Ward surprises in CD-6 GOP assembly

WardState Senator Steve Ward polled better than expected at Saturday’s CD-6 GOP assembly, ending up in second place with 43 percent of the vote.

State Sen. Ted Harvey (R-Centennial) scored the most delegate support on Saturday with 325 votes, or 53.4 percent. Ward (R-Littleton) won 260 votes, or 42.7 percent, while relative newcomer Pepito Castellanes received 24 votes, or 3.9 percent of the votes cast, according to an e-mail from the Douglas County Republican Party.

The results mean that Harvey and Ward will be placed on the August 12 primary ballot.

Ward said he was “quite pleased with the result,” saying his goal going into Saturday was only 201 assembly delegates.

Ward also said delegates for CD-6 GOP candidates Mike Coffman and Wil Armstrong, both of whom are petitioning onto the ballot, swung their votes over to Harvey.

“Let Ted think he got 53 percent of the vote,” Ward said.

Harvey did not immediately return a phone call Monday morning seeking comment.

Coffman manager Dustin Zvonek said the Coffman campaign didn’t coordinate opposition to Ward in the assembly.

“It seems like Steve Ward and (Ward’s manager) Christina Burtt have all these different conspiracy theories about getting supporters to vote for anybody but him,” Zvonek said. “The reality is we had no concerted effort to get supporters to vote for one candidate or another.”

Asked how Coffman delegates voted in the assembly, Zvonek said he hadn’t asked individual delegates who they had supported.

“A lot of (Coffman) folks, quite simply, didn’t show up,” he said, especially after assembly rules were changed to not let delegates vote to abstain.

Before the rule change, there had been rumors that Armstrong and Coffman delegates would abstain to make it harder for any of the candidates participating in the assembly to break the 30 percent vote threshold needed to make the August primary ballot.

“The only thing the (CD-6) convention shows was that neither one was strong enough to deal a knockout punch to the other,” Zvonek said.

A message left with Armstrong manager Jack Stansbery on Monday morning seeking comment was not immediately returned.