GREELEY — After recognizing that the Colorado Republican Party leadership had neither the money or inclination to help Republicans get elected to office on November 5th, Weld County candidates and their supporters went ahead and pushed forward on their own, with remarkable results
“Weld County is the face of the Republican Party,” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton. “And we will deliver at the Capitol just like we delivered flipping seats — left to right — assuring no supermajority for either chamber.”
Kirkmeyer was referring to a GOP sweep of five seats that fall entirely, or partially within Weld County that were previously held by Democrats.
Those seats are:
- Congressional District 8 US House of Representatives — Republican Gabe Evans, of Fort Lupton, defeated incumbent Yadira Caraveo.
- Congressional District 8 Colorado State Board of Education — Republican Yazmin Navarro, of Johnstown, defeated incumbent Rhonda Solis.
- Senate District 13 — Republican Scott Bright, of Greeley, beat Brighton City Councilman Matt Johnston.
- House District 19 — Republican Dan Woog, of Frederick, defeated his Democrat opponent Jillaire McMillan, who ran after incumbent Jennifer Parenti, who beat Woog in 2022, decided not to run for reelection. Woog previously held the seat from 2020-2022.
- House District 50 — Republican Ryan Gonzalez, of Greeley, defeated Democrat Mary Young, a three-term incumbent and the wife of Colorado State Treasurer Dave Young. Gonzalez lost the same race in 2022 by just 330 votes.
Many already expected Bright would return SD13 to the Republican column after the seat was vacated by Democrat Kevin Priola due to term limits. However, Priola was never elected in the strongly Republican SD13 in the first place. He was gifted the seat because his predecessor former Sen. John Cooke, of Greeley, was term limited, and Priola was drawn out of his original district (SD25) and into SD13 during redistricting three years ago, much to the chagrin of Weld Republicans. They were not happy with Priola representing them without an election.
At that time, Priola was a registered Republican, but he voted consistently with the Democrat caucus and eventually flipped parties altogether. The move angered SD 13 Republicans, who vowed to get the seat back. Voters did just that and in a landslide victory for Bright, who won by nearly 8,000 votes and 14 percentage points.
Hitting the trifecta
Three other races were always considered either toss-ups or Democrat leaning. But it was a challenge Kirkmeyer and House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese accepted and faced head on, raising several hundred thousand dollars for the candidates, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and overseeing a group effort to get them all over the line.
“Before anyone gets carried away with slapping themselves on the back, thank you to the candidates for stepping up,” Kirkmeyer said in reference to GOP state party chairman Dave Williams, who has attempted to take the credit for the win multiple times since election night. “And to team Weld, we stuck together. We helped each other out. We got us across the finish line.”
Both Kirkmeyer and Pugliese also both had their own campaigns to worry about, although Kirkmeyer was running unopposed for her second term. They worked overtime and came out so victorious that without Weld County and its tenacity, Kirkmeyer said, the Democrats would still would still have a supermajority in the House of Representatives.
Although a third seat, House District 16 in El Paso County, where Republican challenger Rebecca Keltie beat incumbent Stephanie Vigil by just seven votes, also played a pivotal role in taking away the supermajority, House District 19 and House District 50 were both needed to pull off the trifecta, with HD 50 the toughest fight of them all..
That district has not seen a Republican representative since 2004. Prior to redistricting two years ago, HD50 had a 6 percentage point favor to Democrats, even after the redistricting it still favored Dems by somewhere between 2- and 4-percentage points, depending on who you asked.
Two years ago, Gonzalez ran and came within 330 votes of knocking off incumbent Mary Young, but a Libertarian in the race drew 615 votes. This time around, Gonzalez won by 563 votes, and the Libertarian Party not only did not run a candidate, but it endorsed Gonzalez, and some of its members walked and knocked on doors with him.
“I cannot thank the voters of HD50 enough for the opportunity to serve them,” said Gonzalez, who will be 30 on Christmas Day, “It is a responsibility I take very seriously — the extra 563 votes said yes to TABOR (Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights); the extra 563 votes said yes to freedom; the extra 563 votes said yes to our oil and gas, and said yes to checks and balances.”
The Libertarian Party also played a large role in the other two close-call races. In House District 19, which straddles Weld and Boulder counties, the Libertarian party also chose to support Woog and did not run a candidate. Woog, who was the incumbent in 2022, lost to Jennifer Parenti, with the Libertarian drawing 1,168 votes.
This time around, Woog won the battle by 121 votes over Democrat Jillaire McMillan (Parenti chose not to run for reelection).
Woog said winning these seats back was important to restore order to Colorado.
“It was important for me to come back to the state legislature because it has never been more clear to me how important it is for the Republican Party to start winning seats back and bring some balance to the state,” Woog said. “The Democrats have been in full control with the Senate, House and governor’s office and created an extremely high cost of living, with burdensome regulation and spending.”
And in Congressional District 8, the US House of Representatives race, the Libertarian Party initially ran a candidate, but he dropped out just before ballots were printed, endorsing Evans, who eventually won by over 2400 votes.
Flipping a state board seat
But it was the outcome in the State Board of Education race in CD8 that may have been the biggest surprise victory in the county.
In 2022, Weld County Democrat Rhonda Solis beat her Republican candidate by just 1,951 votes, losing her home county of Weld, where she could not draw the endorsement of most of her fellow school board members or high-up party leaders. And in that race, an American Constitution Party candidate, who was considered to be even more conservative than the Republican Peggy Probst, took 5,367 votes..
This time around Solis still only garnered the endorsement of two former colleagues but was beat by Navarro overwhelmingly — more than 16,000 votes and 5 percentage points. Ironically, Navarro had lost a race for a board of education seat in Loveland’s Thompson School District just one year earlier.
“I met with Yazmin, and I thought ‘man this young woman can win,’” Kirkmeyer said. “She’s got the right story. She’s very sincere. She’s authentic.”
Gonzalez said much of the credit has to go to Kirkmeyer and the Weld County Republican Party.
“She was an instrumental piece of our success,” Gonzalez said, adding the Weld County GOP’s efforts to rally volunteers and donations was also paramount to the candidates’ success. “… Weld County is in fact the true freedom model for the rest of Colorado.”
Kirkmeyer agreed. She said the candidates and other volunteers worked together to make sure they all had what they needed to be successful. Candidates who didn’t have a primary, worked for candidates who did, and vice versa in the general.
“We covered more territory, and all just worked together,” she said. “We are the face of the Republican Party. This is what the Republican Party looks like. It’s women; it’s Hispanics; it’s businessmen; it’s farmers, a former school administrator, former school principal. We got a great group of individuals that are all working together and delivering the same messages. We brought home a message that speaks to the general population of our state.”
