Dan Maes, the scandal-ridden Republican candidate for governor in 2010, proved so unpopular that he got only 11 percent of the vote that November. But though he lost mightily to both Democrat John Hickenlooper and Republican-turned-Constitutionalist Tom Tancredo, he unintentionally handed El Paso County a victory of its own.

Thanks to Maes, El Paso County this year has far and away the most delegates of any county at the coming state assembly. Delegates in the state Republican Party are apportioned to counties based on the number of votes cast in the largest election in the prior cycle, and that was the gubernatorial race in 2010.

Tancredo took 36 percent and Hickenlooper got 51 percent of the vote to Maes’ 11 percent. But because party-loyal El Paso County Republicans cast more votes for Maes than any other county, they were rewarded by the party’s system: one delegate for every 55 votes cast.

El Paso County wound up with 642 of the roughly 3,800 delegates to the state assembly. Its closest competitor is Jefferson County, with 283 delegates.

“We have a ton of influence this year, and the other counties barely have any in comparison,” said El Paso County Treasurer Bob Balink, a longtime El Paso Republican.

The 642 will be elected at the county assembly on March 24 at Liberty High School. The state assembly will be April 14 at the Ritchie Center’s Magness Arena, at the University of Denver.

The assembly this year isn’t as significant as it was two years ago, because there aren’t any statewide candidates to pick, but that doesn’t mean state Republicans won’t take the assembly seriously. What’s at stake is who goes to the national convention in Tampa this August.

There will be 69 Colorado Republicans sent to the national assembly, and the competition for those seats will be fierce.

Aside from Jefferson, several other counties in the Denver metro area also have a good amount — Arapahoe has 276, Douglas has 238 — but El Paso County’s portion means that anyone from the Colorado Springs area will have a much better chance of being named a delegate to the national assembly.

Though no delegate at the state assembly is required to support delegate candidates from their county, many of them end up voting for a person they know, simply because they recognize them, said state party chairman Ryan Call.

“The reality is that El Paso County is going to have a disproportionately large voice at the assembly,” said Call. “They might be more inclined to vote for Wayne Williams, for example, because they’re more familiar with him. Or John Suthers. Or Bob Balink.”

Williams is El Paso County Clerk and Recorder, and Suthers, the state attorney general, hails from Colorado Springs.

Suthers and Balink are already running to be delegates, and Williams said he’s thinking about it. “It’s not just where you’re from.

It’s also who knows you,” said Williams. “So someone from El Paso County who’s been active, they’re likely to fare better with delegates from here. And someone who’s been active statewide is likely to do better. So when (former governor) Bill Owens ran, he was elected. When John Suthers ran before, he was elected.”

Both Balink and Williams have also been delegates to past national assemblies — they both went in 2008, and Balink was also a delegate in 1972 for Richard Nixon.

Not all of Colorado’s 69 seats are up for grabs. Three automatically go to the state chair (Call), and the two Colorado Republican National Committee members, former state treasurer Mark Hillman and longtime GOP activist Lily Nuñez.

Of the other 66, three delegates and three alternates are elected from each of Colorado’s seven congressional districts. So that’s another 42 delegate seats taken.

The remaining 24 are then elected during the state assembly. Which means that El Paso County delegates have significant power in choosing who gets those 24 slots.

That doesn’t mean El Paso County is omnipotent. Williams pointed out that taken together, the metro counties — Jefferson, Arapahoe, Douglas, Adams, and Denver — have more than 1,100 delegates.“While it is helpful to be from a large county, it is not a determinant,” Williams noted. “Denver metro tends to fare fairly well because people in one county tend to know people in the surrounding counties.”

The numbers are perhaps secondary, though, to a broader effect Maes had on the state party, said Call.

Maes became the party nominee in 2010 even after campaign finance missteps had already begun nipping at his heels, but he overtook establishment favorite Scott McInnis. McInnis, a former congressman, admitted plagiarizing for several articles he’d written.

Maes was nominated by the party that summer, but went into a tailspin after it came out that he never worked as an undercover cop with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which he claimed he had.

Those gaffes and more led Tancredo, a former Republican congressman, to enter the race. He split the Republican vote and both lost.

But if Maes had won less than 10 percent of the vote, Colorado Republicans would have lost their status as a majority party in Colorado.

“We’re going to be nominating a president, and I think the Maes episode will be on the minds of the delegates, that their votes could have a profound effect,” Call said.

—Contact John Schroyer: 476-4825Twitter @JohnschroyerFacebook Gazette John Schroyer

Air Force’s Paul Weisgarber (10/hidden) celebrates with the fans and fellow teammates Ryan Timar (13), Jason Fabian (16), Tim Kirby (25), and Scott Mathis (23) after scoring the empty-net goal in the third period at Blue Cross Arena in the Atlantic Hockey Association semifinals. Photo by Nick Serrata, Special to The Gazette