The four neighboring Lakewood couples gathered for dinner and watched the Republican presidential debates for months, rotating as hosts and favoring various candidates until December, when a show of hands revealed the group tipped toward Donald Trump.

“As we learned, as we discussed, things took a direction,” recalls Charles Patricoff, a 63-year-old retired aerospace worker. “It wasn’t anybody getting up and making persuasive speeches. After the debate parties were over, we just talked as friends and neighbors and things went in that direction — almost a natural evolution.”

For Patricoff and his watch-party neighbors, as well as Trump supporters across Colorado, the connection to the billionaire businessman only solidified in the months that followed, despite increasing broadside attacks on Trump from the GOP establishment.

“It feels like an ambush,” Patricoff says. “In fact, it’s basically confirming the things I suspected about their true colors all along, that maintaining power to them is more important than the will of the Republican electorate.”

Read more at DenverPost.com.