Several hours before the restaurant opened one Wednesday in April, Maggiano’s Little Italy was already bustling with people sipping coffee and filling their plates with waffles and eggs.
It was the monthly gathering of the Arapahoe County Republican Breakfast Club. At the Denver Tech Center restaurant, leaders and neighbors meet to build community and discuss issues important to the GOP in the metro area and across Colorado.
At this meeting, talk turned to the Republican Party’s identity crisis.
“It’s very clear that, even in this room of good friends, we are still very deeply divided,” Arapahoe County GOP Chair Anne Rowland said to the group. “In spite of that, if we want to win, we need to keep having conversations in a positive way and not to tear one another down.”
Rowland’s statement highlighted an idea that, despite not being on any official agenda for the meeting, was on everyone’s minds: What do Republicans need to do to win elections?
In 2022, Democrats edged out Republicans in most key elections. Along with wins in all four statewide elected offices, including governor, and a U.S. Senate seat, Democrats gained a supermajority in the state House and a majority in the state Senate.
There seems to be consensus within the Republican Party that unity is needed to start winning. Republicans appear to agree they need an identity, a clear message. The disagreement, however, is exactly what messages to push.
Some want the party to shift focus away from abortion, gun control, the results of the 2020 presidential election and Donald Trump in hopes of appealing to more unaffiliated voters. Others say these topics are exactly what Republicans need to double down on to win.
At the April breakfast, some of those themes played out. Republicans in the room disagreed on how much the party should focus on abortion. While many Republicans share a desire for more restrictions on abortion in Colorado, the question is how much these beliefs should be a part of mainstream messaging.
“It reminds me of an old saying: ‘If you can’t beat them, join them,’” said Bob Andrews, who lost the Arapahoe County assessor race in 2022.
As a “devout Catholic” with “strong opinions about abortion,” Andrews said Republicans need to stop focusing on it.
“We have this abortion albatross around our neck,” he said. “As an assessor candidate, I had to answer questions about abortion. That’s not in my purview. But until we give that up, we’re going to keep losing.”
Others argued the exact opposite is needed, saying the key to winning is to push harder on the controversial social issues that became a focal point of the 2022 elections.
“As a Republican, we’ll never walk away from protecting the unborn, period,” said Randy Corporon, Republican national committeeman and political radio talk show host. “We don’t need to moderate our position. We need to point out how radical the Democrat position is … It’s a wonderful opportunity to stand up for what we believe and convince people why we’re right.”
The passion of these comments — and the divisions they brought to the surface — extend far beyond Maggiano’s.
From Arapahoe County, which has a Democratic majority, to right-leaning Douglas County — Republicans find themselves debating and questioning whether they can come to a consensus on how to present a one-party front to voters.
A numbers game
Last year in Douglas County, a Democrat won a legislative race in the Republican stronghold for the first time since 1966.
Still, Douglas County elected mostly Republicans to the statehouse, reflecting its voter spectrum. Republicans account for 34% of active registered voters in the county, while 19% are Democrats and 46% are unaffiliated. (Voters not included in these numbers are registered with minor parties.)
The numbers differentiate Douglas County from neighboring Arapahoe County, where 21% of active registered voters are Republicans, 31% are Democrats and 46% are unaffiliated.
Kevin Edling, who ran for Arapahoe County sheriff against incumbent Democrat Tyler Brown in 2022, said these numbers played a role in his loss.
“I knew before I ran for office for the Arapahoe County sheriff that we’re behind the eight ball because there’s … more registered Democrats in Arapahoe County than there are Republicans,” he said.
If Edling could have run without choosing a party, he said he would have. Some races feel like they’re already decided down party lines before the candidates even start campaigning, he said.
“That’s not what it’s supposed to be about,” he said. “It’s supposed to be about ideas and candidates and service.”
In the eyes of many Republicans, party registration numbers played a large role in the GOP’s cache of losses in 2022.
“I campaigned for several of the (November 2022) candidates,” said Arapahoe County Commissioner Jeff Baker, the lone Republican on the five-member board. “None of my picks won. But you know … I don’t think they could have done anything better. It’s a mathematics game.”
