DAVE WILLIAMS WAS VOTED OUT OF THE GOP CHAIRMANSHIP SATURDAY And though he says the meeting is illegitimate the National Republican Campaign Committee has already recognized the legitimacy of the new chairman Eli Bremer, who was elected that same day. He joins me at 1 to talk about what comes next and how to get the formal recognition of the national party so he can get to work getting Republicans elected. Read more about Saturday's meeting here.Williams has rejected the meeting as "illegal". Meanwhile Colorado Republicans keep making headlines by doing stupid stuff like not certifying elections where they did pretty well. And let's not even talk about how badly the GOP is doing with young people. Dick Wadhams writes here about how disastrous Williams so called leadership has been in attracting (or more likely actively repelling) younger voters. Great.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The party that matters is the Colorado Republican Party for
this segment, because big goings on last night. Big going
on actually Saturday, in a meeting that saw the voting
out of the disastrous leader Dave Williams and the voting
in of the new chair of the Colorado Republican Party,
(00:22):
who I believe just stepped into a forest, Eli Bremer,
Did you just put your phone down in a forest
of flowers?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
What was that? Oh? You're muted, Eli, You're muted. Hang on.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
All right, Mandy, I'm so sorry about that. Here we
are home office and had had.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
A head over to the door. We just had a
delivery of.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Some flowers, and so I apologize for that. I am
not in a forest of flowers.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I'm at my house. No problem.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, you're probably gonna get more flowers as people are
grateful that Dave Williams was booted on Saturday. Tell me
a little bit about that meeting. We've talked about it extensively,
how it came to be, But how did the actual
meeting go.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Well, it was actually, I would say one of the
best organized Republican Party meetings I've seen. People were extremely
pleasant to each other.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
It was a very.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Very well run meeting by state Representative Richard Holthorf. We
had three lawyers at the front of the room working
to make sure that everything went according to schedule. That
was former state Party chair Christy Burton Brown, former Secretary
of State Wayne Williams, and.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Party attorney Chris Murray. So it really was an incredible meeting,
very well run. People were positive. They showed up to
do a job and they got the job done.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So how many people showed up and how many people
brought proxyies? What was the actual account of the meeting
or roughly if you don't remember the exact numbers.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
If I remember right, it was one hundred and eighty
two people credentialed in in person or by proxy. It
doesn't legally matter whether you were there in person or
it's your proxy, So it's one hundred. I think it
was one hundred and eighty two total votes at the meetings.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That's quite significant, and that is a significant part of
the Central Committee because now, of course Dave Williams has
decided that it was an illegal meeting and he's not
going to pay attention to it, and he's saying, look,
they didn't have the right number of people. We couldn't
verify that there were people that signed this petition, a
whole bunch of other nonsense. What happens now, Eli, have
(02:30):
you been in touch with a Republican National convent Our
Committee to talk about officially recognizing the change and recognizing
you as Colorado chair of the GOP.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Well, that's in process. There's a lot of moving pieces
right now. I've been talking to a lot of media outlet's.
I think you're my fourth interview today. People want to
know what's been going on. I do find it funny
that the former you know, the now deposed leadership.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Team is saying that we didn't have a good enough meeting.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Mandy had one hundred and eighty two people there in
person are by proxy, twelve of whom routinely voted in
support of the former leadership team. Now the former leadership
team is touting a meeting that they held under a
bridge in Bailey, Colorado and July nineteenth, where they mustered
three supporters. We had four times as many people at
(03:20):
this meeting who supported them, as they had it their
own that their claiming was a legitimate meeting.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So, I mean, this is a clear cut situation. It's over.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
You know, we're in the process right now of taking
every legal measure that is needed to take over the
party assets, and then as soon as we have done that,
we are going to turn those assets over to helping
out the candidates instead of attacking them, which is what
the former leadership had done.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So there is another meeting I believe scheduled for this
week that was called as the as Dave Williams and
his team were trying to figure out a way to
circumvent the meeting that you already had. My question is
do you continue do you go to this meeting? What
happens on the thirty first? What's going on there?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Well, they can hold a rally, they can you know,
talk issues. That meeting has been canceled. It was officially
canceled on Saturday by a vote of the Central Committee.
