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Missouri GOP delegate elections take place tomorrow; here’s what you need to know

By: ColdWarrior (Diary)  |  March 16th, 2012 at 02:18 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

If you are a conservative in Missouri, tomorrow you have a chance to become a “voting member” of the Missouri Republican Party at your congressional district convention and state convention. Missourians will elect delegates to the congressional district and state conventions at the Missouri County Caucuses on March 17, 2012. Here’s a link to a site that provides all the information you will need to take part if you are so inclined. The guy who authored the site is even holding a tutorial by conference call this evening. His site includes links to the Missouri GOP site that provides further information about where to attend the caucus meeting. I’m informed and believe that in most locales there will be plenty of vacancies and many who show up to run for the delegate positions will run unopposed. Majority rules, and if conservatives show up in sufficient numbers, they can make sure conservatives become the elected delegates.

Project City Hall: Missouri County Caucus

I hope someone who attends will write a Diary about their participation — with video!

Thank you.

ColdWarrior
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In 2012, will YOU become a “voting member” of the Republican Party in your precinct?

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COMMENTS

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  • onemovoter

    I’ll be going to the county caucus in the morning to see what my chances of being a delegate will be. I can’t get any info out of the current GOP chair for our county other than to show up. We’ll see how it goes.

    • lastgopinillinois

      our county GOP chairman runs in “stealth” mode all year long. But I have been fired upon about the elections all year and theres no way to get in touch with the chairmain except via e-mail (which they never reply to).
      FINALLY five days before the Illinois primary, I get an E-MAIL from the chairman, telling me that there are yard signs and campaign literature at the GOP county headquarters for people to pick up!
      Really??? five days before the primary????
      Thanks a lot. By now we should have been covering door-to-door with literature and signs, and in the final days before the election, calling people to see when they need a ride to the polling place in our precinct.
      Helluva way to support your local GOP, especially during an important national election like this.
      Man, we are Soooooo lost here !

  • http://www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com ColdWarrior

    to post here how it went for you and generally.

    Thanks,
    CW

  • carolina

    “it’s like the Hatfields & the McCoys around here” per a retweet.
    Sounds like more chaos than usual.
    Anyone here have “eyes on the ground”?

  • http://www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com ColdWarrior

    This first video does not include too much that’s eventful but give a flavor of how many in the crowd did not seem to like the way the Party officers were running the caucus.

    Somebody chants “First Amendment” over and over — at this private meeting of a voluntary association.

    This video includes a Party representative going over some of the rules and shows the police presence.

    Things fall apart in this video. Again, all the talk about the “First Amendment, presumably by Paul supporters. At a private, non-governmental meeting of a voluntary association, which can make its own rules about whether to allow filming of its proceedings. (I’m in favor of unobtrusive filming and believe those who made the rule to ban filming made a big mistake.)

    There are other videos shot by others. If you do a search on YouTube for using the search terms charles county caucus you will find some of them.

    Thank you.

    CW

  • carolina

    by one attendee:
    http://pastebin.com/qJnBNC2Y

    It does seem that there was backlash against the Paul supporters – which led to some absolute actions by some people. I guess it will all “come out in the wash” at the State convention. ?

    • http://www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com ColdWarrior

      As you’ll see at the end of my comment below, the Ron Paul supporters back in 2008 had greater success. Although Paul received only 3.8% of the vote in the primary, the Paul supporters showed up in large numbers at the caucus and elected ALL of the delegates to the convention.

      They tried to do it again. As I keep trying to explain, when conservatives don’t come into the Party to fill up the vacant “voting member” slots in the Party (and, in the case of caucus states like MO, actually show up to participate in the caucus meetings where the convention delegates are elected), we conservatives run the risk of having that power vacuum filled by some other united, organize interest group. That’s exactly what’s been happening in St. Charles County, apparently.

      It’s all about showing up to play in the real ball game of politics — party politics at the party committee meetings.

      Can be fun and exciting! ;-)

      Thanks again.

      CW

      • carolina

        http://tinyurl.com/7kk4zqj

        CW – I think your post below is accurate. It is interesting to me that the only reason the Feb primary became a “beauty contest” was because they did not want to lose 1/2 of their delegates, and it was too late to change the primary date – so they decided to have caucuses later. They have a bit of a mess now……

  • http://www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com ColdWarrior

    The video’s audio is terrible, but it lays out the issues with text. There are some “black” spots; just scroll ahead.

    Here’s a summary of some of the facts as I understand them.

    First, the original rules allowed for recordings. The county committee changed that rule.

    Second, a voice vote was taken to appoint the caucus meeting chair. Brent Stafford was a Ron Paul supporter. The other candidate was a Santorum supporter. After the voice vote, someone asked for the votes be counted individually. The then-chairman of the meeting ignored that request.

    After the meeting was adjourned, Brent Stafford tried to, after having been told earlier, apparently, to leave the school grounds for not obeying the “no video recording rule,” organize the people in the parking lot, including Romney supporters, and have them move to a nearby public park. The police decided to arrest him for, possibly, not leaving the property as he had been asked to do so. (Which seems to be confirmed by this news report: http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2012/03/17/two-arrested-at-g-o-p-caucus-in-st-peters/.) The school administrator overseeing the use of the school grounds probably asked the police to remove the crowd from the school grounds as quickly as possible as the meeting was over.

    This “news” report talks about a brawl: http://www.kmov.com/news/local/2-arrested-after-St-Charles-caucus-dispute-143067176.html

    Here’s some history that puts this in perspective:

    FLASHBACK 2008: Ron Paul supporters take control of St. Charles County’s Republican caucus
    http://www.stltoday.com/suburban-journals/update-ron-paul-supporters-take-control-of-republican-caucus/article_4cfbf964-ce15-5fd4-a3d2-029047faff48.html
    SJ Today – March 22, 2008 – Although Paul received just 3.8 percent of the vote during the primary race in St. Charles County, the Paul supporters were in the majority of the 131 people who attended the March 15 caucus. They quickly elected Brent Stafford, a Paul supporter from O’Fallon, as chairman…. The Paul supporters filled 241 of the 274 delegate slots from St. Charles County.

    This time, Ron Paul received 12.69% of the vote in the primary in St. Charles County.

    Thank you.

    CW

    • hayeksheroes

      You might be interested in knowing that Brent Stafford is on the St. Charles GOP Central Committee. His account of the actions which took place are out there. Very interesting.

  • http://www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com ColdWarrior

    Here’s a video showing the attempt to start the caucus meeting and the ill-advised (in my humble opinion) announcement that no recording of the meeting would be allowed by the attendees.

    This is a longer clip that pans the crowd. Some in the crowd seem to believe that this caucus meeting could be turned into a general meeting where other business, other than the limited purpose of the meeting to have the delegates selected, could be discussed, thereby allowing for the original rules (such as the one relating to no recordings) could be changed. They might be correct, but I don’t think that is likely. The elected Party officers probably have to follow certain statutory requirements for holding the caucus, and probably have broad authority to enact rules for the meeting limited to achieving its purpose.

    Here’s the St. Charles County Republican Committee web site.

    http://www.stcharlesgop.com/index.php

    The rules for the meeting were posted in advance. Note also that no where on the web site is there any information about the importance of joining the Party as a committee member or how to become one.

    Here’s a link to the Missouri Precinct Project web site:

    http://www.moprecinctproject.org/

    After the meeting was adjourned, many of the Republicans attempted to peaceably assemble outside the school on the school grounds and one of the people who had been escorted out of the building decided to try to organize a “counter caucus.” The school officials must have asked the police to disperse the crowd, which they did.

    Thank you.

    CW