I want to start out by saying I let you all down in the cause of liberty yesterday at the Arizona
convention. I should have known better what to do and I hope this helps some of you at your state
conventions in the future.
First, some background, not as a justification for my errors, but because it may help some others out
there. I was a grassroots coordinator in my legislative district. I’m relatively new to Arizona (moved in
2009). I moved from Missouri where I first became involved in the RP campaign in 2007. That was the
first time I became involved in politics. I helped out on a failed alderman campaign in St Louis in 2008/9
but that is really the only other experience I have.
I would say my errors fell into one of three categories: 1) Lack of preparation, 2) relying too heavily
on “higher-ups” in the campaign or 3) giving up.
From the beginning, I relied too heavily on the higher-ups in the campaign when I should have educated
myself on the process. This began back in the fall of 2011. PCs in our Legislative District had to be
appointed by Dec 31, 2011 in order to be able to vote in the April, 2012 LD meeting to select state
delegates. I asked our county chair for names of RP supporters. He said he didn’t have them. I called
Shawn Dow asking for the list. He wouldn’t give them to me saying something about the campaign not
being allowed to coordinate with the grass roots. I gave up.
Later when I was recruiting potential state delegates I ran into the same problem. Finally, I got the
2008 list from our county chair who said Shawn Dow still wouldn’t give him the 2012 list. I went through
that list which was pathetic (55 people and < 50% still had the correct contact info) and found five
potential delegates. Finally, I realized I wasn’t going to get any help and tried to find people on my own.
All told, 33% of the people I contacted were not Republicans so they couldn’t be delegates. Some blame
for this is on my shoulders for not working harder but the campaign didn’t help me as they should have.
We ended with 9 delegates and three alternates in our LD caucus. The establishment guys won by
four votes at our LD or all of our people would have been delegates. We had the potential to win 19
delegates from our LD. This is important as there were only 39 state delegates at our CD caucus (easily
the smallest CD caucus in Arizona). With a little more diligence we would have swept our CD and we
would have had another national delegate for Ron Paul in Tampa.
I was ill and very busy at work the week before the convention, and didn’t participate in the conference
calls until the night before the convention. Even on that onecall, I should have realized that something was
wrong and spent the night before reviewing Robert’s rules. Let me say I think everyone worked very hard for
Ron Paul and while we all made mistakes, everyone very dedicated to the cause. The leadership, starting with
myself as organized and prepared as they could have been.
On the morning of the state convention, my wife, my Dad (in a different CD) and I got there early and I
checked in with all of the RP delegates and alternates from my district. I met Papke and saw Fitzgerald
running around. We were all standing in line ready to get our credentials. BTW it was hot in Phoenix
outside the gym at Grand Canyon University - at least 102. So we were all sweating before we made it in.
When I saw our LD chair, I helped him set up his table outside and got chairs for him and the secretary
as they handed out credentials. I checked in at the RP desk and went inside to sit down. At about 9 a.m.
they started with the speeches. Blah, blah, Mitt Romney, unite, blah blah, fire Obama, blah, blah. They
took three hours and still didn’t report back with the credentialing report. The Chair of the convention
dismissed to CD caucuses without the credentialing report even though I made a point of order that we
could not vote in our CDs without an approved credentials report. They ignored me and dismissed to
the CD caucuses. Later in the day, I spoke to a paid Romney staffer while observing the handling of the
at-large delegate ballots. She said the guys running credentialing committee were just plain inept. There
was an error in the counting and it took three hours to find the problem.
After they dismissed they had to have everyone come back to accept the credentialing report. We lost
an hour in the process. When everyone finally came back the credentialing committee report was
accepted.
Upon accepting the credentialing committee’s report we found all of our delegates showed up. I was
a bit surprised, but what I didn’t realize was that some of the alternates were not seated at the time
because their LD or county chairs didn’t bother with the hassle of getting their alternates seated. The
state Ron Paul team should have had someone ready to make a motion to force the chairs to accept
their alternates. They didn’t and I think we missed out on some delegates. No one ever said how many
alternates were seated (so the quorum number could never have been known).