They didn't want to go to a meeting another superfluous
meeting over Labor Day weekend.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
The former chairman had called it during that time.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Specifically to suppress attendance because most people want to spend
Labor Day with their families or supporting campaigns. So that
meeting has been canceled and it will not be recognized
as an official meeting.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Again, if they want to get together.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
And talk about you know, various issues or whatever, it's
the first right to do that, but there will be
no business recognized at that meeting because it's not a
meeting of the Republican Party.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Well, I am officially, in my capacity as the seer,
and nowhere of all things recognizing you, Eli Bremer, as
the rightful chairman of the Colorado Republican Party. So that
leads me to my next question, which how do we
get these Republicans over the finish line this November. Are
you guys pivoting to work on that or are you
still having to deal with the idiocy that has been
(05:10):
going on.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Well, we're doing all of the above. I did not wait.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
I was driving home from the meeting at about an
hour and a half drive home from the meeting, and
I was working the phones on Saturday night into the night.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I talked to Congress from Lauren Bobert.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
On Sunday yesterday, I talked to Paul lundin the House,
the Senate minority leader. We had a great strategy discussion.
That was the first time Mandy that he had heard
from a state party officer this election cycle about campaigning. Okay,
that had not been done.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So he and I.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Talked about the problems that had happened at the state
party and the damage that had been done and what we.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Can do to stop that.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
So we are now fully coordinated with State Senator Lundin
to try to stop the Democrats from taking total control
of the Colorado State Senate.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I had a call with Jeff Hurd.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
That was the first time he had heard from anybody
at the state Party and had not had any conversations
with state officers. I informed him the party was formally
endorsing him, which was a huge shift. If you remember right,
the former vice chair had actually been sharing Adam Fresh
campaign videos and supporting Adam Frish.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I told him that was coming to an end.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
He thanked me for that, and we've swapped information so
that now we can work directly with his campaign. I
had the same exact conversation with Gabe Evans, our candidate
in the eighth district.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Gave informed me.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
That I was the first officer of the Colorado GP
that had contacted him. I informed him that we would
be joining President Trump, who was endorsed him, and working
with him, and he would have all.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Of the resources of the Colorado Republican Party to work with.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Now, So you spoke with Representative Lauren Voebert. Was she
accepting of the Saturday meeting and ready to move forward?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
She wished me well, said, you know, she ought to
do a great job as a chair.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know, we spoke for about thirty minutes, and I
have a I've been friends with Congressman Bobert for a
number of years. Every time I go to Washington, I
always stop by and say hi to her. You know,
we talked about some of the problems that have been
going on with the party and I told her my
vision for fixing that. So we had a very productive conversation.
(07:23):
Her district, the fourth district, won't be a competitive district, however,
I told her that the Colorado Republican Party supports all
of our general election candidates and if she has any
any requests from the party, she can call me personally
on my cell phone.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Any time of the day or night.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
And the Colorado Republican Party is there to serve all
of our candidates well.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And people need to understand why this is important, elve
because you have and you just mentioned Jeff Hurd. He
is in the third congressional district that was formerly held
by Representative Bobert, and because she switched districts, that is
now an open seat. It is critical that we keep
that And until you called him, I guess know when
it reached out to Jeff, he's got a little bit
(08:05):
of a I think of a name id disadvantage. He's
not as well known, but that district is still very winnable, right. So,
and then you've got the eighth with Yadeerer Caraveo, and
you've got Gabe Evans, who I think is a much
better candidate than Yder Caraveo is, and he's well known
in the district. So these are really winnable races. I
(08:25):
know that you were on the phone with donors because
fundraising has been nonexistent under the old leadership. What are
you hearing from donors? Are they ready to move forward?
Are they ready to put money in? What are we
doing with money? Because it's money is critical to get
stuff done.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, money is the is the mother's blood at mother's
milk of politics. I mean, anybody who says that you
don't need money to campaign doesn't know.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
What they're talking about. And you know, the first step
is we had to stop the bleeding.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Last week alone, one of our major campaigns lost twenty
thousand dollars because of bizarre communications coming out of the
state GOP.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
They had multiple.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Donors come out and say we can't support you, we
don't want our name associated with you. And the candidates said, wait, wait,
that's not me, it's the state party. And they said
it doesn't matter. This is too toxic. The venom that's
coming out from the state Party is too toxic. So
the first step is to start doing no harm. I
have given each of these candidates are assurance that the
(09:26):
Colorado Republican Party will not send communication into their district
unless it is one hundred percent coordinated and approved by
the campaign. That is a never event. We should never
do what we did to Cleave Simpson. We should a
state Senate candidate on the Western Slope area. We put
that on the map by accident because the state Party
(09:47):
sent some inflammatory emails into the district.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
That should be an easily winnable seat.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Now we're having to defend it because of nonsense by
the former party leadership. So back to where the donors are.
