State Rep. Mike Lynch, the embattled top Colorado House Republican and congressional candidate whose 2022 drunken driving arrest was revealed last week, said Wednesday he was stepping down as minority leader.
Lynch made his announcement from the House floor, shortly after sending an email to the 18 other members of the Republican caucus. He is not resigning from the House overall. His decision came one week after The Denver Post first reported on his arrest, which hadn’t been known among most — if not all — of his GOP colleagues.
He narrowly survived a first no-confidence vote Monday and was facing a second one Thursday. But in his speech, Lynch said that efforts to oust him did not influence his decision.
“I wanted to be clear that I’m not stepping down because I won a close vote of no confidence. I’m not stepping down because a failed state party chair tried to influence the actions in this House,” he said from the House floor, referring to Colorado GOP chair Dave Williams, a former legislator who was present at a Tuesday meeting during which Republican legislators criticized Lynch.
“I am stepping down because it is the right thing to do,” Lynch said. “Because I’ve become a distraction for my caucus and that is getting in the way of the hard work.”
Lynch was not immediately available for an interview. A third-term Wellington legislator, he has served as minority leader since November 2022, taking over after the death of then-Minority Leader Hugh McKean.
He is also running in a crowded primary for the 4th Congressional District, a race that includes U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert.
Considered a relative moderate in a caucus that’s long been split along ideological fault lines, Lynch’s position as the top Republican in the House has been on the brink of collapse for several days amid fallout from the news about his arrest.
On Jan. 17, The Denver Post reported that Lynch had been arrested for drunken driving and for a weapons charge in September 2022. During that altercation, he briefly reached for a handgun in his pocket and asked the Colorado State Patrol trooper arresting him to keep the incident quiet. He later pleaded guilty, and he remains on probation through June.
His arrest was a secret in the Capitol, even among his Republican colleagues. While the charges were pending in Larimer County, he was elected minority leader.
Now a new one will be selected. Lynch’s assistant minority leader, Colorado Springs Rep. Rose Pugliese, confirmed Wednesday that she would seek to move up. If she’s selected, that would open up further jockeying for who would replace her in the No. 2 slot.
Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican, said he’s considering seeking the minority leader post, too. House Republicans will gather early Thursday morning to select Lynch’s replacement.
Soper said he didn’t think Lynch should’ve stepped down from leadership, given that he’d taken accountability through the criminal justice system. Pugliese said only that Lynch did what he thought was best for the caucus.
Other Colorado lawmakers, including those serving in leadership, have dealt with varying fallout from DUI arrests.
In 2016, Rep. Dan Pabon’s arrest for drunken driving in downtown Denver quickly hit the news — including his attempt to use his position to get out of it. The Democrat, then serving as speaker pro tem, the No. 2 position in the House, gave a tearful apology on the House floor but refused to resign his position.
In 2015, The Post reported that new Senate President Bill Cadman, a Republican, had been arrested for driving drunk in Douglas County in late 2004, when he was a state representative. The decade-old arrest didn’t affect his leadership position.
Back in 1999, House Speaker Russell George, a Republican from Rifle, announced his own news in a confessional floor speech: He had been arrested three days earlier in Douglas County for driving drunk. The media reported that his emotional speech, in which he took responsibility, elicited tears from some lawmakers.
After, his colleagues from both parties stood and applauded. He continued serving in the top post.
In the last week, it was Lynch’s decision not to reveal his own arrest for more than 15 months that perhaps most rankled his Republican colleagues, some whom had previously been critical of Lynch’s leadership.
The fallout from Lynch’s arrest becoming public has again revealed simmering and long-standing ideological divisions among House Republicans. While the caucus generally votes in lockstep, they split roughly between right-wing members who favor more obstructionist tactics and a more institutional faction willing to work with the chamber’s Democratic supermajority.
Pointing to Lynch’s failure to disclose his arrest to colleagues, right-wing members of the caucus moved to oust the minority leader from leadership at a pair of contentious meetings on Monday.
Lynch told his colleagues that he didn’t believe his arrest had negatively impacted his ability to serve as minority leader. But three members of his caucus openly called on him to step down, in part because they felt the arrest had been hidden and also because they felt they were losing a moral high ground to Democrats — who until recently had been plagued with media reports about their own internal turmoil.
Democratic House Speaker Julie McCluskie, for instance, told reporters on Tuesday that Republicans needed to get their house in order.
Lynch narrowly survived a 9-9 no-confidence vote Monday, which did not include conservative Republican and Williams ally Rep. Stephanie Luck, who recently had a baby and was excused from House floor work. Lynch’s critics attempt to meet in caucus again Tuesday, but Lynch and several other Republican lawmakers refused to attend.
Williams, who is running for a separate congressional seat and has been critical of the bloc of Republican leaders that Lynch represents, sat in the back of the room during that gathering and later called out questions to Re[p. Scott Bottoms, a Colorado Springs Republican, that were critical of Lynch.
Amid mounting criticism within the caucus, Rep. Richard Holtorf, the House minority whip, announced that the caucus would meet Thursday morning for a second no-confidence vote.That meeting will now be used to select Lynch’s replacement, and there may be further upheaval as a consequence. If Pugliese is selected, a new assistant minority leader will be needed.
Some Republican legislators have privately called for a complete overhaul of their leadership team, including Holtorf (who’s also running for Congress in the 4th Congressional District) and caucus chair Rep. Mary Bradfield, who oversaw the contentious and poorly organized first confidence vote on Monday.
Soper said a complete overhaul may be too debilitating to the caucus, even this early in the session. He and Pugliese both said the caucus needed to pull together.
Rep. Ron Weinberg, a Loveland Republican, said he expected the minority leader race to be contested, and he lamented the spiraling infighting among legislators.
“Whatap there to say?” he said. “Just when you think things cant get any worse in this building.”
Staff writer Nick Coltrain contributed to this story.
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