10th District Convention ripples not subsided yet
Vince over at Too Conservative points to this story in the Leesburg Today local paper:
Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) described Saturday’s 10th Congressional District Republican Convention as just the first round in a championship battle.
“People will be talking about this convention for years,” he said Tuesday. “We’re not going to forget the bloodshed.”
Longtime District Chairman Jim Rich survived a challenge to retain his position at the convention but his challenger, Heidi Stirrup, said she is considering filing a complaint with the state party because she said the convention was not conducted according to the party plan.
Stirrup blamed the current leadership for recent GOP losses in Loudoun County and elsewhere in the district. District voters rejected that assertion, with 61 percent supporting Rich’s reelection.
Stirrup pointed to procedural gaffes, arguing parliamentary procedure was not followed. Most alarmingly for Stirrup supporters was when Eve Barner asked to amend the convention’s credentials report to challenge the inclusion of delegates who had previously supported a Democrat or Sen. Russ Potts’ (R-27) run for governor as an Independent. The presiding chairman, to the dismay of Stirrup supporters, ruled that effort out of order. J. Warren Geurin, a Loudoun County School Board member who served as parliamentarian during the convention, said the state party plan trumps Robert’s Rules of Order, because it allows anyone to join the committee who pledges to support Republican candidates in the future.
“When [Barner] got into ‘I challenge so and so and so and so,’ at that moment the state party plan came into control,” Geurin said.
As the debate about party participation continued, some fuel may have been added to the fire. Delgaudio was taken slightly aback when the microphone was taken from Barner after her time had expired. The same thing happened to Stirrup. And Geurin talks of what he called a lack of “gentlemanly behavior” from Delgaudio and some Stirrup supporters. He said Delgaudio yelled at the presiding chairman, Jim Fisher, and the delegates to try and gain the floor.
OK, as I’ve previously written, I was at this convention. Allow me to offer a point up about this story. First and foremost, I will call anyone who claims that Eve Barner had the microphone taken away from her because her time ran out a flat-out liar. There was no indication that her time had expired, whatsoever. The mic was taken away because J. Warren Geurin didn’t like what she was proposing and decided the rest of us didn’t need to hear her out. In the middle of her motion, she was simply silenced in spite of having been recognized for the floor.
In short, Guerin and Rich are perfectly fine with your freedom of speech – as long as they agree with what you’re saying. After that… well, you just don’t get to speak.
I’ll reitterate what I’ve written on the matter here again: I don’t agree with the motion Barner was proposing and I would have voted it down. My issue is 100% with the conduct of the chairman and his goons in their actions at this convention. You won’t hear me say it often, so bookmark this one: Delgaudio is right. And in spite of my feelings about most of his methods, he had the right to speak and the chairman had no call to refuse to recognize him. The actions of Rich and the rest of them will simply split the party further, and I want to hear Rich’s excuses when we lose even more electoral ground in the next few years.
7 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
About
HoodaThunk? has moved to a new location: http://www.hoodathunkblog.com as of April 22, 2009. Please come over and visit us there.
Spotlight
Virginia ’09 Elections
Notice!: Contributions to campaigns of currently seated VA General Assembly members and statewide officers are not accepted while the General Assembly is in session per §24.2-954.
Bob McDonnell
Governor of Virginia
Bill Bolling
Lieutenant Governor of Virginia
Networks
Blogroll
StatCounter
Ric's Twitter
Was the time to challenge these individuals in the preceding 2 years at their individual caucuses by the 1/3 petition and 2/3 vote in those committtes at home?
What was the next time consumer?
Voting to strip the members of something on a case by case?
Why was this not brought forward to the credentials committee prior to the meeting.
I’d submit that it was researched, found not to have traction and/or outright rejected there, so they brought it out onto the floor as a great time waster.
The ONLY plan they had that day was to waste as much time as possible in procedure after procedure , for the purpose of complaining about it later, but with the primary goal of seeing how many people would go home when the day was approaching an end without a vote.
Hi Dean,
As I made clear in my earlier posts, I absolutely agree with you that the credentialing questions should have been brought up in the credentials committee prior to the convention’s start. This assumes, of course, that the credentials committee was more likely to actually hear the arguements than the convention chairman.
Your submission that the issues brought up by Eve Barner were researched and found not to have traction is interesting. Do you have something that indicates this was actually the case or are you assuming?
What was the next order of business had she continued?
A mass vote to remove membership AT A CONVENTION?
You cannot do that.
The opportunity was there at anytime in the past two years before this convention to bring the members in question before their respective Committees and get the petition votes , and if those were shown to be in order with 1/3 of the signatures of the caucus, to then place the vote before the body. 2/3 of the majority would see them gone long before May 20th.
This was a stall effort and dirty …and not particularly well thought out.
Master chess players are often 6 to 7 moves ahead. They plan to act, they do not use the last minute to react.
When I said researched, I’m assuming that they approached the credential committee and found that they were out of bounds at that time.
I do not know this, but I have to wonder that if they planned to do the floor show, common sense would indicate that they tried it the way we’ve suggested before the floor show and failed.
Let me make one thing very clear, Jim Rich did not inform the convention delegates where or when the credentials committee was meeting – so how can a convention delegate challenge any 2005 democrat donors who wanted to attend the 2006 10th district GOP convention. And furthermore after Eve Barner was finally allowed to use the mike to give her motion, she was stopped in the middle and ruled out of order. There is nowhere in Roberts Rules of Order that a motion to amend a committee report is out of order. As usual proper procedure and facts be dammed in how the 10th district has been run.
I have been informed Rich actually REFUSED to have any meetings of committees and would not tell anyone who was serving on those committees. Kinda makes it hard to go to the committee before the convention.
Funny. As my first convention, I found the room in about five or ten minutes on my own.
A few of the people who were allowed into the LCRC, but were not quite sure if they were allowed to vote because of the delay found the Committee with no problem.
Anyone who could find the School out there was sure to find the Committees if they looked. All were clearly labeled. That’s a sad story if I ever heard one.
Dimitri, why overlook my correct diagnosis that the time to ATTEMPT to expel those folks was in the months leading up to the convention in their respective Caucuses?
It was too easy to jump past rather than defend, I suppose.