The embattled chair of the Delta County GOP resigned Thursday night, a month after a racist post on her Facebook page drew national attention and calls for her ouster.
In early June, the NAACP Colorado State Conference demanded that Delta County Republican Party Chair Linda Sorenson, who also served as GOP chair of the 3rd Congressional District, “resign — or be removed by party leaders” after news broke about what the civil rights organization termed “a horrifically racist photo” Sorenson shared on her personal Facebook page.
A Delta County Republican official had earlier blamed a hacker for the posting, a graphic depicting a smiling Ronald Reagan bottle-feeding his chimpanzee co-star Bonzo in a1951 movie. “I’ll be damned … Reagan used to babysit Obama!” the graphic read.
In a letter delivered to the Delta County Republican Central Committee late Thursday and obtained by The Colorado Statesman, Sorenson wrote, “After meeting with the Accountability Committee this evening, Sheriff McKee recommended I resign.”
She concluded: “I resign my position of County Chairman as of 7:45 PM, June 30, 2016.”
Delta County Sheriff Fred McKee at a closed-door meeting attended by Colorado GOP chairman Steve House earlier in June proposed that the county party establish a committee tasked with investigating the incident, saying he had been hearing from local Republicans “concerned about our reputation,” according to an account in the Delta County Independent.
The local party’s accountability committee had until the end of the month to complete its investigation and deliver a report.
Sorenson didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Statesman.
Before he met with Sorenson and other local Republicans on June 6, House told The Statesman he expected the meeting — held while House was on a tour to meet with state Republicans — would “yield a resolution on the future of the Republican Party leadership in Delta County.”
A state party spokesman emphasized that House didn’t intend to ask Sorenson to resign, but House added, “To be clear, we do not support any action that is racially insensitive by any member of the Colorado Republican Party.”
Although another Delta County GOP official maintained to a local newspaper that Sorenson was the victim of a hacker, Sorenson had told left-leaning blogger Jason Salzman that she’d meant the posting as a joke. “Sure it is, Jesus,” she said, according to a recording of the telephone interview posted online by Salzman at his BigMedia.org blog.
“I really don’t care if people are offended by it,” Sorenson said. “Un-friend me. Stop looking at me on Facebook.”
But that wasn’t how the president of the NAACP Colorado Montana Wyoming State Conference responded.
“There is no room in Colorado politics for the kind of blatant racism expressed by the chair of the Delta County Republican Party,” said Rosemary Lytle, who demanded that Sorenson to quit her post or that Republicans force her from office.
Sorenson issued a statement apologizing for the incident on June 7, the day after the meeting with House and other Delta County Republicans, but first she lashed out in the statement at what she termed the “‘gotcha’ game” of politics “intend[ed] to ruin a person’s name, reputation, and position of leadership.”
“From one moment to the next, I’m national news,” she wrote. “The vitriol and hatred that has been directed at me has been nothing short of stunning. But anyone paying attention these days knows that the left is only about tolerance when they’re demanding that YOU tolerate their latest nutty idea, and if you don’t like it, then you’re automatically a ‘hater’, a ‘bigot’, and a ‘racist’.”
She added: “I admit saying to the blogger that; ‘I don’t care if you’re offended’, however I do care very much if anyone else was offended. Please forgive me for being insensitive and not thinking of others in the heat of the moment.”
According to the GOP’s bylaws for the 3rd Congressional District, CD officers must also be executive officers from their respective counties, so Sorenson automatically lost the congressional district office as soon as she resigned as county chair, .
A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, who represents the 3rd Congressional District, said the Cortez Republican condemned Sorenson’s post but was focused on defeating Democratic challenger Gail Schwartz and wouldn’t “insert himself” in party politics.
“Congressman Tipton reiterates his previous comment that racism has no place in the Republican Party. He condemns any comments, social media posts or statements that have any racist connotations,” campaigns spokesman Michael Fortney told The Statesman.
