Colorado Republicans on Saturday elected Brita Horn, a former county treasurer and longtime party activist, to a two-year term as state GOP chair at the party’s biennial reorganization meeting in Colorado Springs.

The 62-year-old volunteer fire department chief from Routt County told members of the state central committee that she wants Republicans to move past the internal fights that have consumed the party, giving Democrats free rein to consolidate near total control of state government.

“We have so much division, we have so much distraction. We have all these things going on, debating about the past,” Horn said. “Guess what the Democrats are doing right now? They’re winning elections.”

Added Horn: “We can’t do that anymore. We have to stop the infighting and start fighting for the party.”

Horn defeated former Weld County Commissioner and former state Rep. Lori Saine 232-203, with 53% of the vote, in the second round of balloting after an initial seven-candidate field had narrowed to a two-way race.

Horn takes over a state party riven by disputes following a tumultuous two years under the outgoing state chair Dave Williams, who spent most of last year fending off attempts to force him from the position.

Williams, a former state lawmaker and two-time congressional candidate from Colorado Springs, announced in late February that he wouldn’t seek a second term running the party.

Republicans began calling for Williams to resign as chair more than a year ago when he declined to step aside after jumping into a contested primary for the 5th Congressional District seat held by retiring U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, who fended of a challenge from Williams for the same office two years earlier.

At Williams’ urging, Colorado Republicans abandoned the party’s longstanding tradition of staying neutral in primaries and issued endorsements in more than a dozen races, spending heavily in some of them — including Williams’ own bid. The party’s track record was poor, however, with all but a few of its picks eventually losing their primaries.

Complaints mounted after Williams and his staff attacked the LBGTQ+ community’s Pride Month in party emails and social media posts, including a graphic that said “God hates flags” and instructions to “Burn all the #Pride flags this June.” Williams faced further calls to resign after he lost the congressional primary by a wide margin to veteran political operative Jeff Crank despite boasting an endorsement from Donald Trump.

Last month, Williams and the state party sued Horn and five other Republicans, accusing them of staging a failed “coup” that cost the party more than $100,000 in legal fees while diverting resources from campaigns in the months leading up to the November election.

In the lawsuit, Williams and his fellow plaintiffs alleged that Horn and other Williams critics engaged in “a series of unethical, dishonorable, and fraudulent actions designed to cling to power.”

When it was filed, Horn dismissed the lawsuit as “yet another of (Williams’) frivolous attacks on his political opponents,” telling Colorado Politics that the legal threat wouldn’t deter her from bringing the party together to win elections rather than “using the organization to attack fellow members.”

She sounded the same theme in her speech at the reorganization meeting Saturday.

“We don’t need any more distractions. We don’t need any more divisions. We just need results,” Horn said in her nominating speech.

“We have to unite the party. It’s about all of us. So if we can stop blaming each other, stop pointing fingers … because if we keep doing that, I say we’re going to keep losing.”

The other candidates who ran for chair were former state Rep. Richard Holtorf, R-Akron; state party staffer Darcy Schoening; and party activists Ryan Everett, Jeremy Goodall and Mark Morris. All five withdrew after the first round of voting, with Holtorf, Everett and Morris asking their supporters to back Horn, and Goodall asking his to vote for Saine.

The Colorado GOP’s central committee — numbering around 500 party officers, elected officials and activists — convened for a hybrid reorganization meeting, with about 100 members participating remotely via Zoom and the rest meeting inside Radiant Church in Colorado Springs.

Shad Murib, Horn’s Democratic counterpart, who won reelection to a second term as his party’s state chair earlier this month, told Colorado Politics that Horn’s experience as Routt County treasurer makes her a “perfect fit” for the Trump era.

“It’s no surprise that the Colorado GOP elected Brita Horn — best known for using her government job to extract political favors and cost Routt County millions of dollars through her failed job as treasurer — to their top leadership spot,” Murib said in a text message. “She’s a perfect fit for the new age of corruption that Trump requires of his puppets.”