysis by the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission. Liston has yet to draw a Democratic challenger.

Another Republican has filed to run for the seat – activist Dave Stiver, whose failed attempt to qualify for the district’s primary four years ago was at the center of another heated dispute between local and state Republicans.

In 2020, Stiver charged that he was wrongly kept from the ballot by voting irregularities at the district’s GOP assembly, which was held online due to the pandemic.

Vickie Tonkins, serving her first term as county party chair, joined a complaint filed with state Republicans demanding that Stiver’s name be added to the primary, but a district court judge disagreed in a ruling later upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court.

The controversy drew national attention after U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, who was the state GOP’s chairman, ordered the district’s chairman, Colorado Springs Republican Eli Bremer, to put Stiver’s name on the ballot in an online meeting first reported by Colorado Politics.