Twenty Years Ago This Week: The Colorado Republican Party waded into local political drama when state GOP Chairman Ted Halaby submitted a letter for publication in The Colorado Statesman directing Arapahoe County Republicans to vote in favor of recalling Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Tracy Baker.

The effect was elevating the county recall election to an issue of statewide attention.

The recall was instigated when five employees in Baker’s office threatened to sue the county, alleging that Baker had created a hostile work environment and had sexually harassed them. A subsequent county-initiated investigation had uncovered hundreds of sexually-explicit emails between Baker and his assistant chief deputy, Leesa Sale.

Halaby wrote that his original view was that Baker’s situation was “a local matter,” but that changed with the results of the investigation, compelling him to call on Baker to resign.

“I give my full support to the recall effort,” Halaby wrote, “both as an affected Arapahoe County resident and as the elected political leader of my party.”

Baker’s long list of documented abuses and his “overall creation of a hostile work environment … very well may create a substantial financial liability for Arapahoe County,” Halaby added, urging Republicans to throw their support behind the party’s candidate, Nancy Doty.

Ten Years Ago: In a move that resounded through Colorado’s political landscape; U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, announced that he was going to drop his bid for re-election and instead challenge the Democrat U.S. Sen. Mark Udall. The national consequences of the race were appreciable, the Colorado race potentially determining which party would control the U.S. Senate.

Mere hours after the first reporting of Gardner’s decision, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, who had been touted as the candidate most capable of unseating Udall and had already launched his campaign for the seat, announced that he would instead run for Gardner’s Congressional District 4 seat. The deal pushed state Rep. Amy Stephens, R-Monument, out of the race. The former state house majority leader and minority caucus chair announced that she would withdraw from the race and throw her support behind Gardner.

State. Sen. Owen Hill, R-Colorado Springs, who had also announced his candidacy for the Senate race the previous July, labeled Gardner’s late entry into the Senate race as “the kind of back-room deal” that costs Republicans elections.

Hill said that Gardner had approached him a few weeks previously about dropping out, but he refused.

“At the time, my reaction was, ‘This isn’t right, people should have their own choice who the party’s nominee is going to be,” Hill recalled. “Conservative voters will recoil if they feel like it’s a coronation instead of an election.”

But the new heir apparent to CD 4, Buck, disagreed. “We need to replace Mark Udall in the Senate, and I believe Cory Gardner is in the strongest position to make that happen,” Buck said in a prepared statement announcing his switch to the CD 4 seat. “The Senate race has never been about me but about helping change the direction of the country. I hope to have the opportunity to lead the fight for limited government and fiscal responsibility as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.”

“I think Cory Gardner getting into the race shows that the GOP realized how weak their bench was,” said Jennifer Koch, executive director of the Colorado Democratic Party. Koch argued that Gardner didn’t offer voters anything new as, like others in his party, he had “advocated for dismantling Social Security, Medicare, and banning abortion and other kinds of birth control.”

The Colorado Republican Party, which remained neutral during the primary, said that Gardner’s announcement was “further evidence that Mark Udall’s days in the Senate are numbered … We look forward to a spirited primary, and uniting behind our party’s nominee in the General Election, whoever that may be.”

Rachael Wright is the author of the Captain Savva Mystery series, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Gazette.