California GOP Vice Chair Race Update – a Sad Sad Commentary on the CRA

A lot of the readers of this blog remember the April 2011 CRA Convention.

The fallout has been occurring since then – including the Placer GOP Cent Com election in 2012. It was a revenge mission for several that were on the losing end of that 4/2011 CRA Convention.

The State GOP is electing officers.

The Vice-Chair Race is drawing by far the most attention. It pits San Francisco Lawyer and former Heritage Foundation Member Harmeet Dhillon versus Part-Time Swap Meet Vendor and Campaign Operative Rodney Stanhope.

And that is as simple a terms as I can put it in.

Many had hoped for a third candidate. The CRA had a board meeting two weeks ago and chose to table the issue – because many had questions about Harmeet’s Street Cred. Rodney was not really given serious consideration after a staggering amount of baggage started coming out.

And, this is where the Sad commentary on the CRA starts. In the days after some of us left at 3am to go to the board meeting – anonymous emails started coming out attacking Harmeet as if the CRA had endorsed Rodney. The Emails were sent on the CRA’s platform with official CRA headers on them.

The claims in the emails were hyperbolic – calling Harmeet a communist for her affiliation with a local chapter of the ACLU (even though she has an excellent explanation).

The war at the 4/2011 CRA Convention was fought specifically to break the stranglehold people like David Stafford Reade, Dave Gilliard, Joel Anderson et. al. had over parts of the CRA. It was about freeing the CRA from Consultant manipulation…

It was after Email Number two that CRA Sgt. at Arms Aaron F Park chose to publicly endorse Harmeet, several others followed within days. The second email featured a bald-faced lie attempting to say that a political donation from a business partner was done by Dhillon herself… and this on the heels of a SF Chron Article quoting the President of the CRA calling the ACLU a Communist Organization. (Apparently, she was channeling Senator McCarthy)

Then a third email came out. The damage was done – the CRA had been used by someone looking to get a third candidate in the race, completely overriding the will of the board and making the CRA look like fools. This was the exact thing the 4/2011 Convention was fought to avoid.

Every other major Republican Group endorsed Harmeet Dhillon in the interim. And, now, the CRA is isolated because of the stupidity of a few people.

We are grateful for the CRA officers who have taken public stands to endorse Harmeet Dhillon – someone had to stop the insanity. We are also hopeful that the Contract with the CRA will be restored.