Next, we held our CD caucus. As I mentioned, we had by far the smallest CD caucus with 39 delegates.
The chair was appointed before the fact but he was very fair. He was on the A delegate slate for the
Romney campaign. He is a political consultant and my father has had lunch with him a few times. Oh, he
at first wasn’t there and neither was the secretary (also pre-appointed) so they asked for volunteers so
our LD chair volunteered and asked me to be the secretary. We listened to all the instructions.
We had 7 firm RP delegates and 2 soft from our district (meaning they would vote for our slate but
also for the Romney slate). There were another 5 RP delegates from around the CD. A few more and
we would have won everything. Well, the voting was done, and the Romney guy won with 23 votes to
15 for our guy. Like I said, we only needed another four votes and we would have won. Our delegate
got one of the B slots. The other went to another Romney supporter. Same thing happened with the
alternate slots.
Oh, I should point out here that the caucuses were set up so that only the top vote getter was assured
of a delegate slot. The next two highest vote getters were B delegates. The B delegates represented
the penalty for Arizona holding its primary early. We were to be allotted 58 - %50 = 29 delegates. The
B delegates at the CD level from the 9 CDs represent 18 of the penalized delegates. There were an
additional 19 A delegates on the at-large slate and 12 B delegates--same for the alternates. In 2008, all
the B delegates were seated. The Romney campaign only fielded A delegates and alternates and didn’t
even try for the B delegates. They chair of our CD said the Romney campaign and the RNC have no plans
of trying to seat the B delegates at the national convention.
We got our ballots and there were a couple errors on the ballot as well as a couple nominations from
the floor. The chair selected a secretary, another Romney guy who was on their at-large slate, and he
passed out the ballots. We voted. I asked to accompany the ballots and another guy joined with the secretary and I. We
took the ballots to the counting room. The software used for the counting was designed by a Romney
supporter from my father’s district in Mesa. The machines weren’t set up, so the secretary and I decided
to count the ballots by hand. We first double counted the number of ballots then we each counted
the ballots and came up with the same numbers for the vote. We put the ballots in a sealed envelope
with the vote totals on the outside and signed the envelope. Then, we reported back to the chair and
congratulated him on his win.
Then, we did the voting for the alternates. The Romney guy running wasn’t on the ballot, and had to
be added as a write-in. I served as secretary during this part because the previous secretary was now
running for the at-large spot. When the voting was done, the chair, one other man and I went back
to get the votes counted. By now the scanning machines were up and running, but a couple of the
intermediate sized CDs had their delegate votes in so we just decided to hand count our votes again in
triplicate. We lost 18 to 15 for the A slot this time, got the B slot and another party guy got the second
B slot. Again we put the ballots in an envelope, sealed and signed across the seal. The chair went back
and announced the results. We were done voting and reporting delegates and alternates before any
of the other CDs even finished counting the votes for the delegates. Some hadn’t even voted on their
delegates due to shortages of ballots.
We had a lot of time, so my wife went to my parents and checked in on the kids while I went and
watched the CD5 caucus where my dad lives. We checked with our LD chair to see what to do if my wife
was late getting back. He told us to leave her credentials with him and if they needed to seat our first
alternate, he would take care of it (our three alternates were RP guys). When I got to CD5, they had just
finished voting for delegates. They didn’t have enough ballots when they first got them, so they had to
print more. My Dad is a member of the Right-to-life group in Mesa and he had been talking in the back
with them and got a few to vote for the Paul delegates. All of the alternates in CD5 were seated. I waited
there for an hour, and the results came back and the Paul delegate won the A slot (BTW I can’t think of
a better guy to win than John) and we also got the first B slot. I didn’t hear what the vote count
was.
I spent some time with the folks there celebrating. For the alternate voting, a bunch of the Romney
people left and the Paul delegates should have won in a landslide. Last I heard, they took the A and both
B alternate slots there. CD5 is Mesa, Gilbert and Chandler and has roughly the same Mormon population
percentage as Salt Lake City, so this was a serious coup.
