Release:
Throughout the state Tea Partiers are up in arms about the Ohio Republican Party violating its own rules and potentially election laws, in order to promote its own preferred candidates for State Central Committee. The Party is reputedly spending $330,000 to defeat Tea Partiers who are running for State Central Committee. Jim Woods Medina County Friends And Neighbors (MCFAN) founder commented “I’ve been involved in party politics since I volunteered to be a Ronald Reagan precinct leader in 1976. This is the first time I’ve seen the Party spend money to purposely remain closed, exclusive, and unresponsive to the conservative majority.”
The Republican Party is distributing “slate cards” throughout the state to inform Republican voters of its preferred candidates. Many people are not happy about the Party trying to make their decisions and limit choices for them, but prefer to choose for themselves in an open, competitive primary election. The Party’s own rules prohibit the endorsement of candidates prior to the primary election, and those rules must be voted to be “set aside”, in order to endorse a candidate. The Ohio Republican Party has scheduled a State Central Committee meeting for April 16 for the apparent purpose of voting on whether or not to set aside the rules and endorse themselves. The fact that hundreds of thousands of cards have already been mailed endorsing the Party’s preferred State Central Committee people prior to being authorized by a vote is being characterized as “Misconduct”. Tea Partiers are still incensed about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s setting aside Senate rules and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s threatening to “deem” the Health Care Bill to have been passed without a recorded vote, and see State Republican Chairman’s actions as equivalent to their cavalier and arrogant disregard for the rules, and majority opinion.
In another desperate move, Republicans who have never attended conservative events, such as TEA Party meetings and candidate forums, are attempting to jump on the popularity bandwagon of these groups. For example, this pseudo-TEA-Party logo has been placed on campaign literature.
Noted Steve Christopher, a Tea Party organizer who recently ran for Attorney General “This is an attempt to scam and confuse potential voters into believing that these candidates are endorsed by TEA Party organizations, when in fact, they are not. In many cases, the supporters of these candidates are actively fighting against Tea Party members seeking election to State leadership positions.”
