The "unauthorized" tweet comes as Donald Trump suffered blows in both Colorado and South Carolina, losing delegates to Ted Cruz. | Getty Colorado GOP deletes #nevertrump tweet, pledges investigation

Moments after announcing that Ted Cruz had swept all 34 delegate slots at the Colorado GOP convention Saturday, the state party tweeted: "We did it. #NeverTrump."

Within minutes, the tweet had been deleted.


Steve House, the Colorado GOP chairman, insisted his staff had nothing to do with the tweet and is now investigating.

"There's no way we tweeted that," House said, although he acknowledged that the state party was responsible for deleting it.

The last tweet was the result of unauthorized access to our account and in no way represents the opinion of the party. We are investigating. — The Colorado GOP (@cologop) April 10, 2016

Even though it only existed in the ether of cyberspace for a few minutes, the optics of such a tweet coming from the neutral arbiter of Saturday's delegate selection process amidst a hard-fought trench war between Cruz and Donald Trump to secure the Republican presidential nomination rankled a number of Colorado Republicans.

Several local GOP operatives were quick to suggest that the tweet, which was quickly deleted, was the work of the two young Republican operatives at D/CO, a newly formed Republican consulting firm that caters on outreach to Millennials. Caleb Bonham and Kyle Forti, who formed D/CO in December, just took over a number of clients from another local firm, Avinova, which used to assist the Colorado GOP with social media.

But Forti denied that he or Bonham were responsible and said they don't have access to the state GOP's Twitter feed.

While the tweet immediately drew a backlash, another mistake by the party itself could have a more lasting impact.

That mistake centers around one prospective delegate, Larry Singer, who filed paperwork to run as a delegate in Colorado's 3rd congressional district. But when the election was held on Friday, Singer's name did not appear on the ballot. Somewhere along the way, someone had lost his paperwork.

House tried to remedy the problem, placing Singer on the ballot to run for one of 13 at-large delegate slots up for grabs at Saturday's statewide assembly. As one of more than 600 delegates for those slots, Singer, not surprisingly, came up short.

In that sense, he is not unlike almost every other person who filed papers to be a delegate. He is, however, unlike all the other delegate candidates in one way: he is the brother of Paul Singer, the New York City hedge fund magnate and one of the conservative movement's most coveted donors, often a 7-figure contributor and one of the funders of the conservative infrastructure that's been built in Colorado and across the country.

"This is the one guy who wants to get on who the party should recognize we need to get on because he basically pays for all this," said one local GOP operative. "He wound up being number 600 [on the ballot] and he wasn't even listed on the program because they ran out of paper."

According to House, Singer wasn't too upset about it.

"I actually sat with him while we were waiting for the final results and he was in good spirits," House said. "He's a great guy."

Most of the delegates elected were affiliated with Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a conservative organization with a history of flexing its organizing muscle in Colorado politics.

Ironically, the group saw its chosen U.S. senate candidate, state senator Tim Neville, fail to make the ballot after giving a halting, poorly received speech and being out-shined by Darryl Glenn, an African-American El Paso County commissioner whose 10-minute stem-winder drew repeated ovations.

Kristen East contributed.

