GOP Candidates Take Shots at Hanks, Marking the Beginning of a Long, Crowded, Divisive GOP Senate Primary
Denver, CO – Former corrupt El Paso County GOP Chair Eli Bremer and inexperienced political newcomer Erik Aadland are already attacking election conspiracy theorist Ron Hanks for his launch video where he blows up a copying machine labeled “Dominion Voting Machine” with a semi automatic rifle – marking the beginning of a long, divisive primary for the GOP.
Bremer and Aadland rushed to conservative radio the day after Hanks launched his video to criticize him. Bremer also insulted the 2010 slate of Republican candidates, which includes Congressman Ken Buck, for losing the Senate race because they weren’t “serious” and threw a “temper tantrum.” And Aadland said Hanks “hasn't just muddied the waters. He's bloodied the waters.”
The chaos doesn’t stop there. The same week Hanks launched his video based on conspiracy, Colorado Times Recorder, 9News, Westword, and the Colorado Sun reported Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown was the leader of an organized election conspiracy group that has a militia arm. With Hanks being the Senate candidate catching people’s attention and with Burton Brown at the helm of the Colorado GOP, it’s clear Donald Trump’s Big Lie runs deep within the party.
Colorado Times Recorder reported Bremer’s critical interview of Hanks and you can read excerpts below:
One of Hanks’s opponents in the Republican primary is former Olympian Eli Bremer, from Colorado Springs. In a radio interview on Thursday on Colorado’s 710 KNUS, Bremer dismissed Hanks’ video as a stunt that should not be taken seriously.
“This is not a serious attempt to unseat an unpopular Democratic senator and flip the United States Senate right,” Bremer said. “We need to come to terms with the fact that we’re going to have to be a serious campaign here in Colorado.”
But Bremer’s own stance on whether the election was stolen from Trump is not clear. He’s clearly stated that he thinks Colorado’s 2020 election was legitimate but has stopped short of making the same statement about the national election.
In today’s KNUS interview, Bremer said on air: “And we need to, first of all, understand that we lost in Colorado, not because votes got switched because, at this point, I think there’s so little evidence of that that we should be able to move on from that unless some bombshell hit.”
In a Sep. 28 appearance on 710 KNUS Bremer similarly omitted any explicit mention of the presidential election as he explained his path from initially doubting the results of the 2020 election to believing it was fair — at least in Colorado.
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In today’s radio interview Bremer warned that furthering QAnon conspiracy theories — which have been roundly debunked by fact-checkers — could be detrimental to Colorado’s Republican Party.
“There’s a lot of issues that Colorado Republicans have strong agreements with the electorate on,” Bremer said. “We need to fight for the heart and soul of the Colorado electorate and not engage in QAnon conspiracy theories. … So as Republicans, frankly, we need to quit our whining and we need to start our fighting.”
In the interview today, Bremer emphasized the importance of Republicans connecting with voters through issues other than election security. The two issues he mentioned were the national debt ceiling and transgender athletes competing in sports, an issue Bremer has made a centerpiece of his campaign.
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“We have been failing for years here in Colorado, and we’ve been failing because of actions like this,” Bremer said, referring to Hanks’ video. “We need to ask ourselves the question why did the electorate not agree with us? Because if we don’t learn from our mistakes, then we are not going to have the right to govern again.”
Read more in the Colorado Times Recorder.
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