They are so excited right now. I've been getting calls
folks saying I just got I just actually got a
text from someone said when can I send a check
where we don't have control of the bank account yet,
I said, don't dump into the bank account because we
have every reason to believe that the former leadership team
was basically treating this like a piggybank, and so we
(10:15):
are going to get control of that. And once we've
got that taken back over, Senator Gardner called me yesterday,
offered his full support and said he'd be happy to
host a call with all the major donors in the
state with all the other candidates. I expect within a
week and a half or two weeks we're going to
have all the campaigns together with the state party, with
former Senator Corey Gardner, and we are going to get
(10:38):
this thing back on track and raise as much money
as we can for these candidates. Eili.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
I'd love to see a forensic audit of the last
couple of years of the Republican Party coffers and see
exactly where money went, who was paid, who wasn't, and
see exactly how much money was squandered by Dave Williams
either trying to fight his ouster in court with a
ridiculous lawsuit that that you know, judges have never been
(11:05):
part of intra party squabbles, and he tried to make
it a legal issue and wasted a bunch of money
doing that. I'm sure there's going to waste more money
trying to fight this. So is there anything that rank
and file Republicans who want to move on can do?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Do we need to call.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
The r n C and say, can you help us
out and get this squared away? What can we do
in the meantime before you can get control of the website,
the bank accounts, the email list, all of the other
stuff that the old chairman is still maintaining control of.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
No.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I think you know.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
My Twitter account's been blowing up with people supporting us.
Jump on my personal Twitter feed at Eli Bremmer is
my personal feed.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It's got one m M Bremer Eli v R E
N E R.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
We're putting all the information out there until we have
control of the state's Twitter account, but tweet at the RNC,
the NRCC. The NRCC has already come out and said
they're honoring this election. They're a sister organization to the RNC,
and they've been very supportive. I just talked to another
congressional office, one of the leadership of the NRCC. They
(12:11):
were so excited, they said, we're so glad you're back
in business. But yeah, the average rank and file person,
get on their retweet, show your support, but also get
ready to come back in because I'll let you know, Mandy,
we'll come back on the air when we've got control
of the bank accounts, and I need every single person
out there to pitch in.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
You know, we're going to be running a tight ship.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I ran the largest county party operation in the state
in Olpaso County.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
We raised record amounts of money.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
We put the vast, vast, vast majority of that right
back down into let On Target. I know how to
run a really efficient system. We're not going to have
a huge amount of overhead that's going into this. It's
going to be predominantly money put forward to to win
this election. So if people are excited about it, first
of all, give to the campaigns. Support Jeff Hurd in
the third district, support Evans in the eighth district. You know,
(13:02):
you don't have to wait until the party gets all
legally is figured out. We need to be out there
supporting these candidates today they need your help. But when
we get the bank accounts back, we'd love to have
your support too.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
So I'm guessing that if you had to call this
phase of your leadership anything, it would almost be triage, right,
just trying to trying to stop the bleeding, trying to
figure out where all the pieces fit together. But one
of the things that I am significantly concerned about going
forward is the destruction of the party. And I mean
(13:35):
by Dave Williams and his stupid purity tests and you're
not Republican enough, and Rhino watching all this other crap
that has been out there for so many years, and
now we see Republican You know, people are not joining
the Republican Party and that's a huge problem. We live
in a state full of unaffiliateds.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
So is that the.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Next step, like get us through this election cycle and
then focus on how to rebuild the party and make
it be it's something that people want to be a
part of again.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Well, I think so, and I think people are excited
right now. I think what you have is that it's
we don't have a problem with the Republican Party.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
We have a problem with.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
A very bizarre crew of people who are now squatters
in the office basically, and they can't win elections. If
you look, they lost almost every seat that they endorse
in in this sort of unprecedented deal where the party
took sides in the primaries. So that's not where the
nine hundred thousand Colorado Republicans are, That's not where your
listeners are. The Colorado Republican Party should represent Republicans instead
(14:36):
of yelling at them and telling them.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
The way they should believe.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
And I'd like to point out, by the way, that
in twenty sixteen, these were the same people that were
the never Trumpers. They called me a rhino in twenty
sixteen because I had the audacity to be working on
the Trump campaign and I was a national spokesman on
Olympians for Trump and on the Second Amendment Coalition.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So that made me a rhino. And so I hate
that term rhino.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Because they basically use it's sort of the Republican version
of the word racist. You know, left, when they hate you,
they call you a racist, and now you're canceled, and
we have the same cancel culture.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Nonsense.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
What my pledge is is I'm going to get to
this organization back on track.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
And it's going to make people's head.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Spin how fast we get it back on track. We
are going to get you know, we're going to take
a look at where the finances have been and all that.
