Douglas County voters overwhelmingly rejected the “home rule” proposal by the Republican Board of Douglas County Commissioners by a vote of 71% to 29%.

Normally, this would be the latest example of elected officials who pay the political price for horribly misjudging public sentiment. In the aftermath of the drubbing, the commissioners seem to have conceded that voters saw the proposal as a rushed and confusing power grab.

But their concession is undermined by the outlandish claim by Commissioner George Teal that one of the opposition groups, “No Little Kings in Douglas County,” was funded by the Chinese Communist Party.

“No Little Kings in Douglas County” was organized by a cancer treatment physician, Dr. Eiko Browning of Highlands Ranch, who is an American citizen of Japanese descent, not Chinese. The group only raised $14,000 which largely came from Browning.

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Perhaps the Chinese Communist Party is now enlisting Americans of Japanese descent to do its dirty work in local elections. No word on whether the Korean community or other Asian groups were also recruited into this conspiracy.

Conspiracy theorists seem to abound among Colorado Republicans.

Criminally convicted Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk who is now serving prison time, alleged that sinister Serbian figures were involved in manipulating the 2020 election in Colorado. It is not known if Serbians were also involved in the Douglas County “home rule” election.

During the 2022 Republican primary for the U.S. senate, state Rep. Ron Hanks alleged that Chinese Communists infiltrated Dominion Voting Systems election equipment in Colorado. Hanks claimed Colorado’s eight electoral votes were stolen in 2020 from Donald Trump who lost the state by 14 points to Joe Biden. Dominion equipment is used in 60 of Colorado’s 64 counties.

Former Dominion executive Eric Coomer recently won a defamation case in federal district court in Denver against pillow magnate Mike Lindell. Coomer was falsely accused by Lindell of conspiring to fix the 2020 presidential election against President Donald Trump.

Coomer was awarded more than $2 million. Fox News recently settled a defamation lawsuit by Dominion for $747 million and other cases remain unsettled.

Apparently, the Chinese Communists were not content with just stealing Colorado from Trump. Now they’re allegedly mucking around in local politics in Douglas County.

Even though several Douglas County Republican leaders opposed the “home rule” proposal, it was unilaterally put on the ballot by the all-Republican Douglas County Board of County Commissioners. Douglas County Republicans overall have suffered a serious hit to their credibility in the aftermath of this devastating 71-29 defeat.

For decades, Douglas County was a deep red Republican county that helped drive statewide election victories. But unaffiliated voters are now 49% of the county’s electorate with Republicans at 32% and Democrats at 17%. Republican candidates have gone from getting well above 60 percent to now barely getting above 50%.

The “home rule” defeat and the conspiracy theories it has spawned will further undermine Republican prospects in Douglas County.

Meanwhile, Colorado Republicans continue to pursue another politically bankrupt idea.

While it is a relief that the insidious tenure of Dave Williams as state chairman has ended, the newly elected state chair, Brita Horn, is continuing to pursue a Williams assault on the right of unaffiliated voters to vote in primary elections.

Unaffiliated voters now make up just under half of the Colorado electorate at 49% with Democrats at 25% and Republicans at 23%.

The aspirational budget Horn submitted to the Colorado Republican Executive Committee includes $100,000 to pursue a federal court case started by Williams to overturn Proposition 108 which was passed by voters in 2016. Proposition 108 gives unaffiliated voters the right to choose to vote in one of the two partisan primary elections.

Horn would send $100,000 to indicted and disbarred California lawyer John Eastman to pursue the lawsuit to steal the right to vote in primary elections of more than two million unaffiliated voters who make up nearly half of the Colorado electorate.

If Colorado Republicans are ever going to get back in the game and win some elections, it will not be through Chinese Communist Party conspiracy theories and legal assaults against unaffiliated voters.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who managed campaigns for U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, and Gov. Bill Owens.  He was campaign manager for U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota when Thune unseated Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle in 2004.