A group of Col­orado Repub­li­cans intends to aim low this elec­tion sea­son — as in, low on the bal­lot, with a spe­cial focus on coun­ty races that typ­i­cal­ly don’t gen­er­ate flashy head­lines but may prove key to retain­ing and wield­ing GOP pow­er in a state with an increas­ing­ly blue Capitol.

This week marked the launch of a fundrais­ing com­mit­tee, dubbed Repub­li­can Com­mis­sion­ers for Col­orado, which boasts it will embark on an “aggres­sive cam­paign to aid coun­ty com­mis­sion­er can­di­dates finance their elections.”

“Its pur­pose is to ensure that our coun­ties pro­vide the pub­lic safe­ty, land use and trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture need­ed for strong local economies, while hold­ing back wrong-head­ed poli­cies from the state Capi­tol that will hurt our com­mu­ni­ties,” read a press release the group issued this week.

Depend­ing on who you ask, the effort either smacks of a des­per­ate attempt by the state’s Repub­li­cans to shore up what sup­port they can dur­ing a tumul­tuous elec­tion cycle or it rep­re­sents a cun­ning polit­i­cal play in the qui­eter cor­ri­dors of Colorado’s pow­er structure.

“This to me sounds like the last gasp of a once-for­mi­da­ble polit­i­cal par­ty,” said Min­di Had­dad, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic polit­i­cal strate­gist. “They’re scrap­ing the bot­tom of the bar­rel because that’s all that is avail­able to them now.”

Not so fast, said Dick Wad­hams, a long­time Repub­li­can strate­gist and for­mer head of the Col­orado GOP. With both leg­isla­tive cham­bers and the governor’s office under Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol and dim prospects of that chang­ing in Novem­ber, Repub­li­cans are right to chase down seats at the local lev­el, he said.

Com­mis­sion­ers have broad pow­er over land use deci­sions and region­al water projects, like the con­tro­ver­sial North­ern Inte­grat­ed Sup­ply Project, for which the Repub­li­can-dom­i­nat­ed Larimer Coun­ty board of com­mis­sion­ers approved a per­mit ear­li­er this month, Wad­hams said. There has also been vig­or­ous push­back from con­ser­v­a­tive Weld Coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers to the state’s 2019 oil and gas reform law, with local lead­ers chal­leng­ing state offi­cials over land-use pow­ers when it comes to sit­ing and approv­ing wells.

“Com­mis­sion­ers have more pow­er to influ­ence pub­lic pol­i­cy with­in their coun­ties than state leg­is­la­tors do,” he said. “It’s an off­set to the total Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol at the state level.”

But Repub­li­can Com­mis­sion­ers for Col­orado may already be off to a shaky start. After receiv­ing a press release about its launch, The Den­ver Post couldn’t reach a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the group will­ing to speak on the record despite more than a dozen attempts by phone and email. The group is led by for­mer state Sen. Kevin Grantham, now vying for a com­mis­sion­er seat in Fre­mont County.

And the group’s new web­site address showed only an error mes­sage as of Fri­day afternoon.

Polit­i­cal ana­lyst Eric Son­der­mann said Repub­li­can Com­mis­sion­ers for Col­orado “seems a day late and prob­a­bly a dol­lar short, giv­en that bal­lots are going out in a month or less.”

He said the stat­ed pur­pose of the group “is in keep­ing with what we’ve seen more and more out of both par­ties in recent cycles in tar­get­ing down-bal­lot races and form­ing fundrais­ing com­mit­tees express­ly focused on them.”

Joe Jack­son, spokesman for the Col­orado Repub­li­can Par­ty, said while the par­ty is not offi­cial­ly affil­i­at­ed with Repub­li­can Com­mis­sion­ers for Col­orado, it is work­ing on sup­port­ing GOP can­di­dates “at every lev­el.” To those declar­ing an ear­ly death to the Repub­li­can Par­ty in Col­orado in 2020, Jack­son point­ed to a poll released this week show­ing Repub­li­can Sen. Cory Gard­ner with­in 5 per­cent­age points of Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger John Hickenlooper.