Local Democrats hire director, lose chairman

The El Paso County Democratic Party is looking for a new chairman.

Jason DeGroot resigned the top job last month and party leaders will meet Saturday to pick his successor. That new chairman will need to heal rifts caused by a reorganization that led to the party getting a full-time executive director to oversee fundraising and outreach efforts.

“These things happen,” DeGroot said Tuesday. “New people have come into the party with new energy and new ideas; that is going to cause some friction and some pain.”

Party activists James Tucker and Rita Ague claimed Tuesday DeGroot and other leaders overstepped their bounds by hiring an executive director while sending the party’s longtime office manager packing because the group could not afford both positions.

DeGroot said the tension of the change drove him to step down.

Another loyalist, former party chairman John Morris, said that while the change was the right move, the timing — just days ahead of the March 16 precinct caucuses — is lamentable.

Party leaders have long coveted having a full-time leader to build on gains Democrats made in 2008, when three Democrats were sent to the state General Assembly from what has long been the state’s most solidly conservative county.

The party announced on its Web site Monday that it had hired Christy Le Lait as executive director.

Tucker said the change was the subject of heated debate at a meeting last week. "This is a hostile environment," he said.

"They're not acting like Democrats," Ague said.

DeGroot said he hopes his absence from the chairmanship will calm people down.

"The party needed to be able to go forward and make real changes," he said.