Updated 11/14/24

Not long after winning District 20 in the state House, Republican Rep.-elect Jarvis Caldwell took to social media to call out party leadership for what he described as its failure to support GOP candidates in this year’s election.

Caldwell won the June El Paso County House District 20 primary by a 30-point margin. State GOP chair Dave Williams did not support Caldwell. On Nov. 5, Caldwell beat his Democratic opponent by 44 points in the general election, according to the unofficial results.

On Monday, Caldwell posted on X that he received a congratulatory call from Gov. Jared Polis but not one word of congratulations from either the state Republican party or the El Paso County Republican Party, which Williams ally Vicki Tonkins leads.

Tonkins’s husband, Rex, ran against incumbent Sen. Larry Liston of Colorado Springs for the Senate District 10 seat. In a three-way race, Rex Tonkins finished a distant third, about 45 points behind Liston.

Responding to Caldwell on X, the Republican Party told him to “get over yourself. We’re recruiting and sending volunteers to help cure ballots. You could have two more state house colleagues, so maybe get off your high horse.”

Caldwell responded that he had been out helping cure ballots in House District 16 for the Republican challenger, Rebecca Keltie, who now leads Democratic Rep. Stephanie Vigil by just 21 votes as of Tuesday, the narrowest lead from the 2024 election for any statewide race.

“Didn’t see any of you there,” Caldwell replied.

And the fight was on.

In Twitter, what happened next is defined as getting “ratio’ed,” which is when a tweet gets more comments — usually negative — than likes. It was better than four to one from people criticizing the Colorado GOP leadership versus those supporting the party and Williams.

That included this from @myorthogonalmind: “@cologop‘s response is the most ironic and tone deaf combination in one post I think I’ve seen this month. And that’s saying something. The state party CANNOT keep from picking fights.”

The GOP account responded that it didn’t start the fight.

“Yes, you have – continuously,” @myorthogonalmind replied. “You guys started the fight when you decided to try to pick winners and losers.”

Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas, who lost to a Williams-backed candidate, Matt Burcham, for the House District 43 seat, also got involved, blasting the state party  for choosing her primary rival.

“Let’s talk about @cologop and its colossal blunder in endorsing my GOP opponent in HD43,” Thomas said. “I attended Assembly and got top line. As a @douglascountyco commissioner and past elected Coroner, I had NAME RECOGNITION & an exemplary record of responsible, fiscally-conservative governance. But @cologop, ably assisted by RMGO and hundreds of thousands in dark money from Bill Owens and his cabal, decided to endorse an unemployed nobody as their prize pick to take out incumbent Democrat @Bob4Colorado in the General.”

She added: “No surprise Marshall won. In a +8R district. The lowest-hanging seat to flip back to GOP — and an epic fail by a coalition obviously bent on failure. Enjoy your victory lap as Marshall and the Dems prepare to once again run roughshod over us in the General Assembly.”

Incumbent Bob Marshall, who won the House seat in 2022 by 405 votes and was the first Democrat to represent Douglas County in HD43, beat Burcham by just over 1,200 voted, according to the unofficial results.

Valdamar Archuleta, the Colorado GOP’s choice candidate for the 1st Congressional District, questioned Republican leadership by asking: “Is an immature 12 year old running the Colorado GOP account?”

Another person questioned how many legislative races didn’t have a Republican candidate.

Out of the 18 races in the state Senate, Republicans did not have a candidate in three. In the House, the GOP lacked a candidate in five.

While it’s unknown who officially runs the state party’s X account, several people called out Darcy Schoening, the party’s director of special initiatives.

Caldwell said Thursday he does not believe she is managing the account. Schoening on Thursday denied she had any involvement with the account.

The party’s most significant — and only — campaign expenditure for a Colorado legislative candidate this election cycle was $1,908 on text messages to support a Republican candidate in House District 38. That candidate lost by 9 points last week.

According to data on TRACER, the Secretary of State’s campaign finance database, that’s more money spent than raised in the 2024 election cycle.

The bulk of the party’s funds come through its federal Colorado Republican Committee account, which raised more than $700,000 in the 2024 election cycle. A few contributions were made to candidates, including Donald Trump, and a $3,000 contribution was made in March 2023 to the campaign of U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who was still representing (and living) in the 3rd Congressional District on the Western Slope at the time.

Republicans Jeff Hurd in the 3rd CD and Gabe Evans in the 8th Congressional District 8 beat Williams-backed candidates in the June primary and received campaign support from the Arizona GOP during the general election.

Evans called on Williams to step down from party leadership earlier this year.

Caldwell is no novice to the in-fighting of the Colorado GOP. He’s the former communications director for the state House GOP, serving briefly under the late House Minority Leader Hugh McKean, who battled with Williams during the latter’s last two years in the House and over House Republican candidates in the 2022 election.

That election saw the number of House Republicans allied with Williams shrink from about 12 to less than five.

Caldwell told Colorado Politics that the state party attacked him “viciously” in the primaries.

“I stayed relatively quiet in the election and didn’t want to cause more damage,” he said.

But, he said, the “straw that broke the camel’s back was when the race was called for Gabe Evans” and when Weston Imer, a Republican operative allied with Williams, started taking credit for Evans’ win.

“If the state party had done nothing, it would have been an improvement on what they did for Gabe Evans and other candidates,” Caldwell said.

Williams did not respond to a request for comment.