Alameda County is as blue as any county in the country gets. As of the time of this link it is 12.1% Republican. (VS 57.8% Dem)

I bet you’d be surprised to know that they have been embroiled in lawfare for over two years. It started with a Wendy Huang filing for a restraining order over he-said-she-said issues regarding alleged threats. IT is obvious that Huang could not prove he allegations as about a year later the motion/request was denied.

In the interim, the Alameda GOP went through an election which seated a new board in 2025. That new committee introduced new by-laws with an “Automatic Expulsion Provision”. That provision was modeled after the CRA’s and the CAGOP’s similar provision in their by-laws.

This provision bred a lawsuit from two people affected by it.

The presiding Judge is Michael Markman who was appointed by Jerry Brown and Markman has been on the bench since 2013. My research shows that he has a record of being a thorough and fair judge on a variety of issues and was respected enough that he was elected by his peers to be the presiding judge of the Alameda County Superior Court system starting in 2026.

$500,000 is the estimated cost of legal fees for both lawsuits. Given that the opposition constantly decry the lack of a voter registration program in CA, what could everyone involved have done with $500k to contact people with? How do these legal actions advance the GOP? And is it a conservative value to sue people to try and impose your will on them?

The fairness of Markman was on display in the 11 page document I received. He clearly states that it is not the court’s place to police the inner workings and the bylaws of a political organization. An activist liberal judge could have used this lawsuit to decimate the Alameda GOP.

First off the Plaintiffs were Thomas Wong and Jennifer Kavouniaris, both were presented to me as people involved with the previous lawsuit / motion / restraining order request (pick whichever label you want) against the Alameda GOP.

Basically they sued over the automatic expulsion provision of the Alameda GOP. The Alameda GOP provisionally sat every elected member at the January biennial meeting. All members that were later removed were invited to attend the meeting and were told in the letter they would be provisionally seated. The fact that they failed to attend our organizational meeting was irrelevant as they had been invited to be provisionally seated. Had they attended they could have argued against being removed as well.

In this order dated 1/27/2026, the following ruling occurred:

Order Denying Petitioners Writ of Mandate (aka ordering the Alameda GOP not to expel them)

Granting in Part and Denying in Part respondent’s (Alameda GOP) Anti-SLAPP Motion AND (this is the big one)

Sustaining Respondents Demurrer Without Leave to Amend. (Aka Lawsuit is dead and it ain’t coming back)

The partial denial of the SLAPP motion is that the Judge is not going to award all of the legal fees back to the CAGOP and Alameda GOP, just some of them. This is still a catastrophic loss for the people that sued. Both of them sued in Pro-Per (meaning no lawyer) and will have to pay out of pocket whatever award the judge finally declares!

The second major blunder (the first being do-it-yourself-lawyering) was that they named the CAGOP and several members of the GOP leadership by name as individuals in the lawsuit. By naming the Chair of the CAGOP proxies and credentials committee, the CAGOP, and Jason Clark then a board member of the CAOP in the lawsuit, it brought the firepower of the CAGOP onto them. This came in the form of the Dhillon Law Firm, you know Harmeet Dhillon’s firm that she left to go serve us all in the DOJ from.

It also gave the Alameda GOP desperately needed financial support against these so-called conservatives that sued them.

The third mistake is the people that sued the Alameda GOP did NOT show up to the organizational meeting where the bylaws leading to their expulsion were adopted. (Remember they were seated provisionally pending the outcome of this lawsuit)

The fourth mistake is the people that sued + others staged their own meeting and claimed to be the duly elected Alameda GOP. They went so far as to use banking records to get the local bank to freeze the Alameda GOP’s bank account until (what I believe was) an arbitration hearing undoing their action.

The fifth mistake is they could not file their responses on time. The judge specifically mentions this on page 3 of the document. Such is common with do-it-yourself-lawyering.

Starting on page 4 of the document, the Judge pens a demolition of the case brought by the do-it-yourself lawyers.

1. They claimed exemptions to the SLAPP rule, the judge writes “neither of which applies here” – then lays out how they misread case law.
2. “Petitioners did not plead substantial deprivation of educational, financial, and professional advantages, nor did they try to make any showing in opposition to the motion” Let your intrepid blogger translate, “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU SUE FOR?”
3. It is clear that the people that sued threw a slew of laws and decisions against the wall hoping something would stick and case-by-case, law-by-law the Judge demolished their filing.

There is a passage on page 7 that shows the incompetence of the people that filed the lawsuit, “Petitioners did not request leave to amend or suggest ways they might possible(y) overcome the problems with the pleading, and the court sees no way around the defects in the pleading“. OUCH OUCH OUCH – translation: YOU GUYS DID NOT KNOW WHAT YOU WERE DOING!

What an embarrassment to Conservatives all over California! And the CAGOP / Alameda GOP had to waste Hundreds of Thousands on legal bills over this!?

Referenced above, at the bottom of page 7 the judge cites EU vs SF Dem Central Committee 1989 case. Basically it says “The State has no interest in protection (ing) the party’s integrity against the party itself” Basically, the Judge correctly cites the state constitution and says it is not the State of CA”s jurisdiction to meddle in the affairs of a political party. Imagine if the Judge was an activist, he could have abused his bench to do all kinds of stuff to the Alameda GOP!

IN a key part of the decision on Page 8, the Judge explains that while the elections code provisions prescribe the composition of the County Central Committees, but these can’t be upheld because they burden the first amendment rights of political parties and their members without serving a compelling state interest. In layman’s terms: The elections code says where the members come from and how many there are, but the State of CA is not going to pick your members for you. OUCH OUCH OUCH. Ex-officios beware, just because you file and lose some partisan election does not mean a county party has to keep you seated. This 1989 case proves it.

Then one of the most devastating lines with implications for ALL CENTRAL COMMITTEES FOLLOWS:

The fact that the ACRCC intended to remove petitioners “Automatically” or otherwise after taking the oath and being seated is a matter of the internal affairs of the central committee. Under Wilson and EU (case law), the court can not interfere with those affairs.

The do-it-yourself lawyers tried to assert that removing them after being seated was a violation of the law. In fact, according to the judge they actually cited provisions of the law and case law that shows Central Committees have the right to conduct their own affairs. Basically their own court filing blew up their cause for suing the ACRCC!!!

And the conclusion on page 10 is the coup d’etat.

“An abject refusal to seat Petitioners would have violated a mandatory duty under section 1085 of the code of Civil Procedure, and the court was prepared to issue a write of mandate”. Translation, you gotta seat ’em according to the law, which is why the decision of the Alameda GOP leadership to provisionally seat the two was spot on and legally solid.

but – this is the clincher, “The fact that the central committee appears to automatically removed them once they were seated is a matter beyond the court’s review.”

People may not realize but this beat down of the opposition led do-it-yourself-lawyer lawsuit is a major precedent in Central Committee governance lawsuits and should be used by future Central Committees as a guide for how to deal with destructive members.

I am sorry the Alameda GOP and the State GOP had to deal with this, but the results of this are far-reaching and very important in the grand scheme of things long-term.