Boulder County Republicans almost certainly won’t be fielding any candidates in this year’s elections for county government posts, county GOP chairwoman Ellyn Hilliard said Wednesday.
Boulder County Libertarians, however, will have candidates on the general-election ballot for two of those offices: Randy Luallin is running for the District 3 seat on the Board of County Commissioners, and Ralph Shnelvar for the county clerk and recorder’s job.
Republicans have until the close of business Thursday to have vacancy committees meet and name GOP candidates for this year’s primary and general election ballots.
No eligible GOP office-seekers emerged for county commissioner, county sheriff, county clerk and recorder, county treasurer, county coroner, county assessor or county surveyor during the Boulder County Republican Party’s March 29 assembly in Longmont.
That, however, left open the possibility that the county party, with its central committee meeting as a vacancy committee by the April 17 deadline, could still recruit and nominate a GOP candidate for the the June primary election ballot.
Hilliard, however, said on Wednesday that no would-be county government office-seekers from her party have stepped forward since last month and that it’s “highly, highly unlikely” any would do by the close of business Thursday.
“I don’t think there are going to be any,” Hilliard said.
While Democrats have won most of recent decades’ Boulder County contests, this would be the first time in eight years that no Republicans have run for any of the Boulder County government posts being filled in that year’s election. There were no GOP candidates for the county government seats up for election in 2006.
That, Hilliard said, may be because “people aren’t willing to take the kind of time it takes and raise the kind of money it takes” to defeat a Democrat — especially a Democratic incumbent — in a county where more than 40 percent of the registered voters are Democrats and only 18.6 percent are Republicans.
Hilliard said county Republican officials will likely encourage GOP voters to cast their general-election ballots for Libertarians or candidates unaffiliated with any political party in races where there’s no GOP candidate on the ballot.
This year’s contest for the District 3 Boulder County commissioner’s seat now features incumbent Lafayette Democrat Cindy Domenico, unaffiliated Niwot resident Kai Abelkis, who’s Boulder Community Hospital’s sustainability coordinator, and Louisville stone mason Luallin.
Louisville attorney Alan Rosenfeld, a county commissioner candidate who fell short of getting enough Democratic county assembly delegates’ votes on March 22 to advance to the primary ballot, said in an April 4 news release that he’s “seriously considering gathering petition signatures to continue (my) campaign” for the commissioner’s seat, “as a ‘Progressive Independent.'”
This will be Luallin’s sixth bid for the county commissioner’s office. He’s previously run for that seat as a write-in candidate, as an unaffiliated candidate and as a Libertarian.
Luallin said Wednesday that one of the major issues in this year’s contest will be the current county board’s decision to create a residential subdivision Local Improvement District and bill homeowners the bulk of the costs of rehabilitating their subdivision roads.
Real estate investor Shnelvar, a Longmont resident who’s chairman of the county Libertarian Party, is seeking to unseat County Clerk and Recorder Hillary Hall, the incumbent Boulder Democrat.
Shnelvar, who was the Colorado Libertarian Party’s candidate for governor in 2002 and the county party’s candidate for a commissioner’s seat in 2008, said Wednesday that one reason he’s running for the county clerk’s post is that “for the last 15 years, I have been an election transparency advocate” and that he objects to the way Hall’s office conducts the processing and counting of ballots.
Contact Times-Call staff writer John Fryar at 303-684-5211 or jfryar@times-call.com