But after this election, we're going to get things like
the bi laws cleaned up. We're going to prevent this
from happening. And again, I've got the experience for this.
You probably don't know this, but when I was the
party chair and he'll passive counties from twenty eleven twenty thirteen,
(15:35):
we set record fundraising numbers.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
My vice chair was a young man by the name of.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Dave Williams, and I spent two years undoing the damage
that that young man did and he has not stopped
destroying Republicans ever since.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
This ends.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Now we're going to end this, and then I would
put a call out to any good Republican who wants
to run the Colorado Republican Party for the next two years,
We're going to get it fixed. I'm going to turn
it back over in the spring when we hold a
natural leadership election. I'm not going to run for this again.
I am here to fix the problem, get it back
on track. But we were going to need some good
new leadership Mandy or Frankly, this same fringe group they
(16:13):
can't win a lot of they're going to try to
take over well.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And I want to ask you this, and I think
that's a very good position for you to be in
to say I am not running for this position permanently,
because then you can go scorched starth and you can
do exactly what needs to be done and you don't
have to worry about winning an election for this in
the in the spring. Which leads me to my last question,
and that is we I just read today Dick Watdams
has got pretty much a scorcher of a column criticizing
(16:39):
the fact that the Republican Party has no young people
coming to it. And one of the things he mentioned
is that in El Paso they've invited Mike Lindell to
be a speaker at one of their events.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
When do we get to move on?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
When do we get to stop looking back at twenty
twenty Because you probably know as well as I do,
the unaffiliateds in this state don't give a ratsass about
twenty twelve. They don't want to hear about Mike Lindell
spending forty million dollars.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
They they don't want to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
So how do we move the party past that once
and for all.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Well, I mean, Mandy, the truth of the matter is
that the party has been predominantly run like a scam pack,
and that means that they're trying to do this to
inflame part of the base that will send five or
ten dollars donations in. It's obviously not where the unaffiliateds are.
But guess what, we have got great policies in the
Republican Party that unaffiliated in this state agree with financially
(17:33):
fasically Colorado Republican or Colorado unaffiliated voters. They want lower
property taxes, they want you attainable housing, and lower inflation.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Those are things Republicans can help with.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
On the social policies, the Democrats talk about a Republican's
war on women. Well, let's talk about Title nine and
the fact that the Democrats have launched an all out
assault on the top national women's rights legislation, Title nine.
It's been there for fifty years, women equal rights in
sports and the college scholarships. And I can't find one
Democrat out there who says I will support that men
(18:08):
cannot take women's scholarships. But we've pulled this every what's
like ninety nine point five percent of Republicans support this.
They support keeping women's sports for women. Virtually one hundred
percent of unaffiliated voters in the state of Colorado believe
in keeping women's sports for women. That's a Republican issue, Mandy,
and it's a young person issue. There's a lot of
(18:30):
young women right now for whom this is becoming a
defining issue in their lives. And if Republicans will talk
about keeping inflation down, addressing the border issues, and saying
we are the Party of women's rights. We stand up
for women's rights, to have your own scholarships, to have
your own locker rooms, your own sports teams.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
We support women's rights. I think we can actually make a.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Huge impact with Colorado on affiliated voters. And this is
not a hard blue state that should be a purple state,
but because of the bad actions by the fringe element
that took over the Republican Party organization, we've kind of
made it a solid blue state and it shouldn't be
that way.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Eli Bremer, the new chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.
