During the recent sham state meeting conducted by the deposed Republican state chairman, Dave Williams, one of his enthusiastic defenders declared he was the “best state chairman in 40 years.”

If driving the Colorado Republican Party into a laughable pile of wreckage is the standard for such a grandiose claim, then yes, Williams is the “best.”

I doubt this individual knows much about previous Republican state chairs over the past four decades other than the immediate past chair, Kristi Burton Brown. Williams continues to assassinate the character of Burton Brown with unsubstantiated allegations of financial mismanagement of the state party.

Burton Brown presided over the state party with class and grace in 2022 which have certainly not existed in the past 18 months under Williams. And she tirelessly worked for all Republican candidates in a year when anti-Trump sentiment drove unaffiliated voters, who make up 48% of the electorate, to give Democrats their most dominant presence since the 1930s.

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He also probably recalls former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck who preceded Burton Brown. Buck also had the unenviable task of being chair in 2020 when Trump lost Colorado by 14 points to Joe Biden. Williams, of course, continues to allege Colorado’s eight electoral votes were stolen.

It is unclear if Williams believes the theft was engineered by the Chinese as the stolen-election conspiracist Ron Hanks alleges or if shadowy conspirators in Serbia, who were recently exposed by criminally convicted Tina Peters, stole the votes.

But just for fun, let’s go back 40 years to 1984 and who chaired the Colorado Republican Party and what kind of leadership he exhibited. 

After Bo Callaway graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, he was immediately deployed in the Korean War, where he saw combat as an infantry officer. He was elected to U.S. Congress from his native state of Georgia and built a Republican Party that had n’t existed since the Civil War. He ran against segregationist Democrat Lester Maddox for governor in 1966 but lost in a contentious election.

Callaway’s family bought the Crested Butte ski resort in Colorado and he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1980, but lost in a close primary election to run against U.S. Sen. Gary Hart. Bo was elected Colorado Republican state chairman in 1981 and he immediately worked to move the party into a more professional operation than ever before.

That work came to fruition in 1984, when President Ronald Reagan won Colorado and incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong overwhelmingly won reelection with the support of a massive ground game engineered by Callaway. Armstrong won 60 out of 63 counties including heavily Democratic Denver and Pueblo counties. Republicans won huge state legislative majorities as well.

One of the main components of that ground game was to encourage Republicans to apply for absentee ballots in order to “bank” their votes early and not wait until the November election. In many ways, this Callaway absentee ballot initiative was the precursor for Colorado’s move to all-mail ballots many years later. Republican voters liked the convenience of voting from home and continued to do so after 1984.

But Callaway’s leadership went beyond the nuts and bolts of a ground game. He worked with Republican state legislators to strengthen their incumbency by regular communication with their constituents through state party paid-for mailings. And Callaway had no time for tensions between conservative and moderate Republicans. He supported all Republicans knowing a majority party would always have differing views within it.

There is no comparison between the positive, forward-thinking leadership of Bo Callaway from 40 years ago and the divisive, inept tenure of Dave Williams.

Williams has spent so much time attacking Republicans he doesn’t like; assassinating the character of his predecessor; trying to stop more than 800,000 registered Republicans from voting in a Republican primary, not to mention more than 1.7 million unaffiliated voters; making hate-filled comments about pride flags; trying to steal the votes of Colorado Republican State Central Committee members to vote as he sees fit; having a sham state central committee meeting under a bridge; running for Congress and abusing state party funds for his own campaign; violating a century-old tradition of strict neutrality in primaries — and then losing in 14 of the 18 primaries in which he endorsed candidates — that he has not executed one of the most fundamental roles of the state party, which is to build a statewide GOTV effort known as Victory, as previous state chairs have done.

County parties along with state legislative and congressional candidates are largely on their own in terms of building Republican turnout operations. Gone are the days when the Republican Victory operation turned out 106,000 more Republicans than Democrats, in 2010 which helped drive the unseating of two statewide Democratic incumbents and two Democratic incumbent members of Congress, and the election of a state House majority.

Same thing in 2014, when 110,000 more Republicans than Democrats turned out, which helped U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner unseat Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Mark Udall and Republicans elected a majority in the state Senate.

So if Dave Williams is the “best state chairman in 40 years,” the standard by which this declaration was made is not one any previous state chair would want applied to them.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who worked for U.S. Bill Armstrong for nine years before managing campaigns for U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, Gov. Bill Owens, and U.S. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota.