In October 1876, as Denver’s Rocky Mountain News looked ahead to what it called “our winter campaign,” the city was preparing for the inaugural state Legislature to convene in early November. The paper noted that many married members of the legislature were bringing their families to Denver, while others returning from summer mining camps sought the capital’s relative comfort. A busy social calendar of “hops,” concerts, and other nightly entertainments resumed, many hosted by Denver’s fraternal organizations and secret societies.
The late excitement over the first state elections had now passed, with Denver’s Republican establishment having done enough to avoid disaster against a Democratic Party that made a strong showing in southern Colorado and the mountain mining camps. Ex-territorial Gov. John Routt had been elected the Centennial State’s first chief executive, and the GOP-controlled Legislature would soon elect its first two U.S. senators, and award its three electoral votes in the 1876 presidential election – a one-time provision in the state constitution that underlined Republicans’ partisan motive for admitting Colorado to the union in the centennial year.
However, the Oct. 3 election had also set the stage for a controversy that would engulf state politics for the foreseeable future. Republican James Belford was confirmed as the winner of the race for Colorado’s at-large congressional seat for the remainder of the 44th Congress, but Democrats hoped to get revenge in a second election, scheduled for Nov. 7, for a full term in the 45th Congress, which was set to convene in March 1877. But now Republicans, flush with victory, said no such election could legally take place.
Though the Nov. 7 election had been called by the former Colorado Territory’s Republican-appointed secretary of state, and duly noticed by county officials, the state GOP argued that the authority to hold the election was vested in a state Legislature that hadn’t existed yet. Republicans announced Belford’s withdrawal from the contest and urged the party faithful to “take no part therein whatever.” “(Democratic candidate Thomas) Patterson and Judge Belford were supported for both the 44th and 45th congresses. … The people elected the one and defeated the other,” state GOP chair J.C. Wilson maintained in the Rocky Mountain News on Oct. 15. “To proceed, then, with an election which has no foundation in law, is not only to impose an unnecessary and heavy burden upon the people, but would also bring the character of our elections into contempt.”
