The Colorado Republican Party said Tuesday night that it would withdraw from the GOP primary if former president Donald Trump remains off the state’s 2024 ballot in accordance with the Colorado supreme court’s ruling.
The Colorado GOP announced its decision on X, saying the party will instead “convert to a pure caucus system if this is allowed to stand.”
The social-media comment was made after Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he would “withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary ballot until Trump is also allowed to be on the ballot.” Ramaswamy also asked presidential hopefuls Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley to do the same, “or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver.”
Other Republicans and Trump allies also criticized the court’s decision. Former New Jersey governor Christie, for one, said he only wants voters, not courts, to prevent Trump from becoming president again. “I think it would cause a lot of anger in this country if people had the choice taken away from them,” Christie said at a campaign event on Tuesday.
State representative Dave Williams (R., Colo.), chairman of the Colorado GOP, denounced the “absurd” ruling. “I don’t care if it’s a Republican majority Supreme Court in the United States or if it’s a Democratic majority here in Colorado, we don’t feel that this is the right thing to do,” Williams told CNN.
In a 4–3 ruling, the Colorado supreme court decided that Trump is disqualified from holding the presidency again because he allegedly incited an insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, no person can assume public office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S.
The court stayed its decision until January 4 pending the Trump campaign’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. “We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these unAmerican lawsuits,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Colorado officials said the matter must be settled by January 5, the date by which the state must print its presidential-primary ballots. The Colorado Republican primary is scheduled for March 5.
The verdict comes after Colorado district judge Sarah Wallace dismissed the 14th Amendment challenge last month, concluding the so-called insurrection clause “did not intend to include the President as ‘an officer of the United States’ . . . [or] a person who had only taken the Presidential oath.”