Let me here point out a problem with my overreliance on the top down method used for selecting
delegates. In my CD, if we had been able to choose our own delegate, we could have picked an
undercover RP person and picked up 15-16 votes off the top from our LD. There were enough RP guys
among the rest that we may have won. But I had no idea who the other RP guys in our CD were. The
campaign refused to let me know, so I had no way to plan our line of attack. The campaign chose for our
A and B delegates people who weren’t very well know in our LD. I happened to be copied on an email
by accident from Jeff Greenspan and Shawn Dow a couple days before asking why we didn’t have our slate ready.
No one consulted me, the grassroots leader for RP in our LD, about who might be the best choice among
the RP people running for delegate. At least in this case, the centralized planning didn’t work out as well
as it could have.
After the CD5 voting ended, there were still two CDs that hadn’t finished. When they finally did, we
sat around basically forever and we got ready to vote for the at-large delegates. There was a lot of
confusion as both the Romney and Paul groups were telling people to only vote for 19 slots even though
we were allowed to vote for 31. There were 20 A delegate slots and 11 B delegate slots. Basically both
campaigns were conceding the 11 B slots if they won the A slots. This was a huge error on both sides,
but whatever. I told delegates from Pima County to include other known Ron Paul supporters not on
the list for the alternates.
At this point I looked around and saw our LD hadn’t seated our first alternate. I asked him why. He said
the credentialing committee wouldn’t allow it. I called a point of order and asked that the alternates
replace any missing delegates. The chair then ordered the LD and county chairs to seat any alternates.
About 20-30 alternates were seated at that time. Two more of our delegates had left but our LD chair
wouldn’t seat our last two alternates because those delegates hadn’t turned in their badges. I should
have called another point of order or made a motion to seat other alternates even if the delegates
hadn’t turned in their credentials.
I was looking around for help at this point but nobody knew what they were doing. The whole RP group
was looking to me to pull things together on the floor in terms of rules. I was lost. I was on student council
15 years ago and had no memory of RRO but I was easily the most knowledgeable guy there making any
motions and I knew less than zero.
Then they gave us the ballots. The ballots consisted of two pages with a total of 350 or so options. We
were instructed to vote for up to 31 people. I made an inquiry as to what would keep us from voting
for 31 people on one of the pages and then another 31 on the next. I was told by the rules committee
chairman that only our consciences prevented it.
I considered calling for a hand vote as the voting was compromised. I thought they would lynch me if I
made them try that with 300 candidates. Everyone turned in their votes, and I went back and was one
of the Ron Paul supporters supervising the ordering of the ballots. All was going well, but I missed the
speeches for the national committeewoman and national committeeman. I left to vote when another
RP person replaced me. I saw her later and she told me none of the ballots that were folded could be
read by the scanners. Oh while I was back there, the paid Romney staffers who were also witnessing
the ballots were complaining about how inept the Chairman of the Arizona GOP was along with the
credentialing and rules committees. I should have had a recorder on.
So I voted for NCW and NCM. Then we got to the alternates. Same deal as the delegates slots only we
got to vote for 28 people. I’m still trying to figure out that discrepancy - maybe the chairman, NCW, and NCM.
Anyway, the chair announced that if people were selected as a delegate and alternate, they would award
them the delegate position. By now, more people had left and if I had been thinking, I would have called for
the rest of the alternates to be seated.
After that, we waited and waited. The chair came out and said if the NCW didn’t receive >50% of the
vote we would have the run-off by mail. We called for orders of the day which included the election of
the NCW. Some called for a count of remaining delegates to establish quorum. The chair never recognized
those people and never made the count. He left for an hour.
After a while, I heard a rumor the chair was going to say we no longer had quorum, though he never
actually stated that during the meeting to my knowledge. During this time I was reading through RRO
as fast as I could and I posted on RPF that I needed some parliamentary assistance. My phone died
and I had to plug in. I’ve got to say even if I had been reading RRO beforehand I doubt I would have known
what to actually do in this scenario. How would I have known to read that stuff about Buchanan and rump
conventions?
He came back and announced the results. We had lost the NCM but won the NCW with only 40% of
the vote and he said there would be a run-off by mail. Then he got someone to move to adjourn and a
second and struck his gavel attempting to adjourn the meeting over the cries of the remaining delegates.
