Backers of a move to force Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dave Williams from office over the state GOP’s attacks on Pride Month gained support this week from additional county parties, even as Jefferson County’s GOP censured its chair for setting the drive in motion.

Members of the Weld County Republican Party’s executive committee voted nearly unanimously Tuesday night to join more than a dozen other county GOP organizations that have asked Williams to step down or face a vote to remove him from the top party post.

Williams, a candidate in next week’s primary for the El Paso County-based 5th Congressional District seat held by retiring U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, has drawn criticism from fellow partisans for a series of emails and other messages targeting Pride Month, the LGBTQ+ community’s annual celebration. Among them was an email titled “God Hates Pride” and a social media post urging the party’s followers to “burn all the Pride flags this June.”

“I don’t want to do this,” Weld County GOP Chairman Tom Van Lone told Colorado Politics after the party’s governing body approved the resolution. “We’re here to get people elected and move on, but we find ourselves having to do something.”

Late last week, the Boulder County and Otero County Republican parties took similar steps, raising concerns about Williams’ recent threats to publicize the names of Republicans who disagree with him and the state party’s involvement in contested primaries.

In response to Williams’ emails, Republican candidate Valdamar Archuleta, who is challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in Denver’s 1st Congressional District, renounced the state party’s endorsement.

At the same time, Jefferson County GOP Chair Nancy Pallozzi launched a petition to call a special meeting of the state GOP’s central committee to consider ousting Williams, drawing a reprimand late last week from her county party’s executive committee.

The committee declared in a censure resolution approved on June 13 that Pallozzi had overstepped her authority as county chair to spearhead “the very divisive matter of calling for the State Party Chair to resign” and ordered her to “cease any action and communications related to this matter” in her capacity as chair. The resolution told Pallozzi she had to “immediately disclose and surrender” any records of her communications related to the online petition, including all of her contacts with media outlets and other county party chairs.

The county party’s executive committee also said that any actions taken by Pallozzi — including the petition she circulated — were rendered “null and void,” though Pallozzi told Colorado Politics that provision would have no effect, adding that she planned to forge ahead with the petition in her personal capacity.

Pallozzi told Colorado Politics before she was censured that she’d gathered more than the required number of signatures needed to convene the meeting. On Tuesday — stressing she was speaking in her personal capacity, not as county chair, under the terms of her censure — Pallozzi said she’d decided to postpone submitting the petition, in order to avoid conflicting with next month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Van Lone acknowledged that the county party’s resolution calling for Williams to step aside was largely symbolic, since it was the petition to hold a meeting to remove Williams that had actual teeth.

“The meat of the issue has been taken care of — the petition has enough signatures to call the meeting,” Van Lone said. “So the resolutions from the individual counties are moral support and a statement to whomever that our position is that, as Republicans, we try not to alienate voters, no matter what your persuasion.”

Williams told Colorado Politics on Tuesday that he wasn’t cowed by Weld County’s move.

“We look forward to the discussion over Weld’s defense of Pride Month and its harmful agenda against children while notifying their constituents of their publicly aligned Pride position,” Williams said in a text message, reiterating his responses to other county parties when they adopted similar resolutions.

Van Lone said that Williams didn’t get it.

“That’s not what this is about,” Van Lone said. “You’ve alienated a bunch of citizens and voters and free people, Coloradans and Americans, and we’re here to say that’s not what the party’s about. We need to add voters and constituents, not alienate them.”