Party registration numbers in Arapahoe County are similar to those statewide. Just under a quarter of active voters in Colorado are registered Republican and 27% are Democrat.
It is significantly more popular, however, to not be registered with any party at all – 46% of voters in the state are unaffiliated, and that percentage has increased over time.
On Nov. 4, 2008, the day Barack Obama was first elected, Democratic, Republican and unaffiliated voters in Colorado were evenly split, with about 33% of voters registered in each category. Since then, both major party registration percentages have decreased while unaffiliated voters have increased.
There are multiple theories as to why registering as unaffiliated is becoming more common among voters.
For some, the shift away from party affiliation highlights the declining loyalty to both major political parties and frustration with the two-party political system.
Suzanne Taheri, who was known for much of her political career as Suzanne Staiert, thinks the shift to unaffiliated could also have a systemic cause.
In the past, officials at the Department of Motor Vehicles would ask residents if they wanted to register to vote and would allow them to select a party.
“Now, they don’t ask you the question anymore,” Taheri said. “You’re just automatically registered as unaffiliated.”
A new process, implemented in 2020, automatically registers new voters as unaffiliated when they get a driver’s license.
To register with a specific party, voters have to change their affiliation online or by responding to a mailed notice from the state.
“Your motivation to then go into the system and change your affiliation to something else is much lower,” said Taheri, the former chair of the Arapahoe County GOP. “Like why? What is the benefit? Now we have open primaries, and if you don’t register as a Republican, then you can vote in either. If you register as a Republican or a Democrat, you only get to pick one. So I don’t know that we will ever see (party registration) really increasing in Colorado.”
In March, during a Republican town hall event in Castle Rock, one Douglas County resident said if voters were forced to pick a party, more would choose the right and Republicans would fare better in elections and registration numbers.
With the growing number of unaffiliated voters in the state, many Republicans say the key to winning elections is getting these voters on their side.
“We need to make sure they know that not all Republicans look like me, are old white guys,” Baker said. “That we have folks that are BIPOC, that they are LGBTQ+. We need to make sure that we’re addressing the issues that they find important.”
But in Taheri’s eyes, not all unaffiliated voters are “up for grabs.”
“We’re not necessarily appealing to unaffiliated (voters) — they’re unaffiliated by default, not necessarily by choice,” she said. “I think there’s a big difference between someone who comes here who’s a Democrat, gets registered as unaffiliated and doesn’t switch, versus somebody who made the switch from a party to unaffiliated … If they were truly up for grabs, I would say, you know, you have to sell your issues to them.”
According to the secretary of state’s office, unaffiliated voters can choose a party preference, meaning they can choose to receive a ballot for only the Democratic or Republican primary leading up to an election. Of the unaffiliated voters who have chosen a party preference since the June 2022 primary, 59% chose Democratic and 33% chose Republican.
Voter preference numbers for other recent primaries also show more Democratic preferences than Republican.
Despite these blue-leaning tendencies, many unaffiliated voters, with the ability to vote for either party in the primaries, choose to vote on the Republican ballot.
In the 2022 primaries, 1.2 million total votes were cast, according to numbers from the secretary of state’s office. According to the office’s data, 248,192 unaffiliated voters returned Republican ballots and 170,631 cast their ballots in Democratic primaries.
With unaffiliated voters impacting primary races, some Republicans support closing primary elections to only registered GOP voters. They say this would compel people who want to participate to register with the party.
“As members of our community who have knocked countless doors and engaged untold numbers of residents, we know unaffiliated voters are more aligned with conservative values than not,” Douglas County GOP Chair Steve Peck said in a statement. “We hope to prove the value of Republicanism to them over time and have them join our family to take part in our primary elections as registered Republicans themselves.”
Arapahoe County GOP chair Anne Rowland thinks the party can bring more voters in by selling their issues and, more importantly, by building relationships.
“If we’re going to win, we must work together,” she said. “And not only do we have to work together, but we have to persuade unaffiliated and moderate Democrats. Otherwise we’re gonna lose every time.”