I ran to the stage to try and get up but a security guard pushed me back along with a Romney supporter/
staffer. A friend from Pima County, made it up and a security guard sort of tackled him while he
made his way to the podium, but he made it anyway. I went back to the floor and moved for another
vote for NCW. Karen won with no dissent. Someone called to adjourn and was rebuffed. Someone called
to appoint a new chair and David Fitzgerald was elected while he was walking off the stage. He came
back and basically told us nothing we were doing would make any difference. Security/police was telling
us to leave. David, with Matthew Papke next to him, told us the party wouldn’t accept anything we did
from that point on, that we had Ron Paul people helping with the count and everything would happen
the way it would no matter what else we did.
By now security and the police were pushing us out of the auditorium. David Fitzgerald had arranged for
a spot in another parking lot at what I believe was a different address. But he told us he wasn’t going to try
to go forward with any official proceedings anyway. Join up and become a PC, or you can’t change the party.
I thought about how Shawn Dow stonewalling us on the volunteer and donor lists and it made me sick to my
stomach to know we could have won my district with a little more help.
I had no idea we could have continued the convention. That was my fault. But you can see a lot of things
are my fault. Don’t let this happen at your convention. We could have gotten 20 more delegates for Paul
if I had done my research and not listened to people who I thought knew what they were up to.
Well, there you have my story of the Arizona GOP. On my way home with my Dad, we were talking
about how we never thought this could happen where we live. My Dad was friends with the previous
chairman who called for the adjournment but not anymore. On my way home to Tucson (I didn’t make it there with my
wife and 4 and 1 year-old daughters until 1am), I looked back at my daughters in asleep in the back seat
and I realized I had failed them in the cause of liberty.
We have to stand and fight now, which means we have to be prepared to fight and win now. I wasn’t. Don’t
let this happen to you. Learn the rules, including what to do if everyone just leaves. We can’t let them take
what has been given us by our creator. Stand up now and do what needs to be done.
I’m sorry I failed you. Perhaps if this helps others to learn what to do perhaps I can find some solace in that.
Yours in what liberty I have left.
convention. I should have known better what to do and I hope this helps some of you at your state
conventions in the future.
First, some background, not as a justification for my errors, but because it may help some others out
there. I was a grassroots coordinator in my legislative district. I’m relatively new to Arizona (moved in
2009). I moved from Missouri where I first became involved in the RP campaign in 2007. That was the
first time I became involved in politics. I helped out on a failed alderman campaign in St Louis in 2008/9
but that is really the only other experience I have.
I would say my errors fell into one of three categories: 1) Lack of preparation, 2) relying too heavily
on “higher-ups” in the campaign or 3) giving up.
From the beginning, I relied too heavily on the higher-ups in the campaign when I should have educated
myself on the process. This began back in the fall of 2011. PCs in our Legislative District had to be
appointed by Dec 31, 2011 in order to be able to vote in the April, 2012 LD meeting to select state
delegates. I asked our county chair for names of RP supporters. He said he didn’t have them. I called
Shawn Dow asking for the list. He wouldn’t give them to me saying something about the campaign not
being allowed to coordinate with the grass roots. I gave up.
Later when I was recruiting potential state delegates I ran into the same problem. Finally, I got the
2008 list from our county chair who said Shawn Dow still wouldn’t give him the 2012 list. I went through
that list which was pathetic (55 people and < 50% still had the correct contact info) and found five
potential delegates. Finally, I realized I wasn’t going to get any help and tried to find people on my own.
All told, 33% of the people I contacted were not Republicans so they couldn’t be delegates. Some blame
for this is on my shoulders for not working harder but the campaign didn’t help me as they should have.
We ended with 9 delegates and three alternates in our LD caucus. The establishment guys won by
four votes at our LD or all of our people would have been delegates. We had the potential to win 19
delegates from our LD. This is important as there were only 39 state delegates at our CD caucus (easily
the smallest CD caucus in Arizona). With a little more diligence we would have swept our CD and we
would have had another national delegate for Ron Paul in Tampa.
