The CRA convention was insane to say the least.
Mark Spannagel and David Reade started the pleasantries at 3pm by harrassing Karen Atteberry and my sister in law Christy at the registration table. At one point, Christy was practically in tears.
Mark Spannagel posted himself at the table to harrass people – also observed by Cindy Rowen and one of my “burly” Sgts. Mike Munzig.
We had required people registering at the convention (who did not pre-register) to pay cash due to a number of reasons. (Bad Checks was one) It had been David Reade’s pattern to pay in large numbers of delegates with one check (as he did in the infamous Romney endorsement buy in 2007).
The Restore the CRA team – led by Karen England also disrupted a Credentials Committee Meeting that was scheduled for 3pm before the 4pm CRA Board meeting.
Despite any of their claims of (yawn) a lack of transparency and whining about closed proceedings – the behavior of the Restore the CRA Team led by Reade, Spannagel and Karen England precipitated the closed meetings.
Myself and several deputy Sgts. were harassed later Friday evening as we guarded the door of the credentials committee meeting so they could get their job done. I had never been threatened with so many lawsuits in my life.
Frankly, I have never interacted with so many lawyers in my life before the April 2011 CRA Convention, including the certified letter Karen had her lawyer send George and I in March.
The Mantra was clear – Restore the CRA was telling anyone who would listen that the fraud was allowed in the CRA By-Laws and the Judge’s ruling prevented us from dealing with it. (The restraining order that pertained only to using residency as a factor was allowed to expire without incident on April 28th.)
Saturday was the worst day – even worse than Friday.
The Highlights included:
1. Paul Dillon (up for expulsion) leading a charge of the door – physically assaulting two of my deputies. On the heels of that, I observed Tim LeFever soliciting clients to sue the CRA. This incident also caused the Sacramento Police department to get called to the scene.
2. People causing a ruckus outside the Convention proceedings – encouraged in part by my opponent Ron Givens and led by Mark Spannagel, David Reade, Brenda Haynes, Erin Ryan and others. (all are team LaMalfa / Nielsen staff)
3. Behavior by legitimate CRA delegate supporters of team Karen England that was grossly unprofessional and disruptive all throughout the day inside the proceedings.
4. Units that were in question had members speak that could not tell the convention where the unit was, could not identify their unit President, could not tell the convention when the units had actually met and Karen England herself could not defend the voracity of the Yolo CRA when it was her turn to speak.
Part of what has caused us to attempt the residency rule were the large numbers of legislative staff we saw on delegation lists, people appearing on multiple lists, people we found that were not CRA members, people that when we checked voter registration files were registered DTS, people that appeared on lists from other than the unit they were known to be a member of… and when these issues were laid out at the CRA Convention, most all suspect units were not seated. A residency rule would have prevented the insanity of the Saturday proceedings.
We had limited evidence or ability to research fraud before the convention due to Peggy Mew, Scott Voigts and Team Karen England overtly interfering with the ability of the Credentials Committee to get records to verify eligibility.
Yet – what we found was astounding.
Now that we have the records – we were able to complete the research in to the massive fraud that beset the CRA since 2007. The totality of it is astounding.
To Be Continued…