The drivers of division
In Rowland’s experience, there are two main causes of division within the party. Some Republicans, she said, are divided in their grassroots versus establishment attitudes.
The other division in the party, Rowland said, is about how much weight to put on specific issues.
“Some of us are divided because there’s an issue or another that we’re personally attached to, and that overrules everything,” she said.
During the Arapahoe County Republicans Breakfast in April, the issue dividing the crowd was abortion.
Gun control, contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election and Trump also cause divisions among Republicans.
During a debate leading up to the 2023 GOP state chair election, in which Dave Williams was elected, several candidates said they believe Trump won the 2020 election and the party needs to focus on transparency and election security.
“We need to be bold, we need to stand up,” said then candidate Aaron Wood. “We need to not be afraid of people calling us ‘the Big Lie’ or ‘election deniers’ — Trump won. Plain and simple … I want to see without a doubt that elections are won legitimately and we need to be proponents of that.”
In 2020, President Joe Biden was declared the winner with 306 Electoral College votes and just over 81.2 million popular votes. According to the official results, Trump finished with 232 Electoral College votes and just over 74.2 million citizen votes.
Williams also believes Trump won the 2020 election.
When running for the state legislature in 2022, he filed a lawsuit to try to force Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold to allow his name to be listed on the primary ballot as “Dave ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Williams,” using a coded phrase that means “F— Joe Biden.”
A judge ruled that Griswold had the authority to disallow the use of the phrase.
Erik Aadland, another candidate for the state’s GOP chair position and former congressional candidate, said election integrity is important, but focusing so much on the 2020 results is hurting the party.
“This rehashing 2020 is not serving Republicans,” he said. “Whether fraud dictated a role in the outcome of 2020, well sadly, we’ll never know, folks … Our republic hangs in the balance, and if we keep trying to fight 2020 over and over again, we’re going to lose this war.”
Tina Peters, a 2023 state chair candidate and former Mesa County clerk who was indicted last year on felony and misdemeanor charges related to a security breach of the county’s election system, said focusing on the results is important for the party going forward.
“We need to learn from the past,” she said.
Peters was also recently convicted of obstructing government operations after an encounter in which police said she resisted investigators when they tried to seize an iPad that she had used to record a court proceeding.
Williams said he has offered the six other candidates who ran for Colorado GOP chair, including Peters, titles and roles within the state party, as reported by The Colorado Sun.
Taheri said differing perspectives on the 2020 election results are causing Republicans to turn against each other.
“I think what is driving the wedge in the party is that there is a group who doesn’t want to really talk about (other issues), they just want to talk about stolen elections and they want to sling mud at, not just the Democrats, but other people in the party that don’t want to talk about their issue,” she said.
For the party to be successful, Taheri said she thinks it needs to move away from Trump. Because of his prominent role in people’s perception of the party, she said his influence trickles down to how people vote in local elections.
“The saying used to be ‘All politics is local,’” she said. “Now I feel like all politics is national … I think if we are better at the federal level of articulating our issues, then people start to identify our candidates with our issues instead of just identifying our candidates with Trump.”
For other Republican voices and voters, Trump is the only way forward for the GOP.
During a March town hall hosted by several state House Republicans, several Douglas County citizens said Trump is the best choice to fix not only the party, but also the country.
When asked if they would only support Trump, the Castle Pines and Castle Rock residents said they would support whoever wins the Republican primary.
Unifying issues
To move forward as a party, some Republicans think the key to winning is to focus on the issues that affect voters’ day-to-day lives.
“I don’t like to lead with (abortion and gun rights) because those are hot-button issues,” Rowland said. “If it’s a topic that’s very partisan, I don’t think that’s where you start the conversation. I think you hold your values, but start with the things that you can agree on.”
In Rowland’s eyes, some of those things are crime, inflation, homelessness, school violence and fentanyl.
“These are all issues that should not be Republican or Democrat issues,” she said. “These are not partisan issues. These are issues of life and community.”
Rep. Anthony Hartsook, R-Parker, said ideas that already have broad consensus in the Republican party, like addressing crime, keeping government small with low taxes and fewer regulations, educational choice and promoting individualism, have the best chance of recruiting unaffiliated voters.