I was ill and very busy at work the week before the convention, and didn’t participate in the conference
calls until the night before the convention. Even on that onecall, I should have realized that something was
wrong and spent the night before reviewing Robert’s rules. Let me say I think everyone worked very hard for
Ron Paul and while we all made mistakes, everyone very dedicated to the cause. The leadership, starting with
myself as organized and prepared as they could have been.
On the morning of the state convention, my wife, my Dad (in a different CD) and I got there early and I
checked in with all of the RP delegates and alternates from my district. I met Papke and saw Fitzgerald
running around. We were all standing in line ready to get our credentials. BTW it was hot in Phoenix
outside the gym at Grand Canyon University - at least 102. So we were all sweating before we made it in.
When I saw our LD chair, I helped him set up his table outside and got chairs for him and the secretary
as they handed out credentials. I checked in at the RP desk and went inside to sit down. At about 9 a.m.
they started with the speeches. Blah, blah, Mitt Romney, unite, blah blah, fire Obama, blah, blah. They
took three hours and still didn’t report back with the credentialing report. The Chair of the convention
dismissed to CD caucuses without the credentialing report even though I made a point of order that we
could not vote in our CDs without an approved credentials report. They ignored me and dismissed to
the CD caucuses. Later in the day, I spoke to a paid Romney staffer while observing the handling of the
at-large delegate ballots. She said the guys running credentialing committee were just plain inept. There
was an error in the counting and it took three hours to find the problem.
After they dismissed they had to have everyone come back to accept the credentialing report. We lost
an hour in the process. When everyone finally came back the credentialing committee report was
accepted.
Upon accepting the credentialing committee’s report we found all of our delegates showed up. I was
a bit surprised, but what I didn’t realize was that some of the alternates were not seated at the time
because their LD or county chairs didn’t bother with the hassle of getting their alternates seated. The
state Ron Paul team should have had someone ready to make a motion to force the chairs to accept
their alternates. They didn’t and I think we missed out on some delegates. No one ever said how many
alternates were seated (so the quorum number could never have been known).
Next, we held our CD caucus. As I mentioned, we had by far the smallest CD caucus with 39 delegates.
The chair was appointed before the fact but he was very fair. He was on the A delegate slate for the
Romney campaign. He is a political consultant and my father has had lunch with him a few times. Oh, he
at first wasn’t there and neither was the secretary (also pre-appointed) so they asked for volunteers so
our LD chair volunteered and asked me to be the secretary. We listened to all the instructions.
We had 7 firm RP delegates and 2 soft from our district (meaning they would vote for our slate but
also for the Romney slate). There were another 5 RP delegates from around the CD. A few more and
we would have won everything. Well, the voting was done, and the Romney guy won with 23 votes to
15 for our guy. Like I said, we only needed another four votes and we would have won. Our delegate
got one of the B slots. The other went to another Romney supporter. Same thing happened with the
alternate slots.
Oh, I should point out here that the caucuses were set up so that only the top vote getter was assured
of a delegate slot. The next two highest vote getters were B delegates. The B delegates represented
the penalty for Arizona holding its primary early. We were to be allotted 58 - %50 = 29 delegates. The
B delegates at the CD level from the 9 CDs represent 18 of the penalized delegates. There were an
additional 19 A delegates on the at-large slate and 12 B delegates--same for the alternates. In 2008, all
the B delegates were seated. The Romney campaign only fielded A delegates and alternates and didn’t
even try for the B delegates. They chair of our CD said the Romney campaign and the RNC have no plans
of trying to seat the B delegates at the national convention.
We got our ballots and there were a couple errors on the ballot as well as a couple nominations from
the floor. The chair selected a secretary, another Romney guy who was on their at-large slate, and he
passed out the ballots. We voted. I asked to accompany the ballots and another guy joined with the secretary and I. We
took the ballots to the counting room. The software used for the counting was designed by a Romney
supporter from my father’s district in Mesa. The machines weren’t set up, so the secretary and I decided
to count the ballots by hand. We first double counted the number of ballots then we each counted
the ballots and came up with the same numbers for the vote. We put the ballots in a sealed envelope
with the vote totals on the outside and signed the envelope. Then, we reported back to the chair and
congratulated him on his win.
