The remaining leadership of the badly fractured California Republican Assembly will meet in Fresno this Friday to conduct their own version of the Salem Witch Trials, only the objects of their kangaroo court will be a list of fellow Republicans, not Democrats, and this particular list includes some of the most accomplished and well-known, well-educated Republican volunteer organizers in the state. Their crime? They lost the CRA election. They tried to elect their own slate of officers to CRA statewide office, and when incumbent Celeste Greig and her Merry Band, desparately and pathetically clinging to office, stacked the rules against them, these Republicans sued in Superior Court AND WON THEIR CASE!
But winning justice into a CRA election did not end the story. While the Greig opponents won in court, they were still outmaneuvered at the convention in Sacramento a few months ago by Greig and her top allies: state Board of Equalization career employee Tom Hudson; and Alan and George Park, all of Placer County; and Orange County trial lawyer Craig Alexander, who all disqualified on technicalities scores of delegates lined up to vote against them.
Hudson and the Parks have been distracted by charges of financial wrongdoing while running the Placer County GOP Central Committee, but that is not keeping them from helping Greig and Alexander now to extend the sad, perennial GOP circular firing squad to point their guns and permanently kill off CRA membership of the likes of Lake Forest Councilman Scott Voigts, and many other former top CRA leaders who have collectively accomplished a Mt. Kilimanjaro of work over the years for conservative causes in the GOP.
These amateurs in politics are handling the situation terribly. Republicans are very much the minority party in California. What Celeste Greig and Company should be doing instead, is to be “magnanimous in victory,” and welcome their former opponents back into the CRA fold, so they can repair past divisions and pull together to share their common values, and build strength to beat liberals in the coming elections. But the Greig allies are just too ignorant or intentionally blind of the real purpose of CRA to do that.
Karen England is the Executive Director of Capitol Resource Institute, a non-profit organization that provides education and advocacy for family values. She has led its work in the California state legislature and at local government levels for 12 years. CRI is the oldest pro-family public policy organization in California. But on Saturday, she will lose her CRA membership card in Fresno, as proposed by George Park’s “membership report,” for basically deciding to run against Celeste Greig for CRA President. Outrageous!
David Reade is the Chief of Staff in the Capitol office of conservative Republican Assemblymember Jim Nielsen. David is an accomplished conservative activist who has run for office himself. He is well-known in the current Second Assembly District and in Sacramento as an excellent organizer and political analyst. But on Saturday, Celeste Grieg, the Park Brothers, and Craig Alexander will move to burn his CRA membership card.
Tim LeFever, his wife Amy, and their three girls, are residents of Dixon, California. He is a principal in the real estate development and holding company of LeFever Mattson. He was the Republican nominee in the 3rd Congressional District of California (against Vic Fazio) 1994 and 1996, Chairman of Capitol Resource Institute; Chairman of Mission Solano; advisory board member of The Pacific Justice Institute, Youth Guidance Connection, Campus Life Connection, and the Alpha Pregnancy Resource Center, Co-founder and former board member of The Rutherford Institute of California and The Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom. He is well-educated with a B.A., University of California Berkeley; and J.D., Hastings School of Law, San Francisco. He is scheduled to be purged forever from CRA this Saturday. Because he supported Karen England for CRA president, not Celeste Greig.
Tom Rogers is the District Director for conservative Republican State Senator Joel Anderson in Temecula. Tom has a great reputation for understanding the political landscape and motivating volunteers. But on Saturday he will be terminated from CRA because he did not vote for Celeste Greig at the last CRA convention.
Mark Spannagel is Chief of Staff for conservative Republican State Senator Doug La Malfa. He was Campaign Manager for conservative Republican Tom McClintock For Congress, and is a graduate of the prestigious University of California, Davis. He gets axed by Celeste Greig and her cronies this Saturday, too.
Orange County GOP volunteer activist Paul Dillion will also get the boot this Saturday for the crime of starting a CRA unit in Stanton that did not support Greig, the Parks and Alexander at the last convention.
It really is just a Kafkaesque situation, isn’t it? Purging talented Republicans at a time when conservatives need and should be welcoming to the table every capable person we’ve got, regardless of past differences, which have nothing to do with policy. If CRA needs anything, it needs more, not less talent, especially now, in the wake of the statewide Republican wipe-out of 2010 and the coming reapportionment and open primary elections. And when you really see what Greig and Company are doing in this vile purge, you can conclude that they are really more concerned about consolidating their own power over a now mostly powerless CRA than beating the Left, by forcing these exceptional people out of the organization, an organization that claims honor in being the oldest Republican volunteer organization in the state.
There just isn’t any honor or comradeship left in the CRA, and I suspect that it’s candidate endorsements won’t be worth much, and probably will be a hot potato, if people the caliber of the list above are no longer welcome as members.
July 22nd, 2011 at 8:28 am
Folks – if you’d like a copy of the report that details all the fraud that is being dealt with at the State CRA level, please email me for a copy of the report or look at the State CRA Website soon as it will be posted there.