I have officially recognized him, which means it's official. So
Eli appreciate you making time for me. I hope we
can have more conversations leading up to the elections in November,
and best of luck, you have a herculean effort in
front of you. I do not I don't envy you this,
(19:30):
but I think maybe they got the right person for
the job, and I hope you're successful.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Thanks Mannie. I'm happy to come anytime, Come on, anytime
you want. You know how to reach me. All right,
that's Eli Bremmer.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Thank you. Eli appreciate you, and hopefully the Republican Party
can get going once again.
The party that matters is the Colorado Republican Party for
this segment, because big goings on last night. Big going
on actually Saturday, in a meeting that saw the voting
out of the disastrous leader Dave Williams and the voting
in of the new chair of the Colorado Republican Party,
(00:22):
who I believe just stepped into a forest, Eli Bremer,
Did you just put your phone down in a forest
of flowers?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
What was that? Oh? You're muted, Eli, You're muted. Hang on.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
All right, Mandy, I'm so sorry about that. Here we
are home office and had had.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
A head over to the door. We just had a
delivery of.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Some flowers, and so I apologize for that. I am
not in a forest of flowers.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I'm at my house. No problem.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, you're probably gonna get more flowers as people are
grateful that Dave Williams was booted on Saturday. Tell me
a little bit about that meeting. We've talked about it extensively,
how it came to be, But how did the actual
meeting go.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Well, it was actually, I would say one of the
best organized Republican Party meetings I've seen. People were extremely
pleasant to each other.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
It was a very.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Very well run meeting by state Representative Richard Holthorf. We
had three lawyers at the front of the room working
to make sure that everything went according to schedule. That
was former state Party chair Christy Burton Brown, former Secretary
of State Wayne Williams, and.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Party attorney Chris Murray. So it really was an incredible meeting,
very well run. People were positive. They showed up to
do a job and they got the job done.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So how many people showed up and how many people
brought proxyies? What was the actual account of the meeting
or roughly if you don't remember the exact numbers.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
If I remember right, it was one hundred and eighty
two people credentialed in in person or by proxy. It
doesn't legally matter whether you were there in person or
it's your proxy, So it's one hundred. I think it
was one hundred and eighty two total votes at the meetings.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That's quite significant, and that is a significant part of
the Central Committee because now, of course Dave Williams has
decided that it was an illegal meeting and he's not
going to pay attention to it, and he's saying, look,
they didn't have the right number of people. We couldn't
verify that there were people that signed this petition, a
whole bunch of other nonsense. What happens now, Eli, have
(02:30):
you been in touch with a Republican National convent Our
Committee to talk about officially recognizing the change and recognizing
you as Colorado chair of the GOP.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Well, that's in process. There's a lot of moving pieces
right now. I've been talking to a lot of media outlet's.
I think you're my fourth interview today. People want to
know what's been going on. I do find it funny
that the former you know, the now deposed leadership.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Team is saying that we didn't have a good enough meeting.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Mandy had one hundred and eighty two people there in
person are by proxy, twelve of whom routinely voted in
support of the former leadership team. Now the former leadership
team is touting a meeting that they held under a
bridge in Bailey, Colorado and July nineteenth, where they mustered
three supporters. We had four times as many people at
(03:20):
this meeting who supported them, as they had it their
own that their claiming was a legitimate meeting.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So, I mean, this is a clear cut situation. It's over.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
You know, we're in the process right now of taking
every legal measure that is needed to take over the
party assets, and then as soon as we have done that,
we are going to turn those assets over to helping
out the candidates instead of attacking them, which is what
the former leadership had done.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So there is another meeting I believe scheduled for this
week that was called as the as Dave Williams and
his team were trying to figure out a way to
circumvent the meeting that you already had. My question is
do you continue do you go to this meeting? What
happens on the thirty first? What's going on there?
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Well, they can hold a rally, they can you know,
talk issues. That meeting has been canceled. It was officially
canceled on Saturday by a vote of the Central Committee.