Then, we did the voting for the alternates. The Romney guy running wasn’t on the ballot, and had to
be added as a write-in. I served as secretary during this part because the previous secretary was now
running for the at-large spot. When the voting was done, the chair, one other man and I went back
to get the votes counted. By now the scanning machines were up and running, but a couple of the
intermediate sized CDs had their delegate votes in so we just decided to hand count our votes again in
triplicate. We lost 18 to 15 for the A slot this time, got the B slot and another party guy got the second
B slot. Again we put the ballots in an envelope, sealed and signed across the seal. The chair went back
and announced the results. We were done voting and reporting delegates and alternates before any
of the other CDs even finished counting the votes for the delegates. Some hadn’t even voted on their
delegates due to shortages of ballots.
We had a lot of time, so my wife went to my parents and checked in on the kids while I went and
watched the CD5 caucus where my dad lives. We checked with our LD chair to see what to do if my wife
was late getting back. He told us to leave her credentials with him and if they needed to seat our first
alternate, he would take care of it (our three alternates were RP guys). When I got to CD5, they had just
finished voting for delegates. They didn’t have enough ballots when they first got them, so they had to
print more. My Dad is a member of the Right-to-life group in Mesa and he had been talking in the back
with them and got a few to vote for the Paul delegates. All of the alternates in CD5 were seated. I waited
there for an hour, and the results came back and the Paul delegate won the A slot (BTW I can’t think of
a better guy to win than John) and we also got the first B slot. I didn’t hear what the vote count
was.
I spent some time with the folks there celebrating. For the alternate voting, a bunch of the Romney
people left and the Paul delegates should have won in a landslide. Last I heard, they took the A and both
B alternate slots there. CD5 is Mesa, Gilbert and Chandler and has roughly the same Mormon population
percentage as Salt Lake City, so this was a serious coup.
Let me here point out a problem with my overreliance on the top down method used for selecting
delegates. In my CD, if we had been able to choose our own delegate, we could have picked an
undercover RP person and picked up 15-16 votes off the top from our LD. There were enough RP guys
among the rest that we may have won. But I had no idea who the other RP guys in our CD were. The
campaign refused to let me know, so I had no way to plan our line of attack. The campaign chose for our
A and B delegates people who weren’t very well know in our LD. I happened to be copied on an email
by accident from Jeff Greenspan and Shawn Dow a couple days before asking why we didn’t have our slate ready.
No one consulted me, the grassroots leader for RP in our LD, about who might be the best choice among
the RP people running for delegate. At least in this case, the centralized planning didn’t work out as well
as it could have.
After the CD5 voting ended, there were still two CDs that hadn’t finished. When they finally did, we
sat around basically forever and we got ready to vote for the at-large delegates. There was a lot of
confusion as both the Romney and Paul groups were telling people to only vote for 19 slots even though
we were allowed to vote for 31. There were 20 A delegate slots and 11 B delegate slots. Basically both
campaigns were conceding the 11 B slots if they won the A slots. This was a huge error on both sides,
but whatever. I told delegates from Pima County to include other known Ron Paul supporters not on
the list for the alternates.
At this point I looked around and saw our LD hadn’t seated our first alternate. I asked him why. He said
the credentialing committee wouldn’t allow it. I called a point of order and asked that the alternates
replace any missing delegates. The chair then ordered the LD and county chairs to seat any alternates.
About 20-30 alternates were seated at that time. Two more of our delegates had left but our LD chair
wouldn’t seat our last two alternates because those delegates hadn’t turned in their badges. I should
have called another point of order or made a motion to seat other alternates even if the delegates
hadn’t turned in their credentials.
I was looking around for help at this point but nobody knew what they were doing. The whole RP group
was looking to me to pull things together on the floor in terms of rules. I was lost. I was on student council
15 years ago and had no memory of RRO but I was easily the most knowledgeable guy there making any
motions and I knew less than zero.
Then they gave us the ballots. The ballots consisted of two pages with a total of 350 or so options. We
were instructed to vote for up to 31 people. I made an inquiry as to what would keep us from voting
for 31 people on one of the pages and then another 31 on the next. I was told by the rules committee
chairman that only our consciences prevented it.
