By admin 
A judge Friday ruled that the state’s Libertarian Party can put another secretary of state candidate on November’s ballot after the party’s original candidate dropped out a day after the deadline to replace him.
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The Libertarian Party of Colorado rushed to name Sean Vadney as their replacement candidate in the days after Alex Astley bowed out. Astley’s late withdrawal fueled speculation in the party about whether he intended to drop out all along to help the candidacy of James Wiley, a former Libertarian who is running as a Republican.
Astley dropped out of the race Aug. 26, 69 days before the election. Election rules require minor party candidates to drop out no later than 70 days ahead of the Nov. 3 election in order to be replaced.
Another rule says minor parties have until 64 days before the election to ask for a replacement candidate. The Libertarian Party met that second deadline but its request Monday to put Vadney on the ballot was denied by the Secretary of State’s Office because Astley had missed the other deadline. Both the Libertarians and the Secretary of State’s Office asked a judge to decide whether Vadney could appear on the ballot.
Denver District Judge Adam J. Espinosa ruled that the party had substantially complied with election rules and found that adding Vadney now would not prevent the Secretary of State’s Office from preparing the ballot. Friday is the deadline for the ballot’s lineup to be finalized.
Barring Vadney would prevent Colorado’s approximately 33,000 active Libertarian voters from being able to vote for their preferred candidate, whom the party nominated as quickly as possible, Espinosa said.
He said that would get in the way of the law’s intent “to ensure eligible electors have ballot access.” The ruling cited previous cases that have established a liberal interpretation of election rules that favor voters’ rights.
Nicholas Sarwark, the Libertarian Party’s lawyer, described Colorado’s approach as “the tie goes to the voter,” borrowing a phrase from baseball.
“Never gonna give you up!”
Astley’s motto while running for secretary of state was “Astley is never gonna give you up!” It was a reference to the 1980s hit by singer-songwriter Rick Astley.
But some party members suspect he Rickrolled them with his decision to exit the race when he did.
Astley, a political newcomer and electrical engineer from Holyoke, cited his day job and failure to generate enough support among Libertarians in his withdrawal letter.
Astley, who became a Libertarian last year after being an unaffiliated voter, told The Sun he started thinking seriously about dropping out of the secretary of state’s race in mid- to late-August. He said he knew there was a deadline to drop out and have his party replace him, but didn’t fully consider the implications of it. He said he was busy and had to figure out how to go about withdrawing from the race, calling the timing of his withdrawal “incidental.”
He denied running with the intention of dropping out. He said he wanted to run and try to win after hearing people being encouraged to run at the party’s April assembly with the promise that they wouldn’t win anyway.
“I wasn’t sure I could win, but I didn’t like planning to fail,” he said.
He started to have his doubts about his candidacy after only about 10% of the approximately 33,000 active registered Libertarians in the state returned their ballots in the June 30 primary.
“I went in thinking ‘I’m going to try to win or make a big splash,’” said Astley, who called himself a political novice.
“Suspicious” timing
The Libertarian Party has been subject to plenty of drama in recent years, which has fueled speculation about Astley’s motives.
A takeover by a faction of more conservative, MAGA-leaning Libertarians, known as the Mises Caucus, named for the Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises, around 2022 led to the party asking Republican candidates to sign pledges promising to uphold libertarian ideals. In return, the Libertarian Party agreed not to run candidates in races against GOP candidates who had signed such “liberty pledges.” Wiley was a member of the Mises Caucus until leaving the party last year.
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The Mises Caucus lost power in the state party after President Donald Trump won reelection in 2024, said Joe Johnson, the party’s campaigns director. The party later denounced liberty pledges and said they would no longer be honored.
Last fall, Johnson said he learned that some party members were talking about running candidates with the intention of having them drop out later, to help Republican candidates running in the race. So at the party’s statewide assembly in April, he asked Astley, whom he had never met before, if he planned to run to stay in the race to the end. He said Astley said “yes.”
“I won’t try to pretend to know his heart or his mind. All I will say is his timing is suspicious,” Johnson said.
Some also saw evidence of coordination in a photo that Astley posted of the two together in May at a Wiley campaign event in Holyoke, each one holding the other’s campaign signs.
Sarwark, the chair of the Libertarian Party’s national committee from 2014 to 2020, said the “Y’s” at the end of each of their names are the same font, with a spike at the bottom. He thinks they were signaling what was to come.
“They want to get caught because they want credit for doing it so they leave these little bread crumbs around,” he said.
Astley said Wiley had invited him to the event and he wanted to network, to find out more about other possible secretary of state issues and to get increased voter interest through social media posts about the meeting. He said he was also invited to attend an event in Holyoke earlier in May with the Forward Party candidate for secretary of state, Celeste Landry, which he posted about on Facebook.
Astley posted his withdrawal letter on social media Sunday, the same day that Wiley put out a news release saying that Astley had been encouraged to drop out because Wiley had signed a liberty pledge to prevent a “Libertarian spoiler” in the secretary of state’s race.
Wiley said Astley asked him to agree to other things not named in the standard liberty pledge. He said candidates are still free to ask candidates to sign liberty pledges no matter what the party says about them.
Wiley deferred questions about the timing of Astley’s withdrawal to Astley, but said it seemed “precisely timed.”
“If you’re willing to form a liberty coalition, then that is the outcome you need to prevent spoilers,” Wiley said, referring to the coalition he hopes to build among voters from various parties.
Wiley is an election conspiracy theorist who has no experience running elections and has never won elected office. He advocates for hand-counting all ballots; eliminating the state’s voter rolls and starting over; and requiring voters to cast ballots in person on a single day and show ID before doing so.
Wiley faces Democrat Amanda Gonzalez, Jefferson County’s elected clerk and recorder, in November. She’s expected to win by a wide margin.
Astley said he found out about the existence of liberty pledges after deciding to drop out of the race and reached out to Wiley.
Astley said he hasn’t endorsed anyone in the secretary of state’s race. However, in his withdrawal letter he said he would dedicate himself in the coming months to supporting candidates he believes can advance freedom. The only candidate he mentioned by name was Ross Metler, a Libertarian running against Democrat Alexis Hoffkling to represent House District 23. There is no Republican in the race.
“True to my word, I am Never Gonna Give You Up,” Astley wrote about his plan to help other candidates.
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