Feuding Colorado Republicans were back in court this week as the county party officers who have been trying to oust state GOP Chairman Dave Williams asked a judge to reverse an earlier order that prohibited Williams’ critics from convening a meeting to vote on the question.

El Paso County Republican Vice Chairman Todd Watkins and Jefferson County Republican Chairwoman Nancy Pallozzi filed a motion late Tuesday in Arapahoe County District Court asking Judge Thomas W. Henderson to reconsider the temporary restraining order he issued Friday that blocked a meeting of the party’s state central committee that Watkins had earlier called for the following day.

In their motion, Watkins and Pallozzi said that the judge granted the order based on “a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts and law,” including what the two allege are inaccurate descriptions of party procedures contained in an earlier filing by Williams and the state GOP.

Underlying the arguments made by Watkins and Pallozzi — who represented themselves in the motion filed this week — is the notion that settled Colorado law allows the state’s Democratic and Republican party committees to govern themselves and resolve their own internal disputes, without the courts having a say.

After the judge issued the order on Friday afternoon, organizers behind the disputed special meeting — originally scheduled for the morning of July 27 at a church in Brighton — told Republicans that they would instead hold a rally at the same location to give Williams’ critics a chance to air their grievances.

The reconfigured gathering drew more than 100 Republicans from around the state — including county party officers, state lawmakers and GOP congressional nominees — who spent nearly five hours deriding Williams and the way he’s run the Colorado GOP.

Complaints ranged from the state GOP’s decision to take sides in contested primaries and Williams’ use of party resources to bolster his unsuccessful congressional campaign to attacks the state party has waged in recent months on the LGBTQ community and Republicans the party has derided as “RINOs,” a derisive acronym for “Republicans in name only.”

Williams, a former state lawmaker, maintains he’s taking the combative stance he promised he would when the GOP’s central committee elected him to run the party nearly 16 months ago.

Watkins Pallozzi motion for reconsideration

Watkins and Pallozzi insisted in the motion they filed Tuesday that their attempt to force a meeting of the state central committee follows party bylaws. They also asserted that Williams and the state GOP had it wrong when they told the judge in an earlier motion that an internal party procedure challenging the meeting had been resolved.

Citing what they term “a major — and dispositive — factual inaccuracy” Watkins and Pallozzi argued that a claim made by Williams and the Colorado GOP that “the State Central Committee has declared the July 27, 2024 special meeting to be invalid and illegal” is false, since the matter has only been ruled on by a smaller party committee and is currently under appeal to the wider central committee.

The motion also asks the judge to increase the bond the court told the Colorado Republican Party it had to post from $1,000 to $15,000. The higher figure, they said, would “approach a sufficient level of security” to compensate organizers and the central committee members who had planned travel and booked hotel rooms for the meeting the judge blocked.

Hope Scheppelman, the Colorado GOP’s vice chair and a Williams ally, told Colorado Politics that the party wants to proceed with a broader lawsuit it filed earlier this month seeking to nullify efforts by Watkins and Pallozzi to call any meeting for the purposes of deciding whether to fire Williams.

“(It’s) within the best interest of everyone for this case to proceed to the merits quickly so we can avoid costly litigation in the long run and limit the harm Watkins and Pallozzi are causing to the Party with less than a 100 days left in the election,” Scheppelman said in a text message.

When he issued a formal call for the since-canceled July 27 meeting, Watkins said central committee members could also consider ousting Scheppelman and Anna Ferguson, the state party secretary.

On Wednesday, Watkins told Colorado Politics that it was Scheppelman and her fellow state party officers who were running up the legal tab.

“I don’t know how to repair the damage they have caused the party over the past 480ish days, but we sure can stop any further harm by removing and replacing them,” he said in a text message. “As far as costly litigation—that’s up to them. They’re the ones who kicked that rock down the hill. They could end all of this fighting by doing the honorable and responsible thing and resign.”