OC Central Committee Roundup

One word....wow. This is a tip for anyone who complains about having to pay $21 to go out to the movies these days only to get served up bad movies. You can go to OC GOP Central Committee meetings and get great drama for free! The storyline of the night was if Janet Nguyen should receive the party's early endorsement. She did not get it, but the way it all went down will go down in OC GOP history as one of the weirdest meetings of all time. It all started because a member of the committee, Tim Whitacre, pulled Janet's name from the early endorsement list. Any Central Committee member has this right. Marcia Gilchrist made a motion to reinstate the early endorsement. Three members spoke in favor of this motion and three spoke against it. Then they took the first vote with Parliamentarian Kermit Marsh instructing members that abstentions would count basically the same as NO votes. The count was announced as 32 to 17, not enough. Then Chairman Baugh and Mr. Marsh announced that they were voting "aye". This made the so called total 34 to 17. Just enough for approval. Not so fast said Tim Whitacre. He had a different total of 34 to 23, not enough for endorsement. I think Mary Young and Kermit Marsh need a remedial math class or something because after conferring with Tim, they did announce that Tim's total was the one to go with. Huh? Talk about needing checks and balances in this party. How hard is it to count votes? This is amazing. So Janet doesn't get the endorsement like she thought she would, but people seemed satisfied that fairness had prevailed.

After this we had CRP Chairman Ron Nehring speak about the state of the GOP Presidential race and get in a few gratuitous slams against the potential Dem nominees.

Then we had more formalities like giving awards to volunteers of the year and month and legislator of the year, which went to our Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

So we get to committee reports at the end of the meeting. Most members had left for the night thinking that all important business was finished. Then Parliamentarian Kermit Marsh dropped a bomb on everyone that he is over-ruling himself from earlier in the night that abstentions would count in the vote totals and re-rules that in fact they don't count towards the final tally and announces that Janet Nguyen hereby receives the endorsement by 34 to 12 or something. WHAT? You're over-ruling yourself? Says who? Everyone was looking incredulous and Janet supporters were grinning ear to ear like the cat that just swallowed the canary. Someone restore some order here. Enter Assemblyman DeVore. He strongly objected to the vote and had a few stern words for Mr. Marsh. He then moved for reconsideration of the vote. Now remember, a lot of members had already high tailed it out of there. I had Trung supporters come back into the room that were having drinks at the bar ask me what just happened. I said your guy just got railroaded just like last year with the whole Sheriff endorsement fiasco. Someone stop the insanity. Thankfully Chairman Baugh rose to make a motion that the endorsement vote be expunged and a re vote held at the next meeting in February. That was adopted by voice vote. Whewww. Did you get all that? You had to be there. Matt Cunningham from Red County was there and had his video camera rolling so we should have some juicy tape of how everything happened pretty soon.