I considered calling for a hand vote as the voting was compromised. I thought they would lynch me if I
made them try that with 300 candidates. Everyone turned in their votes, and I went back and was one
of the Ron Paul supporters supervising the ordering of the ballots. All was going well, but I missed the
speeches for the national committeewoman and national committeeman. I left to vote when another
RP person replaced me. I saw her later and she told me none of the ballots that were folded could be
read by the scanners. Oh while I was back there, the paid Romney staffers who were also witnessing
the ballots were complaining about how inept the Chairman of the Arizona GOP was along with the
credentialing and rules committees. I should have had a recorder on.
So I voted for NCW and NCM. Then we got to the alternates. Same deal as the delegates slots only we
got to vote for 28 people. I’m still trying to figure out that discrepancy - maybe the chairman, NCW, and NCM.
Anyway, the chair announced that if people were selected as a delegate and alternate, they would award
them the delegate position. By now, more people had left and if I had been thinking, I would have called for
the rest of the alternates to be seated.
After that, we waited and waited. The chair came out and said if the NCW didn’t receive >50% of the
vote we would have the run-off by mail. We called for orders of the day which included the election of
the NCW. Some called for a count of remaining delegates to establish quorum. The chair never recognized
those people and never made the count. He left for an hour.
After a while, I heard a rumor the chair was going to say we no longer had quorum, though he never
actually stated that during the meeting to my knowledge. During this time I was reading through RRO
as fast as I could and I posted on RPF that I needed some parliamentary assistance. My phone died
and I had to plug in. I’ve got to say even if I had been reading RRO beforehand I doubt I would have known
what to actually do in this scenario. How would I have known to read that stuff about Buchanan and rump
conventions?
He came back and announced the results. We had lost the NCM but won the NCW with only 40% of
the vote and he said there would be a run-off by mail. Then he got someone to move to adjourn and a
second and struck his gavel attempting to adjourn the meeting over the cries of the remaining delegates.
I ran to the stage to try and get up but a security guard pushed me back along with a Romney supporter/
staffer. A friend from Pima County, made it up and a security guard sort of tackled him while he
made his way to the podium, but he made it anyway. I went back to the floor and moved for another
vote for NCW. Karen won with no dissent. Someone called to adjourn and was rebuffed. Someone called
to appoint a new chair and David Fitzgerald was elected while he was walking off the stage. He came
back and basically told us nothing we were doing would make any difference. Security/police was telling
us to leave. David, with Matthew Papke next to him, told us the party wouldn’t accept anything we did
from that point on, that we had Ron Paul people helping with the count and everything would happen
the way it would no matter what else we did.
By now security and the police were pushing us out of the auditorium. David Fitzgerald had arranged for
a spot in another parking lot at what I believe was a different address. But he told us he wasn’t going to try
to go forward with any official proceedings anyway. Join up and become a PC, or you can’t change the party.
I thought about how Shawn Dow stonewalling us on the volunteer and donor lists and it made me sick to my
stomach to know we could have won my district with a little more help.
I had no idea we could have continued the convention. That was my fault. But you can see a lot of things
are my fault. Don’t let this happen at your convention. We could have gotten 20 more delegates for Paul
if I had done my research and not listened to people who I thought knew what they were up to.
Well, there you have my story of the Arizona GOP. On my way home with my Dad, we were talking
about how we never thought this could happen where we live. My Dad was friends with the previous
chairman who called for the adjournment but not anymore. On my way home to Tucson (I didn’t make it there with my
wife and 4 and 1 year-old daughters until 1am), I looked back at my daughters in asleep in the back seat
and I realized I had failed them in the cause of liberty.
We have to stand and fight now, which means we have to be prepared to fight and win now. I wasn’t. Don’t
let this happen to you. Learn the rules, including what to do if everyone just leaves. We can’t let them take
what has been given us by our creator. Stand up now and do what needs to be done.
I’m sorry I failed you. Perhaps if this helps others to learn what to do perhaps I can find some solace in that.
Yours in what liberty I have left.
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