They’re at it again.

For the second time in as many years, a group of Colorado Republicans are planning to convene a meeting of the party’s state central committee despite the state GOP insisting that the proposed meeting would be “illegal” because its organizers haven’t complied with the party’s bylaws.

Critics of state Republican Party Chair Brita Horn say they intend to hold a meeting on Dec. 13 to consider several items, including a “no confidence” vote in Horn’s leadership and a motion to freeze party spending until fundraising improves.

Also on the agenda is a measure to prohibit the state party from pursuing protracted legal action against a group of Republicans who sued Horn and others last year amid a lengthy dispute over control of the state GOP.

Horn, however, said in an email to Republicans this week that the petition submitted last month by organizers of the proposed meeting doesn’t comply with party requirements, since it wasn’t gathered using the proper form.

Additionally, she noted, a number of central committee members have challenged the petition’s validity, postponing any action related to its demands until the challenge is resolved at an upcoming meeting of another committee later this month.

The controversy echoes a months-long effort that divided the state party throughout much of last year as a group of Republicans — including Horn — attempted to remove then-state chair Dave Williams from his position, which led to a series of competing meetings organized by rival factions of the state GOP.

Derided by Williams and his allies as a “coup,” the endeavor ultimately failed. Weeks before the November presidential election, a district court judge ruled that Williams’ opponents hadn’t complied with party bylaws when they voted to replace state GOP officers at a central committee meeting held last August at a church in Brighton that was dismissed by Williams as an “illegal” gathering.

The organizer behind next month’s proposed meeting, Raymond Garcia, an El Paso County member of the state GOP’s central committee and chairman of the Colorado Hispanic Republicans, issued a formal call earlier this week for a Dec. 13 meeting after determining that Horn’s objections were unfounded, he said Friday on a conservative podcast.

In an appearance on the Chuck & Julie Show, Garcia said he was calling the meeting after Horn refused to do so in response to a petition Garcia submitted in mid-October that included the names of 137 central committee members, more than the 126 — or 25% of the committee’s membership — required to force a meeting over the chair’s objections.

Horn rejected Garcia’s conclusion in a Nov. 12 email to party officials obtained by Colorado Politics.

“I write to inform you that this purported call is null and void, which will also be true of any result of this meeting,” Horn said in the email to party officials. Later in the email, she added: “The purported meeting call issued by Mr. Garcia is (to be extra redundant) unauthorized, invalid, null and void.”

Garcia, she said, had invented “a false history of delay” to justify his decision to call the meeting while an administrative review was pending.

The complaints challenging the petition, Horn noted, will be addressed at a Nov. 20 meeting of the state party’s executive committee, a smaller group of Republican party officials than the roughly 500-member central committee.

At the same August 2025 meeting, where what turned out to be an insufficient number of central committee members voted to remove Williams, Republicans also elected Horn to replace Williams’ ally, Hope Scheppelman, as party vice chair, though that result was also thrown out in the judge’s ruling.

In April, Horn took over the party chairmanship from Williams, who didn’t seek reelection to a second term, at the state Republicans’ biennial reorganization meeting after defeating former state lawmaker Lori Saine in a close race.

Garcia also said Friday that he’s counting on state Republican Party Vice Chair Richard Holtorf to chair next month’s meeting if Horn refuses to.

A spokesman for the state party told Colorado Politics that won’t happen, but Holtorf said in an interview Sunday that it remains to be seen whether he’ll wield the gavel at the meeting Garcia has called.

“The Vice Chairman has made no such agreement,” state party executive director Alec Hanna said in a text message. “This is an illegal meeting.”

Holtorf, a cattle rancher and former state lawmaker, told Colorado Politics that he wants to see what happens at this week’s executive committee meeting concerning the petition Garcia submitted, but added that he’s “inclined to say we’re gonna do this, because it’s the right thing to do.”

He added that he wasn’t interested in “all the trickery, the shenanigans, manipulations of bylaws and all these things people have done in the past and continue to do in the present to try to influence outcomes.”

Holtorf, who ran against U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in last year’s 4th Congressional District primary and was the first high-profile elected Republican to call for Williams to step down, has some experience overseeing controversial state central committee meetings. Last year, he chaired the disputed meeting in Brighton where Republicans voted to oust Williams in proceedings that were later ruled to have violated party bylaws.

Describing the commitment he made this month to Garcia, Holtorf said it wasn’t as cut-and-dried as either the state party or Garcia have portrayed it.

“I have initially agreed to host the meeting,” Holtorf said, “if all the bylaws and the rules are followed, and we have a quorum and we have a parliamentarian and we have a credentialing committee and a teller committee and we do everything properly, I have agreed to stand up as vice chair if Brita doesn’t want to chair the meeting.”

He added: “There’s still a lot of questions. That’s why I said conditionally. If the conditions are right and everything’s square, I’m not going to play games and mince words and try to use administrative trickery. I merely want to respect the will of the body and have the process honored.”

What it will come down to, Holtorf said, is whether 25% of the central committee called for a meeting, as the state party bylaws spell out.

“Then we should consider meeting the obligation of the will of the body, not trying to find ways to not meet the will of the body,” he said.

After this story posted online, Hanna, the state party’s executive director, took issue in a text message to Colorado Politics with Holtorf’s suggestion that there might be any “trickery” or “games” involved in the party’s response to Garcia’s petition.

“There is no trickery in following the bylaws,” he said.

Hanna noted that party leadership scheduled “followed the bylaws” and held a state central committee meeting in June when members petitioned with the request.

“Now, the alleged petitioner explicitly ignored the bylaws and another member filed a controversy — a process well defined in our bylaws,” Hanna said, referring to the formal complaint questioning the petition’s validity. “We are now following that well defined process.”

Under party bylaws, he said, the party must rule on the complaint before moving ahead one way or the other on the petition’s request, meaning Garcia has “called an illegal meeting.”

Added Hanna: “The only games being played here are by those who are ignoring our governing document.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include additional comment from a state party spokesman, executive director Alec Hanna.