La Plata County Commissioner Clyde Church formally announced his resignation June 21, but whispers of his plans had circulated for months.
Teal Lehto, chair of the La Plata Democrats, said she was informed of the possible resignation in February, shortly after she was appointed during the party’s reorganization.
Ted Holteen, county spokesman, also heard about the possibility months earlier, though it was never confirmed.
Several weeks before the announcement, Church notified members of the Democratic vacancy committee of his intent to step down, giving them time to prepare.
By the time Church submitted his formal resignation and the county made it public, the local Democratic Party was already deep into the process of setting up an appointment for his replacement.
Vacancy meeting results
The La Plata County Commissioner Vacancy Committee was scheduled to meet from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday to fill Commissioner Clyde Church’s seat. The meeting went past our deadline. Readers can find results from the meeting at durangoherald.com or in Friday’s edition of The Durango Herald.
Since the announcement went public, others have expressed interest and may run from the floor, Lehto said. She clarified that those individuals were given the same opportunity to submit promotional materials as the other candidates but declined.
“This is pretty standard course for something like this,” Lehto said. “As soon as there was even the possibility, we were notified as a party so that we could begin preparing for a vacancy committee.”
She said the early notice was necessary due to the amount of preparation required.
“This process takes a lot of work to run smoothly,” she said. “From our perspective, this has been a pretty rapid process.”
Under Colorado law, the political party of the resigning commissioner has 10 days to fill the seat once a formal announcement is made. If the committee is unable to meet that deadline, the decision falls to Gov. Jared Polis.
“We are following the normal procedures for a county vacancy,” Lehto said.
On June 18, four days before the public resignation, the La Plata County Democrats posted head shots, biographies and completed questionnaires for the three candidates seeking appointment – Robert Logan, Elizabeth Philbrick and Erica Henner Max – on its website.
The three candidates had all previously contacted the board about their intentions to run in the 2026 election, Lehto said. When Church’s resignation became imminent, the party reached out to them, she said.
Logan said several Democrats approached him in November, after his unsuccessful bid for CU regent, to see if he would be interested in running for county commissioner in 2026.
Conversations about the election and his candidacy became more serious in the months that followed, eventually including the possibility of Logan preparing for an earlier election as Church weighed resignation.
Logan said he doesn’t remember exactly when discussions about a potential appointment began. It may have been as early as February or as late as June, he said, unsure of the exact timing of when Lehto asked if he’d be willing to put his hat in the ring earlier than planned.
“I can't say that I remember the exact date or even the exact month that that particular conversation happened, but it was certainly more recent than it is late,” he said.
Philbrick said she had been asked to fill out the questionnaire posted to the Democratic website in preparation for the 2026 election.
“I put together the materials under the impression that I was filling them out for 2026,” Philbrick said.
She said that just like the rest of the public, she found out about Church’s resignation on June 21.
Henner Max echoed Philbrick’s timeline. She had been communicating with the Democrats about a 2026 candidacy, and while she had heard rumors circulating about the resignation, she was not officially informed and asked to run for appointment until June 21.
“That would be the appropriate way to do that – that we would be the last to know,” Henner Max said.
It’s a good sign that the local Democratic Party was fielding a well-rounded slate of candidates in preparation for Church’s resignation, Philbrick said.
“They're (the Democratic Party) looking for people all the time, looking for qualified candidates, and then they want to prepare those qualified candidates to run,” Philbrick said. “So, I guarantee you that the GOP party is currently looking for someone to run against, whoever it is that this party is about to appoint, and honestly, they would be in trouble if they weren't thinking this far in advance.”
Church did not make himself available for a prescheduled phone interview Tuesday for this story, and he did not respond to follow up attempts to reach him later in the day.
jbowman@durangoherald.com
An earlier version of this article erred by transposing Erica Henner Max’s last name.
