Matt, I would very much like to know who you contacted and when. It certainly wasn't me, and I was very involved all of this year in the Oklahoma City / Oklahoma County area. You could safely call me one of the grassroots leaders here, but that only occurred by necessity and was not planned. Quite frankly, it resulted in significant hardship for my family, although I would gladly do it again, and my wife would be more supportive now, after we have gone through it all, than she was during these events.
Lets clear something up. Gerhart was appointed in the last week or so of January. I'm not sure exactly when,
since we never saw any official announcement by the campaign but just read about it in a few online blogs. Call it January 18th, or about then. The "grassroots" activity in OKC at that time consisted of putting signs out, having sign waves, and getting ready for the county-wide precinct meeting on February 6th (Reagan's birthday). We called our friends and asked them to show up for this meeting, and organized a sign in table, as well as made sure our people took pictures of their precinct documents.
It was because of doing these two things that we were aware of exactly who attended the precinct meeting, and were able to fight the credentials report at the County Convention. The campaign was not involved with this at all. There was absolutely no direction or contact from the campaign prior to the precinct meeting. As a Precinct Chairman, I worked on organizing this effort with many others.
After the Feb. 6th Precinct Meeting, which was a Monday, we (a few grassroots people, maybe 8-10 of us) had an informal meeting to discuss what we should be doing. Many were trying to volunteer and all of us were encouraging that. Again, there was no direction from the campaign so people just kept putting signs out and doing sign waves. Some of us, such as myself, began to refresh ourselves on the Rules of the Republican Party and Robert's Rules of Order. We also made a decision, announced on February 23rd, that any grassroots activity would be under the leadership of the campaign going forward. This took some time to announce, since it was not one group but many groups and people who had to agree to this. Within a very short time - March 2nd to be exact - Gerhart went after two different women who hold offices within the GOP, and gave RP a black eye in the press. This is when some of us withdrew our support of him and asked - repeatedly - for National to do something. Letters were written, calls were made, and nothing was done. These efforts were kept private, and not publicized, in order to not hurt the campaign.
The day after the threats was the Oklahoma County Convention (March 3rd). There is a long story to tell about what happened this day, but needless to say what Gerhart says is not what happened. Friends of mine took pictures of their precinct documents. More friends of mine manned a table at the OK County Precinct meeting (people not acting on orders or affiliated with the national campaign, who should have been doing this). I personally obtained the "official" list of delegates, which was posted on the wall of GOP HQ (took pictures with my cell phone). I then matched all of these lists up, so I knew who was friend, foe, and in the middle. I also knew exactly how many people were left out, and I knew what the proposed rules for the Convention were going to be. Based on all of this, some of us decided to be ready to act if needed to ensure a fair convention. We were successful in half of what we attempted, in spite of the antics of Gerhart. I will give a very detailed account of this day in the not too distant future, but that is the gist of the day. This was a Saturday, by the way.
Super Tuesday was the following Tuesday, March 6th. It was a bad day for Ron Paul in Oklahoma, since he received less than 10% of the vote. This meant he qualified for ZERO national delegates from our state.
There were no other actions to be taken on his behalf with the exception of winning Delegates at the District and State Conventions. This is what all of us set out to do, and we were very successful.
To say we sabotaged the efforts in Oklahoma is ridiculous. We won 60% of the National Delegates elected at Congressional Districts, and 83% of the Alternates (9 and 12, respectively). That means we SWEPT 3 out of 5 of those Conventions. In the other two, we lost the 1st district due to cheating (which we attempted to challenge) and the 2nd by TWO VOTES. At the State Convention, we had a majority for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Credentials Reports. We did not for the 4th one - and the only ones legitimately adopted by the Convention were the first two. Otherwise, we would have had 25 delegates and alternates to go along with the 9 delegates and 12 alternates we had already won - for a total of 35 of 43 delegates from Oklahoma.
All of this was done not only without the help of the national campaign and the state coordinaotr but with his direct efforts to stop us. To have an attorney from the campaign, or an official representative from the campaign at our convention from outside the state would have lent credibility and perhaps prevented some of the cheating that occurred. The Romney campaign had people there, watching everything.
This brings us to the Challenge. We - that is, a group of people not affiliated with any campaign officially but Ron Paul supporters unofficially - used our own time, money and other resources to challenge the results of our convention. You can read about it at
www.okliberty.com. Again, we received no help EVEN WHEN WE ASKED FOR IT from the national campaign. We had a legitimate complaint, and should have won our case, but the deck was stacked. This chapter of things is a giant story unto itself, so I'll leave it at that, but will be posting about it down the road - namely, after the election when I have time.
On what basis should I trust the campaign? Based on this track record? Are you crazy, or stupid?