Yesterday (August 28th) at the Michigan Republican State Convention and motion was made to enter a second nominee for Lieutenant Governor; Bill Cooper.
The night before, the tea parties of Michigan had it’s own meeting to discuss the candidates among themselves to see where the people of these groups were headed with their voting.
Several days before the convention, I had asked if everyone was “comfortable” with Rick Snyder’s pick for Lt. Governor, Brian Calley and if not, lets have people through out some names so we could see what was available.
The name Bill Cooper came up many times, so Don Jakel of the Independence Caucus said he would talk with Bill see what we could do.
Bill accepted our offer and gave a speech at our tea party meeting.
The following day at the convention, the motion was made, seconded and then it was to be put up to a vote. The Republican Party stated that we would do a show of hands vote, which we of course loudly rejected to, first off because there were over 3000 in attendance and we were in an arena-seating situation and then to top that off, all the delegates were scattered in among alternate delegates and guests so who could decipher which “hands” were legitimate voting delegates.
Next the republican’s leaders decided we would have them stand… like this would be better count.
As we waited for the Republican Party to decide on how to handle the situation, Bill Cooper took to podium and proceeded to back out of the nomination.
Now a few things came immediately to mind; what did the Republican Party offer him to back out? And then apparently, he was not the man we thought he was.
Now my question to Bill is, what the hell happened here? I believe we have the right to know.
I should also mention that from my vantage point in the arena, I felt he had a strong chance of winning this nomination.
Another little bit of information on this convention; we had to wait two hours in line outside before we cold be signed in. The republican committee blamed the Breslin Center management for the delays stating “it was OK for a basketball game or concert” but not for a political convention of party delegates.
The Republican Party stated over and over again how excited they were about the number of delegates we had, but from the way they kept ramming things through before we had a chance to react and the way the we were inconvenienced, I got the feeling they were much more happier when there were only a handful of delegates that they could control.
The Tea Party had brought in a record number of delegates and we had an agenda that we wanted to fulfill. We are fed up with the business as usual and the old boy network in our government. These was a learning experience for us and believe me, the next convention will be different.
http://republicanmichigander.blogspot.com/2010/08/michigan-republican-convention-8-28.html
ReplyDeleteI've been to most conventions since 2002. This was the most different one I've been to. Some of it I liked, some of it I didn't like very much.
The man thing tea party (and all) participants need to do is 1. Stay active and 2. Learn all about the processes to state, county, and district parties.
One thing we did well in Livingston County is invite the most prominent tea party organization on board to work with them. We avoided a county convention floor flight because we took proactive measures and were on the same side. There was a floor battle, but it wasn't tea party, but the black sheep elected officials from a certain township. I don't know how things are out in West MI and the local parties.
I didn't like what happened with Cooper. I think that could have been handled better, either with procedures beforehand or with better handling. The "show of hands" votes have caused problems in the past when things were close. That's why we moved to secret ballot recently. They could have used "candidate A/B" there too, as they did with sec of state runoff.
The only two things I saw "rammed through" is Cooper/Calley and MSU trustee race. The latter backfired and then some since the underdog won anyway.
I agree, it was a learning expeirence. What it did was show a lot of people that the Republican Party is not much different than the Democratic Party and that politics is a slippery-sleazy business.
ReplyDeleteNovember is just around the corner. I feel we need to put people in office that can tell it like it is, good or bad, earn our trust and put some esteem into these positions that would their mother proud of them.