They didn't want to go to a meeting another superfluous
meeting over Labor Day weekend.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
The former chairman had called it during that time.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Specifically to suppress attendance because most people want to spend
Labor Day with their families or supporting campaigns. So that
meeting has been canceled and it will not be recognized
as an official meeting.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Again, if they want to get together.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
And talk about you know, various issues or whatever, it's
the first right to do that, but there will be
no business recognized at that meeting because it's not a
meeting of the Republican Party.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Well, I am officially, in my capacity as the seer,
and nowhere of all things recognizing you, Eli Bremer, as
the rightful chairman of the Colorado Republican Party. So that
leads me to my next question, which how do we
get these Republicans over the finish line this November. Are
you guys pivoting to work on that or are you
still having to deal with the idiocy that has been
(05:10):
going on.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Well, we're doing all of the above. I did not wait.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
I was driving home from the meeting at about an
hour and a half drive home from the meeting, and
I was working the phones on Saturday night into the night.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I talked to Congress from Lauren Bobert.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
On Sunday yesterday, I talked to Paul lundin the House,
the Senate minority leader. We had a great strategy discussion.
That was the first time Mandy that he had heard
from a state party officer this election cycle about campaigning. Okay,
that had not been done.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So he and I.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Talked about the problems that had happened at the state
party and the damage that had been done and what we.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Can do to stop that.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
So we are now fully coordinated with State Senator Lundin
to try to stop the Democrats from taking total control
of the Colorado State Senate.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I had a call with Jeff Hurd.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
That was the first time he had heard from anybody
at the state Party and had not had any conversations
with state officers. I informed him the party was formally
endorsing him, which was a huge shift. If you remember right,
the former vice chair had actually been sharing Adam Fresh
campaign videos and supporting Adam Frish.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
I told him that was coming to an end.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
He thanked me for that, and we've swapped information so
that now we can work directly with his campaign. I
had the same exact conversation with Gabe Evans, our candidate
in the eighth district.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Gave informed me.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
That I was the first officer of the Colorado GP
that had contacted him. I informed him that we would
be joining President Trump, who was endorsed him, and working
with him, and he would have all.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Of the resources of the Colorado Republican Party to work with.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Now, So you spoke with Representative Lauren Voebert. Was she
accepting of the Saturday meeting and ready to move forward?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
She wished me well, said, you know, she ought to
do a great job as a chair.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know, we spoke for about thirty minutes, and I
have a I've been friends with Congressman Bobert for a
number of years. Every time I go to Washington, I
always stop by and say hi to her. You know,
we talked about some of the problems that have been
going on with the party and I told her my
vision for fixing that. So we had a very productive conversation.
(07:23):
Her district, the fourth district, won't be a competitive district, however,
I told her that the Colorado Republican Party supports all
of our general election candidates and if she has any
any requests from the party, she can call me personally
on my cell phone.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Any time of the day or night.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
And the Colorado Republican Party is there to serve all
of our candidates well.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And people need to understand why this is important, elve
because you have and you just mentioned Jeff Hurd. He
is in the third congressional district that was formerly held
by Representative Bobert, and because she switched districts, that is
now an open seat. It is critical that we keep
that And until you called him, I guess know when
it reached out to Jeff, he's got a little bit
(08:05):
of a I think of a name id disadvantage. He's
not as well known, but that district is still very winnable, right. So,
and then you've got the eighth with Yadeerer Caraveo, and
you've got Gabe Evans, who I think is a much
better candidate than Yder Caraveo is, and he's well known
in the district. So these are really winnable races. I
(08:25):
know that you were on the phone with donors because
fundraising has been nonexistent under the old leadership. What are
you hearing from donors? Are they ready to move forward?
Are they ready to put money in? What are we
doing with money? Because it's money is critical to get
stuff done.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, money is the is the mother's blood at mother's
milk of politics. I mean, anybody who says that you
don't need money to campaign doesn't know.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
What they're talking about. And you know, the first step
is we had to stop the bleeding.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Last week alone, one of our major campaigns lost twenty
thousand dollars because of bizarre communications coming out of the
state GOP.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
They had multiple.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Donors come out and say we can't support you, we
don't want our name associated with you. And the candidates said, wait, wait,
that's not me, it's the state party. And they said
it doesn't matter. This is too toxic. The venom that's
coming out from the state Party is too toxic. So
the first step is to start doing no harm. I
have given each of these candidates are assurance that the
(09:26):
Colorado Republican Party will not send communication into their district
unless it is one hundred percent coordinated and approved by
the campaign. That is a never event. We should never
do what we did to Cleave Simpson. We should a
state Senate candidate on the Western Slope area. We put
that on the map by accident because the state Party
(09:47):
sent some inflammatory emails into the district.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
That should be an easily winnable seat.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Now we're having to defend it because of nonsense by
the former party leadership. So back to where the donors are.
