Dick Wadhams has withdrawn from the race for Colorado GOP Chairman, sending the following email to members of the State Central Committee:<\/p>\n

It has been an honor and privilege to serve as Colorado Republican Chairman but after much reflection I have decided to not seek reelection.<\/p>\n

I am very grateful to a clear majority of the members of the Colorado Republican State Central Committee who offered their support and encouragement over the past several weeks.<\/p>\n

I entered this race a few weeks ago looking forward to discussing what we accomplished in 2010 and to the opportunities we have in 2012 to elect a new Republican president; to increase our state House majority and win a state Senate majority; and to reelect our two new members of Congress.<\/p>\n

However, I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying \u201cuniting conservatives\u201d is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state.<\/p>\n

I have no delusions this will recede after the state central committee meeting in March.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the ability of Colorado Republicans to win and retain the votes of hundreds of thousands of unaffiliated swing voters in 2012 will be severely undermined.<\/p>\n

For the past four years, I have devoted all of my professional time and energy to serving as state chairman and am very proud of what we accomplished in the face of unique and unprecedented challenges in both the 2008 and 2010 election cycles.<\/p>\n

I will always remain humbled and grateful for the opportunity to travel this magnificent state where I was born and raised and to work with Republican leaders and elected officials in all 64 counties as state chairman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This leaves the race open to a number of conservative candidates who have declared, and perhaps opens up the race to couple of new entrants.\u00a0 In any event, the race is no longer simply a referendum on Dick Wadhams’s tenure, but a ballot on what sort of leadership the state Republican party wants.\u00a0 So unless explicit, please don’t read anything below as a direct criticism or praise of Dick’s tenure.<\/p>\n

As I’ve said a number of times vis-a-vis Denver, party politics is coalition politics.\u00a0 The trick is to build a coalition that adheres to your core ideas, and to pick up sympathetic Democrats on specific issues where you don’t have a majority to yourself.\u00a0 That is what makes politics hard, and it is largely the job of the candidates and the office-holders, more than the party leadership.<\/p>\n

That said, there is room for the party leadership to lead on certain matters.\u00a0 Personally, I would like to see a leadership that is able to persuade the Powers That Be to back off from trying to pick nominees before any votes have been cast, and to create an atmosphere where various members of our coalition can feel free to debate in a constructive fashion.\u00a0 There is no doubt in my mind that the torpedoing of an appearance by Sarah Palin last year, by elements in the party who don’t care for her, was a mistake.\u00a0 One doesn’t have to like her chances as a Presidential candidate, or believe in the wisdom of her running, to recognize the energy and clarity that she brings to the debate.\u00a0 Trying to prevent her from speaking amounts to little more than a preemptive surrender of a large swath of the intellectual and ideological battleground.\u00a0 A party chairman should be able to encourage these sorts of appearances.<\/p>\n

Party leaders ought to be creating a situation where the party rank-and-file is able to do so, looking to their former and current officeholders for advice and counsel as it chooses to. The best result would be for a Chairman who stands above factional disputes rather than taking sides, and focuses his energy on building the party apparatus, and getting the various members of our coalition to play well together, always bearing in mind that in electoral politics, the job is to defeat Democrats, and elect Republicans.\u00a0 What sort<\/em> of Republicans nominate is up to the rank-and-file, and those former and current officeholders need to have at least a little faith in the party members who, after all, nominated and elected them.<\/p>\n

Leaving aside what might be read as at least unfortunate phrasing, Dick is undoubtedly correct that winning unaffiliated voters is the key to winning a statewide majority.\u00a0 As is true for both parties, winning without your base, or with only your base, isn’t possible.\u00a0 I think most of the party understands this, and it’ll be interesting to see how those running for State Chair plan to respond to that challenge.
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