A group of Colorado Republicans voted Saturday to remove Dave Williams as chairman of the state party, a gathering that Williams and his allies denounced as “fraudulent” and “illegal.”

Republicans cheered as the results were announced at a Brighton church where Williams’ opponents had gathered, despite warnings from the state Republican Party that their actions had no authority and would be ignored.

About 88% of the 182.16 Central Committee members present voted for Williams’ removal, easily exceeding the 60% required under the state party’s bylaws to remove an official. (Some members have fractions of a vote.)

Williams did not attend the meeting.

With almost identical majorities, Republicans also voted to dismiss Williams’ deputies, Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman and State Party Secretary Anna Ferguson.

The vote came 48 days before mail-in ballots are scheduled to begin in Colorado’s general election, an election in which Republicans hope to regain ground after suffering historic losses at the ballot box in recent years.

In an email sent after the vote, the state Republican Party called Saturday’s meeting a “fraudulent” event called by a “fringe element of our state party.”

“These people are definitely making things up as they go along, but we will not be deterred,” the party’s email said, adding that the meeting organizers had “proven that they do not care if Trump is elected this November.”

Williams told Colorado Politics after the vote that he would rely on a decision by a Republican National Committee representative who had declared that the meeting called by Williams’ critics was “illegitimate and any action taken there was or would be null and void.”

Earlier this week, organizers of the meeting released a statement from another lawmaker who has also worked with the RNC, who said Saturday’s meeting was called in accordance with party bylaws and that the lawmaker appeared to be authorized to conduct official business.

Republicans on both sides said Saturday they did not expect a quick resolution to the dispute and may have to call on the national party to find a solution.

Todd Watkins, vice chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party, told Colorado Politics that he formally called a meeting of the state party’s central committee after Williams and other state Republican officials failed to comply with a petition he submitted in June calling for the party to schedule a meeting within 30 days to consider removing Williams.

Williams and his supporters claimed the application did not meet the requirements and the state board declared it “null and void” last month.

However, a motion passed by Central Committee members at Saturday’s meeting overturned the Executive Committee’s decision, paving the way for a later vote on Williams’ removal.

A majority of Colorado’s Republican congressional candidates earlier this week called for Williams to resign or be removed from office. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, the only Republican candidate running for re-election to the House this year, made a separate demand last month, urging Williams to support Republican candidates or face removal by the party’s central committee.

Saturday’s meeting was the latest in a series of contentious central committee meetings called by feuding factions of the state party, including a sparsely attended gathering under a bridge in the southwestern part of the state called last month by Williams’ supporters, who urged Republicans not to attend.

Williams and his surrogates claim that the state Central Committee meeting they called for Aug. 31 in Castle Rock is the only legitimate meeting. This week they urged Republicans to skip Saturday’s meeting and insisted that any business discussed at the meeting would be disregarded.

In late July, Watkins and other organizers of the initiative to replace Williams canceled a meeting they had called at the Brighton church where Saturday’s vote was to take place after a district judge issued a temporary restraining order sought by Williams and the Colorado Republican Party.

Instead, Williams’ critics who called the derailed meeting announced that they would instead hold a “rally” at the same location, with county officials and party candidates taking turns to take the microphone to air complaints about the state party’s leadership.

Arapahoe County District Court Judge Thomas W. Henderson lifted his preliminary injunction a few days later, ruling that he had issued the original injunction based on false statements made by Williams and that the courts did not have jurisdiction over the internal party dispute.

The Brighton meeting came days after Henderson rejected a request from Williams and the state party to issue another injunction while the case was still on appeal, arguing, among other things, that replacing Republican leadership in the middle of a campaign would create chaos and hinder the party’s efforts to elect Republicans.

Williams appealed the district judge’s ruling this week and requested a preliminary injunction from the Colorado State Court of Appeals. However, as of Saturday morning, the appeals court had not yet acted on the motion, allowing the session to proceed virtually.

Critics accuse Williams, a former state representative from Colorado Springs, of using party resources to support his unsuccessful congressional campaign in the 5th Congressional District in El Paso County.

In his second attempt to fill the seat held by outgoing U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, Williams lost the Republican primary by a wide margin to conservative activist and former radio host Jeff Crank, despite winning the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.

Crank was among the congressional candidates who wrote several letters calling on Williams to resign.

Some Republicans have been calling for Williams to resign since January, when he launched his campaign for Congress and the state party abandoned its longstanding policy of neutrality in contested primaries.

But the organized effort to fire Williams ran into turmoil in June when the state Republican Party attacked the LGBTQ community and Pride Month, sending emails and social media posts that included orders to “burn all #Pride flags.”

Williams and his supporters have repeatedly stressed that his combative approach to politics was exactly what Republicans wanted when the Central Committee elected him party chairman in March 2023.

This developing story will be updated.