Things are starting to add up for Colorado’s chairman of the Republican Party, and not in a good way.
Dave Williams has had more missteps in his first year as chairman than any in recent memory. And not just the regular petty stuff thrown at Republicans by hateful Democrats.
Now the noise is coming from within the GOP, and it’s gotten louder since Williams decided to run for an open congressional seat and use party resources to prop up his candidacy against other Republican candidates.
News broke this week that Williams’ family business has relied on trade with China recording nearly 1,100 imports over a decade.
That’s according to Shaun Boyd with CBS Colorado, who uncovered the trade records from U.S. Customs listing the imports through shipping containers to MKW Global Sourcing.
All of the trade data is listed on her report linked here, and it’s worrisome for any Republican running for office in a post COVID world.
Williams family dissolved the business after COVID in 2022. Boyd reports:
Williams says they wanted to retire, but the tariffs Trump imposed on China starting in 2018 appear to have impacted the company’s import business. Before the tariffs, MKW made nearly 300 Chinese import transactions a month. In 2020, it made just nine. And by 2022, it went out of business.
So his company was put out of business by Trump’s tariffs?
Next time, try buying American.
No wonder Republicans are starting to ask each other if they inadvertently elected a RINO to helm the state GOP.
Williams isn’t talking about this report, or the criminal complaint lodged against him earlier this week that he used internal party access to obtain delegate contact information to start campaigning right after the caucus was held.
No other candidate in the 5th District congressional race was given early access to the critical data. When candidate Joshua Griffin asked for the information after Williams’ blast email to delegates, he was told it was not yet available.
In addition to Griffin and Williams, other candidates running for the seat being vacated by Doug Lamborn include Jeff Crank, state Sen. Bob Gardner, and former state Rep. Douglas Bruce.
Colorado Politics reported on the criminal complaint, and had this reaction from Crank:
“Dave is a hypocrite,” says Crank. “He’s made his whole career off of selling cheap Chinese products then he runs off and tells everyone he’s Mister America First.”
So awkward.