William Forrester Owens is an American former politician who served as the 40th Governor of Colorado, from 1999 to 2007. A member of the Republican Party, he was re-elected in 2002, amassing 62.6% of the vote, the largest Republican share of the vote in state history. As of 2024, he is the last Republican to serve as Governor of Colorado.
Mark Raymond Kennedy is an American businessman, politician, and university administrator. Following a career as a business executive, he was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Minnesota from 2001 to 2007. Kennedy did not seek reelection in 2006, instead running in the 2006 election for U.S. Senate. He lost to Democratic–Farmer–Labor nominee Amy Klobuchar.
John Michael Luttig is an American lawyer and jurist who served as a U.S. circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006. Luttig resigned his judicial appointment in 2006 to become the general counsel of Boeing, a position he held until 2019.
The Colorado Supreme Court is the highest court in the U.S. state of Colorado. Located in Denver, the court was established in 1876. It consists of a Chief Justice and six Associate Justices who are appointed by the Governor of Colorado from a list of candidates approved by a state judicial commission. Each justice faces a retention election two years after his or her appointment and every ten years thereafter, with mandatory retirement at age 72.
John Charles Eastman is an American lawyer and former academic. He is the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public-interest law firm affiliated with the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. He is a former professor and former dean at Chapman University School of Law. He ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for California's 34th congressional district in 1990, and for California Attorney General in 2010. He is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Eastman has been criminally indicted in Georgia and is facing disbarment proceedings in California for his role in assisting then-president Donald Trump's attempts to undo the 2020 election results, including by pressuring vice president Mike Pence to reject the votes of electors from crucial swing states that Joe Biden won while certifying the 2020 United States presidential election. He is believed to be one of the six co-conspirators listed in the Justice Department’s indictment of Trump.
Michael Harold Coffman is an American politician, businessman, and veteran of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps serving as Mayor of Aurora, Colorado since 2019. A Republican, Coffman served as the U.S. representative for Colorado's 6th congressional district for five terms, as well as Secretary of State of Colorado and Colorado State Treasurer.
Heidi Ganahl is an American businesswoman, entrepreneur, author, and formerly an elected member of the University of Colorado Board of Regents. She is the founder and former CEO of Camp Bow Wow, an international pet care franchise. In November 2016, she was elected Regent of the University of Colorado. As of 2024 she is the last Republican to hold statewide office in Colorado.
Jocelyn Benson is an American academic administrator and politician serving as the 43rd Secretary of State of Michigan since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she is a former dean of Wayne State University Law School, a co-founder of the Military Spouses of Michigan, and a board member of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality. Benson is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.
Kenneth Robert Buck is an American lawyer and politician who has represented Colorado's 4th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives since 2015. Buck served as chair of the Colorado Republican Party, from 2019 to 2021. Formerly the District Attorney for Weld County, Colorado, Buck ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2010, narrowly losing to Democrat Michael Bennet.
Cory Scott Gardner is an American attorney and politician who served as a United States senator from Colorado from 2015 to 2021. A Republican, he was the U.S. representative for Colorado's 4th congressional district from 2011 to 2015 and a member of the Colorado House of Representatives from 2005 to 2011.
Allison Lynn Hartwell Eid is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. She previously served as an associate justice of the Colorado Supreme Court.
Joseph D. Neguse is an American lawyer and politician serving as the U.S. representative for Colorado's 2nd congressional district since 2019. The district is based in Boulder and includes many of Denver's northwestern suburbs, as well as Fort Collins. A member of the Democratic Party, he was a regent of the University of Colorado from 2008 to 2015. Neguse is the first Eritrean-American elected to the United States Congress and Colorado's first black member of Congress.
Ronna Romney McDaniel is an American political strategist who served as chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 2017 until her resignation in 2024. A member of the Republican Party and the Romney family, she was chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 2015 to 2017. During McDaniel’s tenure as chair of the RNC, the Republican Party had a net loss of eight governorships, four seats in the United States Senate, and 20 seats in the House of Representatives, and the presidency. In December 2022, Axios wrote that McDaniel "has thus far failed to preside over a single positive election cycle."
Melissa Hart is a justice of the Colorado Supreme Court.
Eric Herschmann is an American political advisor and attorney who served as a senior advisor to former President Donald Trump.
After Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, Republican nominee and then-incumbent president Donald Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election, with support and assistance from his campaign, proxies, political allies, and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the January 6 United States Capitol attack by Trump supporters, which was widely described as an attempted coup d'état. One week later, Trump was impeached for incitement of insurrection but was acquitted by the Senate by a vote of 57–43, 10 votes short of the 67 votes required to convict him.
Jenna Lynn Ellis is an American conservative lawyer who was a member of Donald Trump's 2020 re-election campaign's legal team. She is a former deputy district attorney in Weld County, Colorado. During the Trump presidency, she presented herself as a "constitutional law attorney" during cable news appearances, though The New York Times reported that her background did not reflect such expertise and The Wall Street Journal reported that she had no history in any federal cases.
The Eastman memos, also known as the "coup memo", are documents by John Eastman, an American law professor retained by then-President Donald Trump advancing the fringe legal theory that a U.S. Vice President has unilateral authority to reject certified State electors. This would have the effect of nullifying an election in order to produce an outcome personally desired by the Vice President, such as a result in the Vice President's own party's favor, including retaining himself as Vice President, or if the Vice President is himself the presidential candidate, then to unilaterally make himself president.
Gregory Jacob is an American lawyer who was legal counsel to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during the administration of Donald Trump. He is currently a partner in the Washington office of the law firm, O'Melveny & Myers, specializing in ERISA matters.
Following the results of the 2020 United States presidential election, an obstruction scheme was devised by outgoing 45th U.S. president Donald Trump and his allies in seven states, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico, to create and submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment that falsely asserted Trump had won the electoral college vote in those states. The intent of the scheme was to pass the fraudulent certificates to then-vice president Mike Pence in the hope he would count them, rather than the authentic certificates, and thus overturn Joe Biden's victory. This effort helped form a fringe legal theory outlined by Trump attorney John Eastman in the Eastman memos, which claimed the vice president has constitutional discretion to swap official electors with an alternate slate during the certification process, thus changing the outcome of the electoral college vote and the overall winner of the presidential race. The scheme came to be known as the Pence Card. By 2023, many individuals in several states had been indicted for their alleged involvement, with other investigations underway.