They are so excited right now. I've been getting calls
folks saying I just got I just actually got a
text from someone said when can I send a check
where we don't have control of the bank account yet,
I said, don't dump into the bank account because we
have every reason to believe that the former leadership team
was basically treating this like a piggybank, and so we
(10:15):
are going to get control of that. And once we've
got that taken back over, Senator Gardner called me yesterday,
offered his full support and said he'd be happy to
host a call with all the major donors in the
state with all the other candidates. I expect within a
week and a half or two weeks we're going to
have all the campaigns together with the state party, with
former Senator Corey Gardner, and we are going to get
(10:38):
this thing back on track and raise as much money
as we can for these candidates. Eili.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
I'd love to see a forensic audit of the last
couple of years of the Republican Party coffers and see
exactly where money went, who was paid, who wasn't, and
see exactly how much money was squandered by Dave Williams
either trying to fight his ouster in court with a
ridiculous lawsuit that that you know, judges have never been
(11:05):
part of intra party squabbles, and he tried to make
it a legal issue and wasted a bunch of money
doing that. I'm sure there's going to waste more money
trying to fight this. So is there anything that rank
and file Republicans who want to move on can do?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Do we need to call.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
The r n C and say, can you help us
out and get this squared away? What can we do
in the meantime before you can get control of the website,
the bank accounts, the email list, all of the other
stuff that the old chairman is still maintaining control of.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
No.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I think you know.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
My Twitter account's been blowing up with people supporting us.
Jump on my personal Twitter feed at Eli Bremmer is
my personal feed.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It's got one m M Bremer Eli v R E
N E R.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
We're putting all the information out there until we have
control of the state's Twitter account, but tweet at the RNC,
the NRCC. The NRCC has already come out and said
they're honoring this election. They're a sister organization to the RNC,
and they've been very supportive. I just talked to another
congressional office, one of the leadership of the NRCC. They
(12:11):
were so excited, they said, we're so glad you're back
in business. But yeah, the average rank and file person,
get on their retweet, show your support, but also get
ready to come back in because I'll let you know, Mandy,
we'll come back on the air when we've got control
of the bank accounts, and I need every single person
out there to pitch in.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
You know, we're going to be running a tight ship.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I ran the largest county party operation in the state
in Olpaso County.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
We raised record amounts of money.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
We put the vast, vast, vast majority of that right
back down into let On Target. I know how to
run a really efficient system. We're not going to have
a huge amount of overhead that's going into this. It's
going to be predominantly money put forward to to win
this election. So if people are excited about it, first
of all, give to the campaigns. Support Jeff Hurd in
the third district, support Evans in the eighth district. You know,
(13:02):
you don't have to wait until the party gets all
legally is figured out. We need to be out there
supporting these candidates today they need your help. But when
we get the bank accounts back, we'd love to have
your support too.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
So I'm guessing that if you had to call this
phase of your leadership anything, it would almost be triage, right,
just trying to trying to stop the bleeding, trying to
figure out where all the pieces fit together. But one
of the things that I am significantly concerned about going
forward is the destruction of the party. And I mean
(13:35):
by Dave Williams and his stupid purity tests and you're
not Republican enough, and Rhino watching all this other crap
that has been out there for so many years, and
now we see Republican You know, people are not joining
the Republican Party and that's a huge problem. We live
in a state full of unaffiliateds.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
So is that the.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Next step, like get us through this election cycle and
then focus on how to rebuild the party and make
it be it's something that people want to be a
part of again.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Well, I think so, and I think people are excited
right now. I think what you have is that it's
we don't have a problem with the Republican Party.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
We have a problem with.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
A very bizarre crew of people who are now squatters
in the office basically, and they can't win elections. If
you look, they lost almost every seat that they endorse
in in this sort of unprecedented deal where the party
took sides in the primaries. So that's not where the
nine hundred thousand Colorado Republicans are, That's not where your
listeners are. The Colorado Republican Party should represent Republicans instead
(14:36):
of yelling at them and telling them.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
The way they should believe.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
And I'd like to point out, by the way, that
in twenty sixteen, these were the same people that were
the never Trumpers. They called me a rhino in twenty
sixteen because I had the audacity to be working on
the Trump campaign and I was a national spokesman on
Olympians for Trump and on the Second Amendment Coalition.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So that made me a rhino. And so I hate
that term rhino.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Because they basically use it's sort of the Republican version
of the word racist. You know, left, when they hate you,
they call you a racist, and now you're canceled, and
we have the same cancel culture.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Nonsense.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
What my pledge is is I'm going to get to
this organization back on track.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
And it's going to make people's head.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Spin how fast we get it back on track. We
are going to get you know, we're going to take
a look at where the finances have been and all that.
