El Paso County GOP piqued by Lamborn's charges of mismanagement

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn

While nobody from the El Paso County Republican Party wanted to say it on the record, they have a problem with U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado Springs).

In an interview with PolitickerCO.com published Monday, Lamborn accused the El Paso Republicans of mismanaging the distribution of CD-5 assembly delegate information, making his road to re-election much more difficult.

Indignant party officials called Lamborn’s charges "patently incorrect" and a “straw argument” for his dropping out of the assembly process.

Lamborn told PolitickerCO.com that his decision late last month to petition onto the CD-5 primary ballot was taken in part because the El Paso County GOP took a month to get his campaign a final list of CD-5 assembly delegates and alternates, putting him at a disadvantage.

He also said when his campaign finally received a delegate list, a “huge percentage” of the names had “no valid contact information.”

"There are some procedural problems in one of the counties in the 5th Congressional District that have made it very difficult to contact people and have sufficient information and to be even halfway organize,” Lamborn said in the interview. “So the level of competency needed and professionalism needed for a congressional race was lacking."

Lamborn presented similar concerns in an April 22 e-mail to supporters announcing he was petitioning onto the ballot – a very rare, if not unprecedented move for an incumbent Congressman to make. Lamborn also cited his busy Congressional schedule in May as another factor in choosing to petition.

El Paso Republican Party officials, while leery of openly denouncing a sitting Republican Congressman, have sought to refute Lamborn’s criticism about their organization's handling of CD-5 assembly delegate information.

“To have a Congressman say there’s this major problem when it’s so clear that there’s not – it’s just a really interesting and very difficult position for us to be in,” said one senior El Paso County GOP official.

The CD-5 delegate information was indeed sent out later about two weeks later than usual this year: because of the massive caucus turnout on Feb. 5, the El Paso County GOP didn’t e-mail the final list of CD-5 assembly delegates and alternates to the three candidates until Feb. 26, according to a copy of the e-mail obtained by PolitickerCO.com.

In previous years, the El Paso GOP usually compiled and sent delegate lists to CD-5 candidates within a week of the caucus.

But that delay, the senior GOP official said, was more than offset by the Colorado GOP moving up the caucus date to Feb. 5 this year – more than six weeks earlier than the 2006 caucuses, which were held on March 21.

And since the 2008 CD-5 assembly is scheduled to be held nine days later in the year than the 2006 assembly was – May 21 in 2006; May 30 this year – CD-5 candidates actually have more than a month more time this year to campaign with the delegate lists in hand than they did in 2006, the official said.

“Two years ago, four years ago, and six years ago, they actually had less time than they did this cycle, even though in those cycles the data was delivered, if you will, more promptly because they had fewer people turn out to the caucuses,” the official said. “That’s the reason that (Lamborn’s) argument really becomes a straw argument, if you will, because compared to any other year before they’ve had more time than they’ve ever had to contact these delegates and alternates.”

County party leadership also questioned Lamborn’s claim that the delegate list failed to provide valid contact information for a “huge percentage” of the delegates.

The El Paso County GOP obtained delegate contact information from the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office, which is “not perfect – but it never is,” the senior official said.

Also, because CD-5 delegates and alternates have to also be El Paso County assembly delegates or alternates, the contact information for the people on the CD-5 delegate contact list were also included in the county delegate list sent to 25 other campaigns.

“None of the other campaigns had this issue,” the official said. “They all ran into the same people with the wrong phone numbers or the same people with the wrong addresses, but none of the other campaigns had the issue where ‘Well, because the list is so bad we’re not going to go through the county assembly.’ There was only one campaign that came to that conclusion.”

The official said the party contacted Lamborn’s campaign after sending the delegate list on Feb. 26 to ensure there were no problems; the two groups have also corresponded several times since then. However, at no time did Lamborn’s campaign ever mention anything about inaccurate or incomplete delegate information, the official said.

“If there had been any problems with the data, he had ample opportunity to ask us about it,” the official said.

After Lamborn announced on April 22 that he would petition, the county party called Lamborn to set up a meeting to discuss his delegate information problems; no such meeting has yet been set up, the official said.

A request for comment sent on Tuesday to a Lamborn spokesperson was not returned by Thursday afternoon.

Many followers of the CD-5 race, including Lamborn GOP primary opponents Jeff Crank and Bentley Rayburn, have claimed Lamborn is petitioning out of fear he’ll flounder at the CD-5 GOP assembly. Lamborn denies those allegations, saying polling by his campaign indicated he was ahead among CD-5 assembly delegates.

Both Crank’s and Rayburn’s campaigns said they haven't had many problems contacting delegates with the El Paso GOP information.

Amber O’Connor, Crank’s deputy manager, said she estimated the Crank campaign was able to reach 90-95 percent of delegates using the information supplied by the county party.