The Colorado Republican Party is now seeking to establish an electoral alliance with the American Constitution Party. This follows its June partnership with the Libertarian Party of Colorado to support liberty-minded candidates where applicable.
Last month, Colorado Republicans and Libertarians reached an agreement where the two groups refrained from competing in specific races where the opposing party is already fielding a candidate. The Colorado Republican Party initially broke the news of the deal on Twitter, stating, “We negotiated an unprecedented deal with [Libertarian Party of Colorado] that if we run more limited-government & pro-liberty nominees they won’t run spoiler candidates. Together we can break the stranglehold of Democrats’ one-party rule over Colorado.”
The Libertarian Party of Colorado rereleased the statement on its newly created Twitter account this week, providing further clarification regarding the agreement. “The Colorado GOP agrees to stay out of local elections that are key to LPCO’s strategy,” it read. “In return, LPCO agrees to not spoil certain elections, under the condition they meet our liberty-minded standard.”
According to Dave Williams, Chair of the Colorado Republican Party, state Republicans are now looking to replicate their electoral alliance strategy with the American Constitution Party of Colorado. It remains unclear whether the terms of the deal identically mirrored those presented to the Libertarian Party of Colorado.
In an interview with local media, the Colorado Times Recorder, Williams stated that the Colorado Republicans had initiated contact with the American Constitution Party of Colorado and are awaiting further communication. “I’ve engaged obviously— we engaged the Libertarian Party,” Williams says in a video accompanying the article. “We’re still talking with the American Constitution Party right now, and we’ll see what we can get done on that end.”
The American Constitution Party has subsequently voiced reservations regarding the proposed deal put forth by Williams. “We will review the document [Williams] sends, but to be candid there are not many Republicans that actually understand Constitutional Governance, which is the only solution to fixing the woes of our state and nation,” said American Constitution Party Chair Doug Aden in an email response to the Times Recorder. “He didn’t indicate that he would consider one of our candidates if they were more suited than the potential Republican candidate, therefore we see his offer of coalition as disingenuous.”
Of Colorado’s emerging parties, the American Constitution Party of Colorado has come closest to winning statewide office in recent history. In 2010, Tom Tancredo, the nominee of the American Constitution Party and a former Colorado Congressman, achieved significant support, garnering over 650,000 votes or 36.38% of the total votes cast. Meanwhile, the Republican candidate in the race, Dan Reas, faced several setbacks during the campaign and failed to regain momentum, receiving just under 200,000 votes.
Since Tom Tancredo’s notable performance, no other third party candidate has achieved a similar level of competitiveness in Colorado’s more recent elections. However, it is important to acknowledge that several third-party candidates have still impacted election results. A relevant example occurred in 2022 when Rhonda Solis, a Democrat, narrowly defeated Peggy Propst, a Republican, by a margin of less than 2,000 votes in the District 8 race for the Colorado State Board of Education. James Triebert, the candidate from the American Constitution Party, garnered over 5,000 votes, surpassing the difference between Solis and Propst.
While it’s impossible to say if Triebert’s supporters would’ve broke to Propst had he not been on the ballot, Republicans have made it clear they are not willing to pass up on that chance.
It is also important to note that Dave Williams’ motivations for pursuing partnerships with other party organizations extend beyond purely altruistic intentions. As Williams himself stated in the same conversation, his preference lies in aligning with organizations that directly threaten the Republican Party nominee. For those parties who don’t, such as the Colorado Greens, he’s entirely acceptable with them fielding their own candidates.
“I’m fine with No Labels putting a candidate up. I’m fine with the Green Party putting a candidate up.,” Williams said, “We just want to make sure that we don’t have third parties that are going to adversely affect the Republican nominee.”
A section of Constitution Partiers hated Castle in 2016 as being a representative of the as they saw it good ole boy Jim Clymer establishment that ran the party for their own personal benefit. 2 state party affiliates chose to run their own candidates instead of Castle.
“Castle was a good candidate in ’16…” – Rick
I voted for him myself because I just couldn’t cast a vote for Bill Weld.
Castle was a good candidate in ’16, especially when Gary Johnson went far left.
Jorgensen supporting the Marxist BLM in 2020 lost my vote.
“Unfortunately conservatives don’t understand this, conflate libertarianism with capitalism and think that’s the end of it (and then proceed to call themselves libertarian aka our “paleo-libertarian” friends in the Mises caucus). ”
Well that’s the only bits of libertarianism that conservatives really care for is less taxes and unfettered business. They ignore the rest of it. Been doing the county fair past few days and having passers-by do the Smallest Political Quiz test. Look at the Nolan Chart diamond, conservatives are with libertarians on economic issues, not on personal/social issues.
I also don’t think the current Republican Party can really be considered conservative in the classical sense in a fiscal/economic fashion. Trump has turned them into a populist direction. On the right-leaning RRH Elections blog, a couple of the daily blog content creators there have started to refer to J.D. Vance as “MAGA Socialist” in displeasure at his railroad bill he’s pushing. The relationship between the national party and the Chamber of Commerce is at best frayed. At a smaller level, there was a Republican state legislator in my state of Indiana that wanted to force wholesalers to sell soda drinks for the same price to the mom-and-pop gas station as they did to Wal-Mart, completely discounting amortization effects like volume. It did get committee approval, but then died, but the notion it was being raised and get that far would have been jawdropping to come from a Republican 15 years ago.
We’ll see what happens in Colorado. The Libertarian Party chair in the state is going to now own every non-libertarian Republican that there’s no Libertarian opponent for on purpose, so he’s putting himself completely in the hands of a group probably antagonistic toward his party’s existence. I think the American Constitution Party head took the right path of “do you want to do this? which of our party members would you support?” It forces the state Republican Chair to “give up something” for this alliance and if he has no interest in cooperation giving up anything, it exposes the hypocrisy.
@Phil… Ah yes, one of those people that thinks social conservatism is compatible with libertarian thought. Libertarianism is literally historical liberalism; aka leaving people alone to control their own bodies including complete freedom of association in marriage and sexual partners (whether straight or gay), freedom to consume whatever they want in whatever quantity they want (alcohol, drugs, or whatever), complete bodily autonomy (including abortion and prostitution), freedom to do whatever they want with their money (including gambling it all away), freedom to practice any religion they want including religions other than Judeo-Christian religions or none at all (aka atheism).
Unfortunately conservatives don’t understand this, conflate libertarianism with capitalism and think that’s the end of it (and then proceed to call themselves libertarian aka our “paleo-libertarian” friends in the Mises caucus). If you’re not socially liberal (freedom from government control in ALL of your interpersonal and social interactions) you’re not libertarian. The Constitution Party has never once put up anybody like that.
The CP’s 2016 Presidential candidate was more libertarian than Gary Johnson. 2020 was debatable- both parties nominated horrible choices.
Not sure how the GOP can appease both the Libertarians and the Constitution Party at the same time seeing as how on many issues they’re diametrically opposed. Or maybe they’re actually not anymore (after the Mises takeover I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s really no difference anymore) and the LP and CP should just merge?