Colorado’s Republicans plan to fill the state party’s vacant vice chair position later this month in an election pitting two starkly different visions of the state GOP and the party’s path back from the sidelines in a state that’s turned an increasingly brighter blue in the decade since Donald Trump emerged as the Republican Party’s dominant figure.

On the right is former state House Minority Whip Richard Holtorf, an Army combat veteran, former congressional candidate and third generation cattle rancher from Washington County, who stresses the need to unify a party that’s long been riven by infighting.

Also on the right is seasoned Douglas County businessman and executive coach Mark Hampton, founder of Parker Conservatives and the We the People Network, who says he’s running to represent “the true grassroots, the real conservatives,” while shrugging off calls for Republican unity and vowing to bring a “reckoning” to a party he considers to be mired in chaos and headed in the wrong direction.

The state GOP’s central committee is scheduled to convene online on the evening of July 21 to fill the party’s No. 2 position following the previous occupant’s “immediate” resignation in early June, less than three months after his election as part of a slate of newly elected state party officers.

Darrel Phelan, a former chairman of the Las Animas County Republican Party, said in a message to fellow Republicans on June 10 that he’d grown frustrated at party chair Brita Horn’s refusal to involve him in key party decisions and initiatives, claiming Horn was ignoring Phelan’s input and wanted him to be “seen, not heard.”

Although other potential vice chair candidates have made noise about running — former top party staffer Darcy Schoening declared her candidacy but later told Colorado Politics that she’d decided against running — Holtorf and Hampton appear to have the field to themselves as the party election nears. Late last month, the party’s congressional delegation split between the two, with Lauren Boebert, the state’s senior elected Republican, backing Hampton and the three freshman U.S. House members — Jeff Hurd, Jeff Crank and Gabe Evans — throwing their support behind Holtorf.

Horn, Phelan and state party secretary Russ Andrews — along with Holtorf and Boebert — were involved to varying degrees last year in a months-long campaign to force the previous trio of state party officers from their positions. The unsuccessful attempt — derided as a failed coup attempt by critics, including Hampton — followed a slew of complaints by some Republicans that then-Chairman Dave Williams, then-Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman and then-Secretary Anna Ferguson were damaging the party and its prospects by taking sides and making endorsements in primaries, attacking the LGBTQ community and all-around alienating potential Republican voters.

The battle for control of the party played out in headlines and often mocking TV segments as both sides convened multiple dueling central committee meetings — including one gaveled in by Scheppelman under a bridge during a rainstorm in a public park in Bayfield, a town of 2,800 in the southwest corner of the state — and filed lawsuits against each other that Williams and his supporters said drained party resources as the November election approached. The whole affair came to a swift end just weeks before ballots were due when a judge ruled that Williams’ critics violated party bylaws when they voted to remove the party officers.

Williams declined to seek a second, two-year term running the party at the GOP’s March 29 reorganization meeting, but Scheppelman and Ferguson lost their bids for reelection to Phelan and Andrews, respectively. Meanwhile, Horn won the chair race, prevailing over Williams’ ally Lori Saine, a county commissioner and former state lawmaker. Holtorf was among a crowded field vying for the state chair post before withdrawing after the first round and endorsing Horn.

Although the Republicans opposed to Williams appeared to retake the reins of the state GOP at the March party election, Phelan’s abrupt departure gives the two factions another chance to duke it out over which side best represents the state’s GOP voters.

Holtorf and Hampton met on the night of July 10 for an hour-long, online debate moderated by radio host Kim Monson, live-streamed on social media platforms by conservative activist Sherronna Bishop, who goes by the nickname “America’s Mom.”

The cordial, fast-paced forum gave the two candidates the opportunity to spell out their differing approaches to the job and make clear where they think the party should go.

While they tended to agree on most broad public policy issues — both said Republicans need to defend TABOR and prevent Democrats from blaming Trump and the GOP Congress for looming state budget shortfalls, both said the party must stand strong against adoption of ranked-choice voting, calling the method a threat to Republican and conservative candidates — Holtorf and Hampton staked out opposite positions as far as the party’s future.

Holtorf said that when he ran against Boebert in last year’s 4th Congressional District primary, he “railed against the establishment, and anybody that calls me an establishment candidate is very naive and misguided, because that’s not me. But I’m also a realist, and I understand that 2026 is an important election with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, if we don’t blow it in Colorado. We have to have electoral performance. It’s all about winning — winning elections and winning seats. Let’s not forget, if we don’t have the seats and we don’t win, the progressive Democrats continue to run this state into the ground, and they’re not going to abate. They’re not going to let up.”

Added Holtorf: “We change that by having a team, a team of teams. We change that by statewide messaging in a statewide platform that’s uniquely Coloradan, that resonates with the unaffiliated voters that decide elections. Let’s be clear, the far-right radical Republicans don’t win elections in Colorado. It’s a fact. We still need to preserve and protect our Republican ideals and our values, but how do we do that if we don’t get Republicans elected?”

“We don’t need another insider playing musical chairs while our party sinks and our true grassroots base gets ignored and the left continues to steamroll us across the state, with the help of the RINOs,” Hampton said, using a derisive term for “Republican in name only.”

“We need a leader who’s not afraid to disrupt the system, to challenge the status quo, break group think, and work with others to rebuild and build something better. That’s what I’m offering,” he added.

“Truly, I believe the Colorado GOP can be great again, but not if we keep choosing the same old retreads, not if we keep picking people who will smile to your face, protecting the same old failed establishment strategies and tactics behind closed doors,” Hampton said.

“We need bold, unapologetic grassroots leadership, someone who won’t blink when the pressure comes, somebody who’s not afraid to call a RINO a RINO, and someone who will pick up the phone and listen to anybody that takes the time to call…. The days of silence, secrecy and surrender are over. We have to choose to end them. So let’s stop managing decline and start fighting to win — not just in elections, but restoring trust values and a party worth belonging to.”