The Colorado Republican Party on Saturday elected Craig Steiner to fill the party’s vacant state chair position at a state central committee meeting in Buena Vista, just over a week before primary ballots go out to voters and five months before the general election.

The former Douglas County GOP chair takes over from Eric Grossman, the state party vice chair, who has helmed the party for the last six weeks following embattled former state chair Brita Horn’s resignation, which took effect in April.

It took two rounds of balloting for Steiner to emerge with a majority in a crowded field that also included El Paso County Republican Jeremy Goodall, podcaster and former gubernatorial candidate Joe Oltmann, and Douglas County business owner Curtis McCrackin, who made an unsuccessful run for Congress two years ago. Two other candidates withdrew from the contest before the vote.

After none of the candidates cleared 50% in the first round, McCrackin, who finished in last place, withdrew and threw his support behind Steiner. In the final round, Steiner led with 54%, followed by Goodall at 28% and Oltmann at 17%, plus a handful of votes for McCrackin.

Steiner takes the reins of a party roiled by factional infighting and reeling from unprecedented turnover, becoming the state GOP’s third chairman in a little over a year. Across the same stretch, Colorado Republicans have had had four vice chairs, with Grossman being the most recently elected.

Steiner is a software engineer and designed apps the state GOP uses to manage voter turnout and delegate selection. He said the party must shift its focus from internal conflicts to electing Republicans.

“I’d like to modify a well-known quote,” Steiner said as he accepted the nomination. “Colorado Republicans will win when we love defeating Democrats more than we hate each other, and I think we can do that.”

Former state Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, said in his nomination speech that Steiner’s record turning out Republican voters when he chaired the Douglas County party a decade ago stands unchallenged.

“When Craig was chair, we had a 97.2% Republican turnout, the highest of any county in this camp in the state, and I would say that’s probably a record of any time in our state’s history,” Harvey said. “There’s nobody (else) running who had served as county chair of any county party in the state. Craig has the experience and the background to have this job.”

Steiner noted that in addition to Harvey — who described himself as “one of the most conservative members in the legislature” when he was at the Capitol — his endorsers include former House Speaker Frank McNulty, former Secretary of State Scott Gessler and former House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, spanning the party’s spectrum.

These are people that reflect both sides of the divided party that we have, and they all endorse me. And I think that’s what we need to do. We need more of that,” Steiner said. There’s a lot of people that always say, hey, we need to get together and work together to elect Republicans, but do we actually practice that? I think this is an example of exactly that. This is both sides of the party.”

Before the central committee voted to replace Horn, several GOP leaders painted a dire portrait of the party’s predicament after the Democrats have carried every statewide election in the last decade and won majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly since 2018.

“We are not in control of our party, we’re not in control of our state,” Grossman said in welcoming remarks. “The fact that the Republican Party has gone so far down the tubes — there’s no more check-and-balance between the Democrats and Republicans, because we’re not a functional entity.”

State Sen. Mark Baisley, R-Woodland Park, the Republicans’ 2026 nominee for U.S. Senate, told Colorado Politics that he’s known Steiner since his friend chaired the county party when Baisley was first elected to the legislature.

“The election of Craig Steiner marks a meaningful transition for the Colorado state party,” Baisley said Saturday in a text message. “We now move from wrangling over philosophical differences to making sure that the trains run on time.”

Baisley added that he was grateful that the central committee chose to “return to focusing not he basics and doing them well.”

Douglas County GOP Chair Robin Webb, who seconded Steiner’s nomination for state chair, said when Steiner called to discuss running for the position, she joked that she was surprised he’d want the job.

“‘But God bless you for being willing to do this,'” she recalled telling Steiner. “‘You are the perfect person for where we are at this juncture, our party is at a crossroads. If we don’t correct this, it will be catastrophic.'”