The Texas attorney who unsuccessfully tried to run for Colorado attorney general as a Republican last month filed paperwork Friday to run for the office as an independent candidate. 

Stanley Thorne, the former conservative former talk radio host who represented Coloradans in a lawsuit claiming Gov. Jared Polis lacked authority to impose shutdown orders during the pandemic, initially won a spot in April on the June Republican primary ballot for attorney general but was removed after party officials determined he hadn’t met legal qualifications to run for the job.

The move left John Kellner, the 18th Judicial District attorney, who also made the ballot at the State GOP assembly,  as the presumptive GOP nominee for the state’s top legal position.

Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser is seeking reelection to a second term.

To make the general election ballot as an unaffiliated candidate, Thorne will have to gather 8,000 valid signatures from Colorado voters — including 1,000 from each of the state’s eight congressional districts. Completed petitions are due to the Secretary of State by July 14.

A group of Thorne supporters threw the already contentious state GOP assembly in Colorado Springs into a tizzy on April 9 when they nominated Thorne from the floor.

“He cannot be moved, he cannot be bought,” said activist Sherronna Bishop, a former campaign manager for U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, in a speech nominating Thorne. “He’s already fought for parents across this country, protecting their rights to care for their children as they see fit.”

Rich Wyatt, the one-time star of a popular reality show about guns who served 18 months in federal prison on tax charges, proclaimed from the stage that Thorne has “been a lawyer for 40 years” and claimed he has “been endorsed” by Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk running for secretary of State, and Ron Hanks, the Fremont County state lawmaker running for U.S. Senate. Peters and Hanks won top-line designation at the assembly.

Hanks later told conservative talk show host George Brauchler, Kellner’s predecessor as district attorney and the Republicans’ 2018 nominee for attorney general, that he’d told Thorne it sounded like a good idea to run but wouldn’t say whether he’d formally endorsed him. It was Brauchler who first raised questions about Thorne’s qualifications at the assembly.

In his acceptance speech, Thorne said he first considered running for attorney general 36 hours before he was nominated and vowed to “prosecute crimes by government officers” who violated Coloradans’ constitutional rights during the pandemic.

Thorne and Arapahoe County attorney Randy Corporon, one of Colorado’s two elected members of the Republican National Committee, represented a group of Coloradans who sued Polis in 2020, challenging the Democratic governor’s executive orders issued during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Colorado Supreme Court declined to hear the complaint, which was filed by state Rep.Patrick Neville, a Castle Rock Republican, and conservative author Michelle Malkin of Monument.

While Thorne received 42.5% of the delegate vote to Kellner’s 57.5% — both clearing the 30% threshold required to make the primary ballot — state GOP chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown declared days later that Thorne wouldn’t appear on the Republican primary ballot because he didn’t meet additional qualifications for the office because he wasn’t registered as a Republican and wasn’t a member of the State Bar of Colorado, as the state constitution requires.

“There did initially appear to be a second-place candidate on the Attorney General ballot. However, he has been disqualified,” Burton Brown said in an email to state Republicans. “All votes cast for him must be disqualified, so those delegates’ votes were stolen with false information.”

Voter records obtained by Colorado Politics show Thorne registered as unaffiliated on Aug. 17, 2016, and changed his registration to Republican on April 9. 

Thorne, who has practiced law in Texas since 1982, said in a document filed with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office that he had “started a motion for admission by reciprocity” to the Colorado Bar and expected to be a licensed Colorado attorney by late June.

Thorne’s candidacy could face another impediment, however, since Colorado law requires that unaffiliated general election candidates be registered unaffiliated “no later than the first business day in January of the election year,” and he changed his registration to Republican months after that date.

Thorne didn’t immediately respond on Friday morning to phone calls and an email from Colorado Politics. Neither did a campaign spokesman for Kellner.

A spokesman for the Colorado GOP brushed aside word Thorne was making another attempt at making the ballot.

“We aren’t concerned about third party or unaffiliated candidates, all of whom have less than 1% name ID,” Joe Jackson, the state party’s executive director, said in a text message. “Republicans are united behind our nominee, John Kellner — and he will defeat failed Boulder liberal Phil Weiser in November.”

According to the American Family Justice Project, an organization Thorne founded last summer, Thorne holds a law degree from Baylor University School of Law and is an expert on energy law and constitutional law. He was host of the “Dr. Thorne Traveling Emporium and Medicine Show” for a year on KLZ 560 AM in Denver.

Editor’s note: This developing story has been updated.