Is NC RP leadership going to fight for RNC delegates at convention??

[devil21]

Based on what Im hearing, Im under the impression that NC RP2012 leadership isn't going to fight for RNC delegates and will roll over to establishment delegate slate. I don't know this for sure but that's what it sounds like to me based on recent statements from local leadership.

Has anybody in NC heard of any plans to challenge for delegates? I just reviewed the proposed rules on ncgop.org and it calls for slates of delegates to be submitted for vote. Does anybody know if an RP delegate slate is being prepared or at the very least a unity slate of RP and Romney delegates?

 

[MozoVote]

People left the 2008 convention very bitter at the NCGOP for taking two Paul delegates off the slate. My understanding is that this continued to bubble behind the scenes, until the GOP legal counsel weighed in and told the leadership what they did was inappropriate. The rules chairman from the 9th district also discussed the delegate situation publicly this year. He's no buddy to the Paul movement - but did agree that the allocation should be done in accordance with how the RP faction argued 4 years ago. He's pretty influential in the party, and I expect has the ear of the NCGOP leaders.

North Carolina is a little different than some of the other states, because the allocation of delegates is a part of our election law. It's not a debate about "party rules" per se.

So what you have is a situation where many of the RP camp are waiting to see if the party keeps its word this time. If so, many of them can accept the unity slate that will be rolled out by the nomination committee. If not, we'll be sitting at convention with knives in our teeth.

 

[devil21]

I'd vote for a verified slate of unity delegates with a hat tip to RP's outsized influence in this election. I won't hesitate to clog up the floor with motions if the slate is full of establishment folks.

We can still submit our own slate based on the convention rules.

(D) Rule No. 11(D) applies only in even numbered Presidential Election years.
All nominations and election of Delegates and Alternates to the 2012 Republican National Convention shall be by written slate, and elected by a plurality vote with the balloting for Delegates being completed before nominations for Alternate Delegates. Any Delegate may, upon proper recognition by the Convention Chairman, place in nomination a written slate of candidates consisting of thirteen (13) proposed Delegates and thirteen (13) proposed Alternates to the 2012 Republican National Convention, and shall include with such slate a written certification that each person so nominated is a duly registered Republican in the State of North Carolina who has consented to nomination on said slate and will serve as a Delegate or Alternate to the 2012 Republican National Convention if elected. Each slate must state the name of the Republican Presidential candidate that each nominated Delegate or nominated Alternate Delegate would be supporting and voting for if given the opportunity. No person shall be nominated on more than one slate for Delegate or Alternate to the 2012 Republican National Convention.

That's an open invitation for a slate of Paul supporters to be submitted from the floor. We may have the numbers and not know it yet.

The bound myth has also been proven.

(Mozo, we may have met recently and not know it....)

 

[aclove]

I think what's going to happen is what you guys are saying...a Ron Paul slate will be ready to go, but not submitted unless the NCGOP tries to hose us again and assign the bound Paul delegate slots to people who are not actual Ron Paul supporters. If that happens, a Ron Paul slate will be submitted from the floor and the battle is on.

If it does not happen, and all of the bound Ron Paul delegate slots are given to actual Paul supporters, there will be no reason to submit an all-Paul slate, since we definitely won't have the votes to pass it anyway.

 

[devil21]

Hi A,
I don't see why we don't try anyway. I keep hearing this stuff about not having enough votes to pass anything but I don't see where this is coming from. How do we know how many establishment folks from the entire state will show up vs. how many Paul folks from across the entire state will show up? We both know our local organization's numbers but do you know the rest of the state's numbers? We may actually end up having the numbers to pass anything we want.

I sure hope we do have a Paul slate ready. Any way we can verify that this is the case through state leadership?

 

[aclove]

This is coming from 4 consecutive years of going to these conventions, plus the makeup of the county and district conventions we've had so far this year.

We do...not...have the numbers to take over. I promise you.

With that being the case, introducing our own slate pre-emptively, without knowing whether the establishment will give the bound Paul delegate slots to Paul supporters, will come across as needlessly dickish and confrontational, and will seriously hamper our ability to win votes on rules, platform, Plan of Organization, and resolutions which we may win if we can attract sympathetic Tea Party/grassroots delegates who are not Paul supporters, but not establishment either. It will cost us those votes because they will (rightly) see us as dragging out the proceedings forcing votes we can't win anyway.

In short, it would draw ill will, diminish our stature, and in return, gain nothing.

 

[MozoVote]

Keep in mind that many of the regular GOP get frustrated with how the conventions have been run. They start late, run overtime - and then conclude without a quorum as people trickle out, while convention business still remains to be debated. We don't need to be seen as "the cause" of an incomplete convention, if the party has followed its own rules and N.C. election law.