For the perspective of the author, please also note that Mr. Lacy is purported to have funded the first lawsuit against the CRA.
Please also note that the CRA was sued a second time by these same folks – that fact is omitted in the above post as are hundreds of additional facts that paint a completely different picture.
There are two sides to every story.
July 22nd, 2011 at 10:01 am
Here we go again – Mr. Conservative Republican himself James Lacy paints a one sided picture of the current debates within CRA. Once again I will note that in my opinion Mr. Lacy has no place at all to be critical of any Republican when he runs a group of slate mailers that will take government employee union money to run ads against your endorsed Republican candidates – candidates that were endorsed by the CRA, the OCGOP, the Family Action PAC and Atlas PAC (to name a few). Candidates his slates opposed in favor of the union candidates.
There was a very good post on Red County in March 2011 exposing Mr. Lacy for his deceptive ads. Here is the link: http://www.redcounty.com/content/deceptive-shameful-slate-mailers-jim-lacy
I also have not been shy about calling Mr. Lacy on the carpet for what I consider to be his hypocrisy including in a prior post to one of Mr. Lacy’s diatribes here on the Flashreport. Bottom line – before you judge either myself or others Mr. Lacy is critical of (especially within the Republican Party) – consider the source.
July 22nd, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Once again, Jim Lacy has revealed why he has no credibility in the conservative movement.
Almost every alleged fact in this blog post is FALSE. Jim Lacy has not participated in California Republican Assembly events for many years, at least not at the state level, so it is not clear why he feels qualified to spread misinformation on this matter. This does not help the credibility of the Flash Report.
As to CRA, Celeste Greig and the leadership of the California Republican Assembly will continue to seek every opportunity to mend fences and make friends with former adversaries. The Convention is over, Celeste and her slate won by a landslide, and now it is time to move on.
However, no matter how eager they may be to move on, the leaders of the California Republican Assembly have an obligation to enforce the rules of the organization. Past offences can be forgotten and ignored in the spirit of friendship, but the Board cannot ignore on-going and future violations of the rules without destroying the organization. If one group of activists is allowed to break the rules with impunity, then others will naturally demand the right to do the same thing and the organization will fall apart.
As an example of the rule-breaking that the Board cannot ignore, Karen England admitted to the CRA Convention that she was submitted as a delegate from the Yolo County unit at a time when she knew that she was still a member of the Placer County Republican Assembly. When asked how she was elected as a delegate from Yolo County, she told the whole Convention, “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” To make matters worse, no evidence has ever been presented by anyone that the Yolo County unit has held meetings, much less elected its delegates. In clear violation of CRA Bylaws, the Yolo unit refused to submit membership records, bylaws, and meeting information to CRA officers. This is just a single example of a long list of violations of the CRA Bylaws that are under investigation.
Jim Lacy and the other apologists for delegate fraud keep pretending that the CRA Bylaws are only being enforced against Karen England and her allies, not against those on the winning side. The problem is that all of the fraud seems to have been committed by Karen England and her allies. No evidence has been submitted showing fraud on the winning side. It is bizarre that the people who played by the rules are being attacked for bias by the rule breakers themselves.
I do not know what action the CRA Board of Directors will take, or what evidence will be presented, but I know that CRA will not survive if wide-spread delegate fraud and membership fraud is tolerated or condoned.
Tom Hudson
CRA Vice President
July 27th, 2011 at 11:13 pm
Aaron and George Park along with Tom Hudson has completely destroyed the Placer County Republican Party, and now they have their sights set on CRA.
They set up what appears to be a money laundering operation through a vehicle called Headquarters Partnership. Placer County Republican Central Committee voted to form Headquarters Partnership a few years back and the promise was made that the financial books would be open to all Central Committee members. Well Headquarters Partnership evolved into what appears to be a money laundering entity where the Parks and Hudson shake down candidates, sell endorsements and their services, and the $ would make its way into the Park’s personal pockets. Now the FPPC and the FBI are after these guys. And guess what, they have reneged on their initial promise to the Central Committee— that being to open the financial books of Placer County Republican Party Headquarters Partnership.
Senator Ted Gaines, Senator Doug LaMalfa and Assembly member Beth Gaines has become so concerned about the finances of Placer County Republican Party Headquarters Partnership that they sent a letter asking that the financial books be opened. They received the letter, but basically gave Gaines, LaMalfa and Gaines the finger.
I don’t know what these guys are up to, but they sure are not acting like innocent people that have nothing to hide. Why not open Placer County Republican Party Headquarters Partnership?
Why is this relevant? Well anyone that questions their integrity, honesty or methods, those people are targeted and destroyed. So now they have critics in CRA, and what do they do but kick them out in a manner that would make Hugo Chavez proud.
Just as they have completely destroyed the integrity, and the good and honest reputation of the Placer County Republican Party, so now they are going to destroy CRA.