CO Republican Party Chair praises Tina Peters, gets pushback from GOP members & former Mesa County GOP Chair Kevin McCarney

Dave Williams

In a mass email to members of the Colorado GOP on Feb. 2,  Colorado Republican Party Chair Dave Williams praised Tina Peters for “fighting the establishment and our corrupt judicial system.” He wrote that the charges against her were “retaliation, persecution, and prosecution for preserving our election records and exposing the fraud inside the machines” and said Tina has “risked so much to expose the fraud by doing her job as a county clerk…”  He concluded by saying that “We must all unite in prayer and support for Tina Peters so that the jury sees this for what it really is and acquits her of all charges.” Williams added, “We are praying for you, dear Tina. You are loved and appreciated by all.” [All Italicized emphasis in original.]

No proof of fraud has been found in Colorado’s or Mesa County’s elections.

The letter drew immediate pushback from a long list of prominent Colorado Republicans including former Republican secretaries of state. According to a February 6 article in Colorado Newsline by Sharon Sullivan, the written response to Williams said,

“As current and former Republican election officials, your decision to support an individual who has actively worked to undermine our elections statewide is a slap in the face and an affront to each of us who have worked to become experts in election administration and to build and sustain secure elections in Colorado over many decades … To be clear, there was no fraud in Mesa County elections. She led a willful breach of her voting system. Peters did not uncover any fraud or threats to Mesa County elections. In the end, she herself was the threat to election integrity in the county. Her actions made elections less secure and more susceptible to nefarious activity. She has since embarked on a national campaign to discredit our elections processes, the same processes she never bothered to understand when she served as a county clerk. She has also profited financially and has become quite famous while trying to deflect blame, putting her former staff and others in harm’s way and saddling Mesa County taxpayers with more than one million dollars in expenses to unnecessarily recount election results and replace the voting systems she compromised.” 

Even former Mesa County GOP Chair Kevin McCarney, who used to boast publicly that he was a Tina Peters supporter “all the way,” (video), sent an email to Williams and the Republican Party’s Central Committee in which he told Williams that by supporting Tina he was supporting “criminality,” and making it harder to elect Republicans in 2024.