While campaigning in 2020, Hartsook said he found that unaffiliated voters and Republicans shared the same concerns with growing inflation, crime and cost of living.
For Edling, the core values of the Republican party are fiscal.
“What truly is not divisive in politics is people’s money — their wallet,” he said. “People often vote with their wallet. Money is money. So if we could somehow turn our politics back into something we all agree on, and we want to protect — our financial freedom, our financial resources.”
For Baker, core conservative values are limited government, property rights, the rule of law and supporting law enforcement and public safety officers.
Instead of mainly focusing on the importance of these Republican ideals, state GOP chair Williams said party leaders need to show voters why Democrats are corrupt.
“Here’s the truth: swing voters are not driven by ideology, otherwise they would affiliate,” he said during a February debate. “If we’re going to win, let’s provide that bold contrast because our issues do, in fact, win. Swing voters, specifically, just want to be able to vote for someone they can trust. And I assure you, if we call out the Democrats for being morally bankrupt and corrupted, we’re going to earn their trust.”
In an email to Colorado Community Media, Williams said the GOP needs to “show that Colorado Republicans care about resolving their very real kitchen table, pocketbook issues while exposing radical Democrats for making hard working citizens’ lives harder and more expensive.”
In addition to pointing out Democratic failures, Rowland said Republicans need to offer a better way.
“We have to say, ‘This, this and this are going wrong — here’s a better way to fix them,’” she said.
State Rep. Lisa Frizell, R-Castle Rock, said the lack of improvement on many issues will be a motivator for people to start voting Republican.
“We’re not seeing an improvement in crime. We’re not seeing an improvement in homelessness. We’re not seeing an improvement in affordability,” she said. “Democrats have had years to fix these problems and they have been unable to.”
Get the brand out like Tony the Tiger
To get the party’s message out, Edling said the party needs to do a better job marketing through social media, schools and extracurriculars. He said the GOP could even consider hiring a consultant to help.
“We have to do a better job of marketing to all our young people for both parties to get the future talent of politicians (and) leaders,” he said. “I want young, new, bright faces, new ideas to come out.”
Andrews, who ran for Arapahoe County assessor, said this messaging needs to start in schools.
“We keep talking about reaching out to the young people,” he said. “That’s just lip service — unless we start creating some young Republican clubs in every high school, it’s not gonna matter because all of the teachers and the media are speaking the language of the young people, and we’re not even in the game.”
In Taheri’s eyes, the party will be difficult to brand as long as Trump is still the national focus. Trump, facing criminal charges in New York, has already announced he will run for president in 2024.
“I just think it’s going to be really hard (to sell the issues) in Arapahoe County if Trump’s still in the picture.” Taheri said. “I just think his tone, I mean, I just don’t see many suburban women supporting something like that. Arapahoe is a very educated county. I just don’t think any of us wanted that in our living room.”
From her perspective in the Capitol, Frizell said divisions in the party can distract from policy efforts to tackle constituents’ problems.
“We have to come together and unify if we’re ever going to succeed,” she said.
In Rowland’s eyes, the one true key to uniting the party and fixing its image is to put real effort into building relationships such as doing more community service, an idea she got from Boulder GOP Chair George Tristan.
“I think if the person you know — the person that came and helped build a tiny house for you, the person that came and did whatever service project your church was working on, and you meet that person, and you get to know them — that’s the person you vote for and you don’t pay attention to whether there’s an R or a D by their name,” she said. “Here in Colorado, it almost seems as though the R is like a scarlet letter.”
Both in the greater community and within the party itself, Rowland thinks the only way toward unity is giving each other a chance — sitting down for a cup of coffee over disagreement, and finding common ground.
“We have a Tony the Tiger problem,” she said. “For years, Tony the Tiger has taught us that Frosted Flakes are great. We grew up knowing that. But kids today grow up thinking Republicans are mean on social issues, that they’re too narrow-minded and too traditional and they don’t like any new ideas.”
“We have to be able to have discussions, respectful discussions, to come to a place where we can message,” she said. “And if we can’t agree on something, where can we work towards?”