 

[musicmax]

When will the official slate be made available? In '08 we knew the slate in advance and Adam, Pat, Ken, Glen, Gary, I and others spent about two hours writing a page-and-a-half-long motion explaining in lawyerly detail why the Chairman's slate should have been thrown out. The convention chair ruled the motion out of order and while it was a nice shot across the establishment's bow that took the air out of the room for a few minutes as the delegates were given a peek at what goes on behind the curtain, in the end we got nothing out of it.

I do agree with Adam that if a "unity" slate is presented that is in compliance with NC law and party rules that there is no point in presenting a pure Paul slate or a Paul/Santy/Newt slate unless it's obvious that such a slate would win handily. Based on the primary the split should be 36 Mitt, 6 Ron, 6 Rick, 4 Newt, and if nobody self-identifies as a Santorum or Gingrich diehard you can bet the party will give their ten slots to Mittheads rather than Ronulans.

 

[MozoVote]

The Central Committee meets Friday. I suspect they'll have a short list agreed on, and then be nailing down agreements with those invited until Saturday morning. Sharon *should* be informed, I would think, of any invitations to serve as a Paul delegate. If the Central Committee is keeping the official Paul campaign representative frozen out of communication, that's a bad sign.

 

[devil21]

In short, it would draw ill will, diminish our stature, and in return, gain nothing.

This is strange to me since you're saying we don't have a stature worth much already, any good will to speak of (if an establishment slate is presented), and we still don't gain anything. At this point we shouldnt expect any state party to play fair....we must have a Paul loaded slate ready to challenge. I like the zest Im seeing from many of the other state's Paul contingents but NC seems....well, meh about it.

 

[MozoVote]

We gain respectability in the party when we expose the leadership double-talking their own rules and positions. But we also have to demonstrate that we know how to wield political power tactically. The alterate slate should be a "Let's not resort to this" diplomacy baton. We don't want to use it, they don't want to see us use it - but it's available in case they screw us, and deserve to be called out in front of everyone.

 

[aclove]

What Mozo said.

Make no mistake, we've already earned some respect this year. The fact that we won a National slot for Matthew Ridenhour at the Meck County convention and Carson Daves and his establishment contingent kept their word and didn't try to boot him off at the District 9 convention was pretty damn major. We've been fighting Carson and his cronies here in Mecklenburg for 4 years and this is the first real victory we've won.

That's the scale of wins we can realistically expect here until our numbers grow significantly. It's real easy to get fired up in a state like Alaska, Nevada, Maine, or Minnesota, where we already grew enough to take over. Here in the Bible belt, it's a whole different story. I seriously doubt we've ever had more than 100, 150 Paul delegates at any State convention since 2008. Even if we triple that this year, that's still only 450 Paul delegates, max. With over 1,600 total delegates pre-registered for the State convention, that means that best, best case scenario, we still don't even have 30%. That's not enough to do anything other than be a swing vote on important motions as part of a larger grassroots coalition.

As far as I know, we will have an alternate slate put together by the time the convention kicks off next week. That's not in question. The question is whether those putting it together have sense enough not to use it unless the situation calls for it, or if they simply want to pull the pin on the grenade no matter what just to make themselves feel like real badass revolutionaries, regardless of how hard it makes it to get things done next year, and the next, and the next.

 

[lib3rtarian]

Just to put things in perspective, even if the establishment sticks to their "word", we are talking about getting ONE national delegate, that's it!

Let me explain. RP won 11.1% of the total votes, which means he is eligible for 11.1% of 52 delegates = 5.772 delegates ~ 6 delegates. We got 5 open Paul delegates out of the CDs already, and the establishment knows it! (In hindsight, those guys should have run as stealth, but I digress..) So all we are expecting them to give us is 1 extra delegate.

RP got 107,109 votes in NC and we do know that RP folks are more dedicated than Romney's. How is it that we are not able to contact and recruit at least 1% of these folks as delegates? Call me crazy, but there's got to be ways to coalesce our numbers to affect conventions, where the numbers really count. There is not enough time between now and June 1 to do this, but we should do something about this for the future.

The Liberty Movement in NC should not fizzle out. At the _next_ convention, we MUST have the numbers and get Hayes's position. Why not?

 

[aclove]

If there's a secret to it, I sure as hell don't know it. Yeah, there are thousands and thousands of Ron Paul voters out there, but year after year after year they refuse to show up to precinct meetings and engage in the delegate process. The excuses are various and sundry...

"Oh, I'm too busy."

"Oh, I hate Republicans, I'm Unaffiliated."

