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GOP Chair Dave Williams Stops Phil Anschutz From Turning Colorado Totally Blue
Editorial —
Philip Anschutz
The richest man in Colorado, billionaire Phil Anschutz, is a highly secretive individual. What exactly his political views are is unknown but he is usually described as “deeply conservative.” He is highly interested in influencing Colorado politics and policy and he spends millions of dollars every year to do so.
He funds or partially funds think tanks and policy groups like the Independence Institute and Advance Colorado; publications like the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Denver Gazette, Complete Colorado, and Colorado Politics; and even radio personalities like Jimmy Sengenberger.
Like many billionaires in America his views have evolved over the years. He was a strong Bush/Cheney supporter and hates Donald Trump due to his views on immigration and tariffs as well as his far from gentlemanly demeanor and personal conduct. Anschutz seldom contributes in his own name to politicians, but did so for Liz Cheney in her unsuccessful bid for re-election in Wyoming. Anschutz is referred to as the Liz Cheney of Colorado in grassroots circles in Colorado.
Dave Williams
He has always disliked Colorado’s Republican Party’s primary system with caucuses and assemblies that allows everyday grassroot Republicans a chance to be a candidate for public office in a general election. Back in 2016, he supported Proposition 107 behind the scenes. The proposition opened party primaries to unaffiliates purportedly to ensure that moderate Republicans like Joe O’Dea and Walker Stapleton would win the Republican primaries.
Anschutz has almost always controlled the chair of the Republican Party due to his contributions to the party, but in 2022 there was a grassroots pro Trump revolt and Dave Williams was elected chair, and other grassroots candidates such as Hope Scheppelman Vice Chair and Anna Ferguson for Secretary also won.
That was too much for Anschutz and he stopped giving to the Colorado Republican Party. He threw his hidden support to Proposition 131 which would do away with party primaries for jungle primaries with rank choice voting in general elections. Prop 131 was backed by Democrats like Governor Jared Polis and Senator John Hickenlooper as well as a war chest of fifteen million dollars.
If one wishes to gauge Anschutz’s views on any matter just listen to the Independence Institute’s board member Dick Wadhams and President Jon Caldara. Both wrote numerous articles in the Anschutz publications praising Prop 131 and Wadhams was even paid as a consultant to back the measure.
Practically the only voice opposing Prop 131 in public was Republican Chair Dave Williams who, with virtually no money, managed to defeat Prop 131 and Anschutz 55% to 45%.
Anschutz and the Republican establishment had attempted to recall Williams as Chair of the Republican Party right in the middle of the election season, but Williams defeated them in court and by vote of the Colorado State Central Committee.
The purpose of the recall was not only to get rid of Anschutz’s nemesis but also to be sure the Republican Party would have a bad election night under Williams’ tutelage. But instead, the Republicans had a very good night. They gained a Congressional seat as well as three in the State House defeating a Democrat supermajority. While Trump lost Colorado, the margin decreased from 13.5% to 11%
It is not often that a billionaire like Phil Anschutz is handed a spanking by an underfunded grassroots leader like Dave Williams, but that is the under reported story of the general election of 2024 in Colorado.
— Editorial Board
The First 100 Days
Blasting With Boyles
OPINION
What we have just come through is the most unpredictable/predictable election perhaps in my lifetime. Donald Trump triumphs over almost everyone. Who was right? Very few people had it. For the first time in my life I anchored to, modestly he says, great success election night coverage. We had made plans to have hotel rooms, caterers, but at 11:28 Tuesday night I wrote it down to mark it, Pennsylvania was called for Donald Trump. At that moment I said I should throw water on the fires, call in the dogs, we’re going home. Trump had won.
But, and I cannot do math, and I cannot do marriage. I looked at numbers, and I have questions without answers. In the 2020 election, nationwide Trump received 74,223,975 votes, and he lost. Now in 2024, Donald Trump received 74,668,551 votes. It’s not a large difference. The real key it seems to me in the outcome of the election is the number of Democrats and anti-Trumpers that simply stayed away from Vice President Harris.
Donald Trump in the first go around received 232 electoral college votes. This time 312.
For all of us here in Colorado, interestingly enough, Trump received even less votes.
It is an unheard of victory in so far as Donald Trump the man, but what I believe it speaks volumes to is a rejection of having: little boys simply proclaim they are girls and beating up our daughters on the athletic fields; ripping down monuments to historical figures; changing the names of military installations; changing the names of mountain tops, rivers, and streets; public education that seems to be an absolute failure; a border that’s like a sieve; and a crime rate that skyrockets.
The Biden administration has gotten the United States into a surrogate war against Putin, a Middle East that end of the Trump last term was relative calm is not now, it cost me $20 to fill up a tank on a Harley Davidson, the inflation in the supermarkets, the cost of food, and a general malaise that came over this country.
They did not show up for Harris. Those were greater factors than Donald Trump being considered crazy.
The question now is what will the first 100 days bring? I don’t believe the press is going to leave Trump alone, but if you go back and look at Reagan and Kennedy, the idea was the press was going to give them a honeymoon period. But Trump is not going to get this.
I think the single biggest casualty in the outcome of this presidential race is clearly corporate media. If you think no one cared about what the national media had to say before, did you see the looks on their faces on Tuesday night? Especially when the call came in that Trump had won. It’s also, I think, significant this was not a COVID election, and both Pennsylvania and Georgia had new legislation, which when the counting began, it could not stop, which cleans up those accusations.
The victor is clearly Donald Trump.
A hundred days will mark what’s coming our way. The man made a lot of promises. Now he has the House and the Senate, there’s no roadblocks. The future of the next four years of this country will be determiend by the first hundred days, and it is a make or break. If all the things that Trump promised will happen or partially happen, we head for a better time.
If, on the other hand, the people that predict he is getting crazier by the day are correct, it could turn out to be the wildest time since Richard Nixon and Watergate. For Joe Biden, who I believe holds as much responsibility for Trump’s win as Trump himself, the questions will be asked by historians for generations. What was really the matter with the Democrat party, Joe and Dr. Jill Biden, and why they suddenly appointed Vice President Harris to stick her out there and feed her to the dogs. Let’s see what happens folks.
Happy holidays!
— Peter Boyles