But after this election, we're going to get things like
the bi laws cleaned up. We're going to prevent this
from happening. And again, I've got the experience for this.
You probably don't know this, but when I was the
party chair and he'll passive counties from twenty eleven twenty thirteen,
(15:35):
we set record fundraising numbers.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
My vice chair was a young man by the name of.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Dave Williams, and I spent two years undoing the damage
that that young man did and he has not stopped
destroying Republicans ever since.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
This ends.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Now we're going to end this, and then I would
put a call out to any good Republican who wants
to run the Colorado Republican Party for the next two years,
We're going to get it fixed. I'm going to turn
it back over in the spring when we hold a
natural leadership election. I'm not going to run for this again.
I am here to fix the problem, get it back
on track. But we were going to need some good
new leadership Mandy or Frankly, this same fringe group they
(16:13):
can't win a lot of they're going to try to
take over well.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And I want to ask you this, and I think
that's a very good position for you to be in
to say I am not running for this position permanently,
because then you can go scorched starth and you can
do exactly what needs to be done and you don't
have to worry about winning an election for this in
the in the spring. Which leads me to my last question,
and that is we I just read today Dick Watdams
has got pretty much a scorcher of a column criticizing
(16:39):
the fact that the Republican Party has no young people
coming to it. And one of the things he mentioned
is that in El Paso they've invited Mike Lindell to
be a speaker at one of their events.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
When do we get to move on?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
When do we get to stop looking back at twenty
twenty Because you probably know as well as I do,
the unaffiliateds in this state don't give a ratsass about
twenty twelve. They don't want to hear about Mike Lindell
spending forty million dollars.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
They they don't want to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
So how do we move the party past that once
and for all.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Well, I mean, Mandy, the truth of the matter is
that the party has been predominantly run like a scam pack,
and that means that they're trying to do this to
inflame part of the base that will send five or
ten dollars donations in. It's obviously not where the unaffiliateds are.
But guess what, we have got great policies in the
Republican Party that unaffiliated in this state agree with financially
(17:33):
fasically Colorado Republican or Colorado unaffiliated voters. They want lower
property taxes, they want you attainable housing, and lower inflation.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Those are things Republicans can help with.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
On the social policies, the Democrats talk about a Republican's
war on women. Well, let's talk about Title nine and
the fact that the Democrats have launched an all out
assault on the top national women's rights legislation, Title nine.
It's been there for fifty years, women equal rights in
sports and the college scholarships. And I can't find one
Democrat out there who says I will support that men
(18:08):
cannot take women's scholarships. But we've pulled this every what's
like ninety nine point five percent of Republicans support this.
They support keeping women's sports for women. Virtually one hundred
percent of unaffiliated voters in the state of Colorado believe
in keeping women's sports for women. That's a Republican issue, Mandy,
and it's a young person issue. There's a lot of
(18:30):
young women right now for whom this is becoming a
defining issue in their lives. And if Republicans will talk
about keeping inflation down, addressing the border issues, and saying
we are the Party of women's rights. We stand up
for women's rights, to have your own scholarships, to have
your own locker rooms, your own sports teams.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
We support women's rights. I think we can actually make a.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Huge impact with Colorado on affiliated voters. And this is
not a hard blue state that should be a purple state,
but because of the bad actions by the fringe element
that took over the Republican Party organization, we've kind of
made it a solid blue state and it shouldn't be
that way.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Eli Bremer, the new chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.
I have officially recognized him, which means it's official. So
Eli appreciate you making time for me. I hope we
can have more conversations leading up to the elections in November,
and best of luck, you have a herculean effort in
front of you. I do not I don't envy you this,
(19:30):
but I think maybe they got the right person for
the job, and I hope you're successful.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Thanks Mannie. I'm happy to come anytime, Come on, anytime
you want. You know how to reach me. All right,
that's Eli Bremmer.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Thank you. Eli appreciate you, and hopefully the Republican Party
can get going once again.
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