"Oh, I forgot."

"Oh, it's late May, I want to be a delegate...what do you mean, it's too late?"

The precinct meetings always happen in February, which means the time to get people aware and organized is December-January. People are not plugged into or thinking about politics at that time of the year unless they're the hardest of the hard core, and do you know how many of those there are in this state?

100 to 150. So far.

So here's what I'm saying. I am convinced that the way this movement is going to grow in this state is that it's not going to grow until Ron Paul is off the political stage. I think that we have recruited all of the hard-core, NOBP people that can be recruited in this state without someone (or many someones) committing to doing nothing but Ron Paul Voter ID full-time, 40 hours per week like it's their job. I don't know about anyone else, but no one's paying me to comb campaign finance reports to find and mobilize these people. Selling tires is what pays my bills.

No, the way this movement is going to grow in this state is to bring over to our side the much larger group of grassroots/Tea Party voters who are thick as fleas down here who spent this year bouncing from Cain to Bachmann to Perry to Gingrich. There are a lot more of them than there are of us, and they're with us on most of our issues as long as they don't hear the name "Ron Paul" associated with them. They're anti-Washington, anti-Agenda 21, pro-10th Amendment, and in all likelihood, will vote for Rand Paul in 4 years...if, if, we don't spend the next 4 years fighting and arguing with them about the few things we disagree on. And, most importantly, they show up to conventions without having to be begged and harrassed to.

The investment of time in Matthew Ridenhour to convert him from pro-war Tea Party leader into Ron Paul Delegate only took a couple of years, but it was the reason we elected a Ron Paul national delegate out of the district of Sue Myrick, who is probably in the top 5 most virulent anti-Muslim bigots in the Congress. And she is loved in her district.

These are my opinions based on my experience. Make of them what you will.

 

[lib3rtarian]

I agree with what you are saying. Ron Paul is very polarizing. Either you love him (us) or you hate him, although you are not sure why. Dr. Paul is very misunderstood.

In preparation for the future, can the campaign share the list of donors from NC? Even if that's a list of 1000 people, that's a much more credible list to work with rather than all 107,109 who voted for RP. We should divide that list of 1000 people, across CDs and have coordinators and volunteers from each CD reach out to those folks and educate them about the need to become delegates. Heck, I can even do house calls if that'll help. We could talk to each donor and get them to join us.

What we have now is a mess, to be honest. There is no single, private channel to strategize and disseminate information. There is a meetup, there are FB groups, but none of them cover the whole state, or when they do, they are not private enough to speak our mind there. (Note to self - start a NEW FB fully private RP group. I'll handle this.) People at one event do not show up at another event, because one event is planned on FB while another is planned on meetup. We need to bring all of this together. Or have a mailing list. We need to do SOMETHING! I am willing to invest as much time in this as is humanly possible.

 

[aclove]

In preparation for the future, can the campaign share the list of donors from NC?

I would love for that to happen. However, I'm not holding my breath. The official campaign has been extremely tight-fisted with their contact and donor lists. I don't believe that Sharon Ward has been able to pry any really useful information out of them. I suspect that what's going to happen is that this information will not be turned over to grassroots activsts afterward, but will instead be turned over to Campaign for Liberty. Which would be fine, except that C4L is a 501(c)4 non-profit, and as such, is prohibited by federal law from using that information for the purpose of electioneering. Instead, they are limited to issue advocacy.

Since the same people who are running the Ron Paul 2012 official campaign are the same people who ran C4L from 2008-2011 (and will almost certainly return to C4L once the campaign ends), any appeal to C4L for that information is going to run you up against the same brick wall.

 

[MozoVote]

I started to reply again, but I think aclove has covered the bases.

The national campaign has chosen to negotiate on the unity slate, rather than urge us to "breach the walls". We were campaigning to have Paul as commander in chief after all - so let's follow his strategy rather than "go rogue".

 

[devil21]

Yeah we have won some delegates out of the CDs and that's great. Im just hoping a Paul slate is ready to go if any shenanigans come up. You're right that our local GOP has been fair, Adam, but I don't know if the same can be expected from the state party? What I really don't want to see is Paul leadership roll over purely out of desire to build political capital or through becoming just another wing of the entrenched establishment. Having a Paul slate ready to use gives us leverage.

 

[aclove]

Having a Paul slate ready to use gives us leverage.

Agreed. The message is not, "Don't prepare a slate." The message is, "Prepare a slate, but don't pull the trigger unless the state party tries to screw us."

 

[lib3rtarian]

Are we going to move a motion on Friday to have the delegates voted on individually, rather than as a slate? I heard some talk about it. If that happens, are we going to nominate other folks from the floor?