As you may have heard, multibillionaire Kent Thiry’s Super PAC dumped a late-breaking million bucks into 13 state legislative primary races — eight of them involving Democrats, five Republicans — in order to help defeat politicians he has identified as insufficiently moderate.

It was very Jared Polis-ish of him, I’d say. 

It makes me wonder if Thiry — who also wants to bring ranked choice voting, which presumably helps moderates, to Colorado — has his eye on possibly succeeding Polis, another one-percenter, who will be term-limited in two years when Colorado elects its next governor.

And to Thiry’s point, moderates do have their place. But you don’t have to be a historian to know that most of the great advances in America have been led by activists who were often called radical in their time. Some of those so-called radicals now have holidays dedicated in their honor.

But that’s not the real issue here in Colorado, where moderates — think Democrats like Hickenlooper, Bennet, Ritter, Salazar, et al — have dominated statewide politics for years.

The desperately critical issue regarding political moderation in Colorado is that one altogether immoderate party — the GOP of Lauren Boebert and Dave Williams and their MAGA allies — has been wholly captured by radical MAGA cultism.

And that issue was very much on the line in Tuesday’s primary elections, as seen in several congressional races across the state. 

Want early access to
Mike’s columns?

Subscribe to get an
exclusive first look at
his columns twice a week.

SUBSCRIBE

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the future of the diminished Colorado GOP depended on the results, because, at this point, it’s hard to see much of a future for Colorado Republicans, who have been stuck in the shrink cycle for the last 20 years.

But going into the night, it seemed clear that if Boebert, the carpetbagging canoodler, and Williams, the God-hates-flags guy, managed to win their primaries Tuesday, it would confirm the worst fears of those remaining establishment Republicans left in the state, not to mention the rest of us.

So, let’s begin with Boebert, who definitely confirmed fears that whatever she does, whatever outrages she commits, whatever theater decorum she violates, whatever norm she offends, the MAGA base remains all in.

She won easily. She didn’t need the six-person field to help her sneak in. When the AP declared her a winner early in the evening, she was running at a solid 40-plus-percent pace. The polls were exactly right: No one in the field had a chance against her.

You know her story — how she nearly lost her race in the deep-red 3rd Congressional District in 2022, how that was in the pre-“Beetlejuice” stage of her career and how, in desperation, and with the urging of national Republicans, she switched to the even-deeper-red 4th CD in an effort to save her swampy job.

Everyone knows that story — and if they didn’t before, they certainly do now that the New York Times and the Economist and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and, for all I know, Guns & Ammo, have stopped by to check out Boebert’s situation.

The tone in most of the national stories is one of incredulity that she could be returned to Congress post-“Beetlejuice.” The Wall Street Journal headline summed it up: “Lauren Boebert’s Latest Election Shock: She’s Favored to Win.”

And so she did. 

But, even with Boebert’s win, the GOP establishment, much to its relief, did manage to pull out a split decision. Boebert may have won easily, but her buddy Dave Williams got crushed. Trump had endorsed both of them, of course, but Trump didn’t carry the day.

There are lines apparently, and Williams, to his lasting discredit, crossed every one of them, including crimes against the spirit of the First Amendment.  

Apparently there are limits to how extreme you can be in MAGA World. In Williams’ race in the 5th CD against Jeff Crank — who is extremely conservative in his own right, and who has run for office with disturbing regularity — voters rejected him soundly. 

Williams was not just running for Congress, but he is also, of course, the state Republican Party chair.

Yes, still the Republican Party chair.

And that’s despite his bigoted call to burn Pride flags, which outraged Republicans who aren’t homophobes and had led some party leaders to demand that he either resign as chair or be replaced by the state GOP central committee.

Those calls, if you remember, got a lot of headlines, but, to this point, little to no action.

What we did see, though, was James Dobson, the former powerful leader of Focus on the Family, endorse Williams for his homophobia.

It’s safe to say that state Republicans leaders have failed regarding Williams, which isn’t surprising because they’re the ones who elected him in the first place. But establishment Republicans, though their political action committees, poured big money into the race to try to stop Williams.

But what of the voters?

That was the question coming into Tuesday — would voters decide that Williams’ outrages, his petty corruption, his assault on a free press, his mismanagement of the state party, disqualify him? And what would it mean if they didn’t?

We now know the answer.

It was a busy primary night, with progressives trailing in a few hotly contested legislative races, with Jeff Hurd winning easily in the 3rd Congressional District over another MAGA favorite, Ron Hanks, with results pouring in from across the state. I wonder if moderates in Colorado needed Thiry’s help. 

The headline from the night, of course, is that Boebert saved her career with her CD switcheroo. And what a, uh, career. We can assume that in her heavily GOP district, she’ll win in November and resume her war on political decency.

When the Economist, the conservative-leaving magazine from the UK, weighed in on Boebert last week, this was the headline: “Lauren Boebert’s primary is a window into everyday Trumpism.”

And the subhead: “Republican primary voters’ favourite thing is anything that horrifies Democrats.”

But if the other headline story is that voters soundly and convincingly and wisely rejected Williams, the night wasn’t as horrifying for Democrats, and for all right-thinking people, as it could have been.

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.

The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.

Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.