It took just over an hour and a half for the Colorado Republican Party’s state central committee to decide it wasn’t going to conduct any business on Thursday night.

About 90 minutes into an online meeting of the committee, state GOP Chairman Dave Williams declared that he was going to adjourn after members voted narrowly to require Republicans on the Zoom call to verify their identities with government-issued ID’s — something Williams conceded would be impossible to accomplish on short notice.

“Even though everyone already knows that we’re all here, who we claim to be, there’s no way we can think of in the moment to do credentialing, so I will go ahead and adjourn the meeting,” Williams said as other Republicans attempted to speak, including U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who raised objections throughout the meeting and was routinely silenced.

“I appreciate everyone —” Williams added as the teleconference ended.

Williams called the meeting to consider a set of proposed amendments to the party’s bylaws.

Described by proponents as long-overdue changes to align the state GOP’s governing bodies more closely with grassroots activists and volunteers, the amendments were derided by critics as a power grab that would fundamentally reshape the party by concentrating power in its officers, largely at the expense of Republican elected officials.

The six amendments under consideration would have:

• strengthened the party’s ability to endorse candidates in primaries

• shifted authority from the roughly 400-member state central committee to the much smaller state executive committee

• made it easier for the party to close its primary elections to unaffiliated voters

• raised the threshold to remove state party officers

• banished central committee members who sue the state party without covering the party’s litigation expenses

• relegated the vast majority of elected Republicans in the state — including statewide elected officials, members of Congress, legislators and district attorneys — to non-voting member status on the state central committee.

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Many of the amendments appear to be in response to a nearly year-long dispute over party leadership that came to a head last summer, when a group of Republicans — including numerous county party officers and most of the state’s Republican elected officials — voted to remove Williams and his fellow state party officers but were rebuffed by a district court judge who ruled that Williams’ critics had failed to properly follow procedures set in the party’s bylaws.

The bylaws amendments sparked a furious backlash, including from some state Republicans who accused Williams and his allies of trying to ram the changes through just days before the party’s biennial reorganization process starts up with county party elections in the first half of February.

Earlier this week, Boebert and the state’s three other Republican members of Congress — U.S. Reps. Jeff Hurd, Jeff Crank and Gabe Evans — issued a lengthy statement calling on central committee members to reject the amendments, describing the proposals as an attempt to “centralize power in the hands of a few,” while distracting from efforts to pursue the party’s goals.

“As a party, we should not be taking votes to radically change our rules while under a lame-duck administration but additionally, these changes threaten to undermine our ability as a party to focus on the issues that matter most to the people of Colorado and to advance a bold, conservative agenda,” the Republican lawmakers said.

They also trained fire on Williams and what they branded his “failed leadership.”

“Under Chairman Dave Williams, the Colorado GOP has been plagued by infighting and distractions that have undermined our ability to deliver for the people of Colorado,” said the U.S. House members, who jointly called on Williams to resign from his party position last summer ahead of one of the meetings that sought to vote him out.

The lawmakers unfurled a familiar litany of complaints about Williams’ tenure atop the party — from “refusing to repair relationships” with candidates who defeated Williams’ preferred candidates in primaries to what they termed the party’s “subjective endorsements” in Republican primaries.

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At Williams’ urging, the state GOP abandoned its tradition of neutrality in primaries and instead made endorsements and attacked some of the Republicans running against its endorsed candidates, including Hurd, Evans and Crank, who beat Williams in the El Paso County-based 5th Congressional District primary.

“This is not the leadership our voters or activists deserve, and it is not the leadership that will help Republicans win in Colorado,” the four lawmakers said.

Most of the Republican state senators and GOP leaders in the state House released statements supporting the congressional missive.

Willams responded this week by challenging the four members of Congress to join him in a debate over the proposals prior to the central committee’s votes, but none took him up on the offer.

In a party email calling for the debate, Williams outlined his arguments for the amendments.

“Let’s ask ourselves: Shouldn’t the people who dedicate their time, resources, and passion to this Party have a greater voice in shaping its direction? Shouldn’t the process of selecting our candidates reflect our core values, rather than be influenced by those who don’t share them? Isn’t it time to revitalize our grassroots so we can better connect with and represent the voters who trust us to fight for their principles?” he said.

Added Williams: “Personal attacks against one another only serve to fracture our Party further.”

Although Williams noted later in the meeting that organizers had decided to postpone consideration of one of the amendments — the proposal to strip voting rights from most Republican elected officials — he  opened Thursday night’s Zoom meeting with remarks addressing his quarrel with the lawmakers.

“Over the past couple of weeks, and certainly the last few days, we’ve seen some in our party who have preached unity when convenient but resorted to divisive personal attacks because they were unable to articulate any true problems with the proposals being put forward,” Williams said. “In fact, when challenged to have a merit-focused debate before the vote occurred, they all stayed silent and backed down.”

As some participants murmured, Williams continued: “What’s troubling is that there are those in our party who have been very eager to attack pro-Trump grassroots activists and the current conservative direction of our party, while never expending the same amount of energy to attack the radical Democrats like Jared Polis. This state party actually looks forward to the day when its elected officials publish a unified letter against Democrats in power.”

Williams added that, while he considered “passionate disagreement” to be healthy, he wouldn’t tolerate “character assassination, personal accusations or any attempt to impugn the motives of our fellow members.”

As soon as Williams concluded, committee members started shouting out parliamentary objections and asking Williams to clarify procedural questions, including in a lengthy, disjointed exchange between Williams, Boebert and state Rep. Ron Weinberg, a Loveland Republican who repeatedly complained that he was being muted before he could get his question out.

At one point, Boebert moved to adjourn the meeting, but the party’s longstanding parliamentarian, Gregory Carlson, ruled that the congresswoman hadn’t been recognized by the chair when she made the motion, so it wouldn’t be considered.

Before the central committee could discuss the bylaws amendments, however, another Republican asked why the party hadn’t verified participants’ identities by checking ID’s, noting that party bylaws required it, sparking a discussion that was frequently interrupted and delayed by other procedural maneuvers on both sides. Eventually, after first conducting a vote over whether to wrap up debate and vote on the ID requirement — with some confusion over the meaning of a yes and no vote, necessitating a revote — the committee members weighed in on the credentialing question.

According to multiple Republicans who sent text messages to Colorado Politics during the balloting, the vote was considered a proxy vote on the bylaws amendments as a whole, with those voting in favor of checking ID’s hoping to bring the meeting to a swift conclusion. And that’s what happened, with 155 siding with Williams, 162 voting against the chair’s position, and 15 abstaining.

After the meeting adjourned, Williams told Colorado Politics that the committee had spoken.

“At the end of the day, this administration respects the votes of the body,” he said in a text message, “and while we were never in doubt about the true identities of the participants in the meeting, the body wanted a more thorough credentials process, but there wasn’t a realistic way to address that concern tonight, so we will take up the remaining agenda items at a different time.”

Asked whether the bylaws amendments might be considered before or at the state GOP’s reorganization meeting on March 29, Williams responded: “We’ll see.”