My County Central Committee Experience

I was recently elected to the Central Committee of my county's Republican Party for the first time. And I just attended my first county committee meeting two nights ago.

The meeting was held in the “Hall of Mirrors”, a large room in a fancy downtown hotel. Everyone except the Tea Party types was dressed up in their suits and ties. Every GOP precinct committeeman in the county was invited and a lot of big wig politicians also attended. There are about 800 precincts in my county, most of which were filled this year, and it seemed like most of those elected attended the meeting, a big crowd.

I brought petitions for the Healthcare Freedom Amendment, the Estate Tax Repeal, and the Ohio Sovereignty Amendment, but did not make much of an effort to get any signatures, since a lot of other people were already doing it. I sat with four other members of our neighborhood 912 group.

When the meeting started, they hurriedly read through the necessary legal jargon to make it official. Then they elected the officers. It was all choreographed. The chairman would recognize someone to make a motion and then they moved to nominate the candidate. “If there is no discussion”, he said, “We’ll now vote on [so and so]”. No one raised any objections or nominated anyone else. A couple of times they made motions to nominate a whole slew of candidates to certain special positions. Each time, about ¾ of the people stood up (voting yes) and no one that I could see voted no. I didn’t even know most of the people they listed off. Why did they all just rubberstamp these guys?

Then they started patting themselves on the back. They threw in some words of apology for their recent shenanigans and pleaded with us to support their corrupt candidates because of the impending census redistricting. (The auditor, secretary of state, and the Governor make up three of the five members of the apportionment Board in Ohio.) Enough to make you sick!

Afterwards, they served brie and fancy roasted vegetable slices and lots of alcoholic drinks. Some of the big wig politicians were drinking like a fish!

Next time, we need to come up with a plan to organize an opposing slate of officers. But have to know what were doing, convince the liberty groups and social conservatives that these guys don’t really stand for what we believe in, and we have to overcome the intimidation factor.