The Reagan Wing has learned that "Mainstream" King County Republican Chairman Michael Young will announce his resignation next Tuesday. No reason has been given for the impending announcement. King County is one of the most populous counties in the nation.
Speculation is high that Young will become a part of the John McCain campaign team. He was rumored two years ago to have coveted a top Washington State position with the "Mainstreamer's" Presidential campaign that has the favor of Washington State's Republican pro-"Comprehensive" Immigration brass, and with McCain's new front runner status, the money, once again, has begun to flow.
Known as both an enthusiastic supporter of the Republican Left as well as a skilled practicioner of negative (and often clandestine) campaigns, Young would add a real dose of killer instinct to the Senator's Washington team.
His most recent foray into candidate strategy was the string of personal attacks on the election opponent of Liberal Republican County Councilwoman Jane Hague: Richard Pope. Creating a phoney newspaper "The Truth on Pope", Young's unattributed stories falsely accused Pope of a bankruptcy and questioned the sanity of the King County attorney (and former front-running Judicial candidate), spurring a libel suit.
During his tenure as King County Chair, Young orchestrated sneak slander attacks on several Republicans, illegally confiscated campaign literature, protected radical left-wing King County Democrat Larry Gossett from Republican opposition, and used support for his favored liberal Republicans against conservative Republicans in contested primaries as a litmus test for Precinct Committee Officer (PCO) appointments.
I, personally locked horns with Young many times, such as the over the issue of Gay Rights on the 2006 Platform Committee. Young spoke at length and repeatedly against my "Natural Family" plank and opposed any support in the Platform for Tim Eyman's referendum to repeal the State's then-new Gay Rights law. Young wanted nothing in the platform that could offend the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered community.
During his chaimanship the number of PCOs dwindled, the winning percentage of elections went down, fundraising dropped drastically and the KCGOP was fined forty thousand dollars for hundreds of violations of Public Disclosure Laws, directly under his control and authority.
He won re-election by effectively preventing candidate speeches (the locations and times of Party meetings were continually changed at the last minute), taking an hour onstage at the County officer election meeting in promotion of his candidacy (while his opponent was given five minuites) and using private King County Republican Party Assets (the email list) for his exclusive benefit.
His first act following re-election was to institute a rule that gave him and his cronies the exclusive right to kick his political opponents out of the Republican Party on any criteria whatsoever. (Gag Rule 19 - It was never used and was certainly illegal, but designed for intimidation of his political opponents.)
Will all these skills now be available for the use of the McCain campaign?
Stay tuned...
Link: The "Natural Family" plank that Young opposed
Posted by DougParris at February 15, 2008 03:35 AM | Email ThisMike did not have the underwearwithall to push for the platform that was needed to win more seats here in King County.
Hopefully he isn't replaced by a religious nut,or ex hitler youth.
Posted by: Publicbulldog on February 15, 2008 10:30 AMIllegal? In what way?
Posted by: pudge on February 15, 2008 03:58 PMI am not sure that he chased people out of the tent purposely, but the R's did lose a couple of legislators recently on his watch.
I think it is a positive step myself.
As far as intimidation goes, I think the Eastern Washington/rural crowd took a pretty hard line on the platform so I can't hold him alone responsible.
I just think he was doing what the hard liners wanted.
Now maybe we can get someone who will stand up to the hard liners and try and get some more people into the tent.
King County has to win more republican seats,and they need to switch to a platform that will do that.
I think that it will have to be a fiscal conservative platform.
Posted by: Publicbulldog on February 15, 2008 04:31 PMThe Blacklist Rule 19 says they can prevent an elected PCO from serving his constituents as a PCO, despite his legal, public election by his precinct. Further, it says they can prevent him from being a delegate to any convention, even if he is elected, and that this blacklisting can outlive the Young Administration throughout 3 full terms of County GOP administrations. It would be like a Democrat Majority passing a law that they can kick Republican Senators and Congressmen out of their elected seats in Congress (and in the case of Senators, for instance, prevent them from running again for 18 years), without a vote of the people, without any conviction for any wrong doing, on purely political grounds.
PCO is a publically elected office. The County Chair is supposed to SERVE the PCOs not be their RULER. A County Republican Administration has no more right to eliminate an elected Precinct official than the WSRP has to fire the Republican State Attorney General. The Republican Left has the whole picture of representative government upside down. They think the PCOs are supposed to serve them.
I talked to our national people back when this happened and everyone is quite certain it's illegal (besides being morally corrupt and laughable), but they felt the lawsuits and media circus should wait until Young and Company actually tried using it. Posted by: Doug Parris on February 15, 2008 05:28 PM
I don't know what planet you
have been living on but Michael
Young most certainly did try to
chase people out of Kcgop.Ask
Ruth Gibbs what he tried to do
to her when she actually had the
gall to run against him last time for county chair.Ask Edwina
Johnston what he threatened to do to her if she handed a flier
that was critical of some of the
Gop county council members at the Kcgop picnic in 2005.
Ask Phil Fortunato what Michael
Young threatened to do to him
if he handed out a brochure that
pointed out the differences
Between he and Pete Von Reichbauer at the Kcgop convention in 2005. That's just
to name a few.
Now what has happened here in
King I would say is the direct
result of trying to bring more
people in by going more to left.
It never works because ultimately what happens is you
drive the majority of your base
away. I'm all for growing the
Party but you do it by educating
the people about your beliefs
not by cow towing to liberals.
Doing so is a recipe for destruction and that what's happening here in king county.
Ah yes, when applied to removing elected PCOs from office, it could be construed as illegal, although I am not sure where the line is drawn. Certainly the party has SOME right to remove elected PCOs (see below).
It would be like a Democrat Majority passing a law that they can kick Republican Senators and Congressmen out of their elected seats in Congress (and in the case of Senators, for instance, prevent them from running again for 18 years), without a vote of the people, without any conviction for any wrong doing, on purely political grounds.
Well yes, they can do so: either house of Congress can expel a member with a two-thirds vote of that house (Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution), and while there is disagreement over whether it is Constitutional, the House has impeached a sitting U.S. Senator as well (which if successful could also result in restricting them from serving again).
Further, it's not the same thing, because while this is a publicly elected position, the Republican Party is a private organization.
A County Republican Administration has no more right to eliminate an elected Precinct official than the WSRP has to fire the Republican State Attorney General.
Nope, not the same thing, for two reasons. First, as noted above, one is a position in a public organization (state government), while the other is in a private organization (despite being publicly elected). Further, the AG is not elected to a position IN the WSRP, which makes it different from both the PCO example, and the Congress example.
I would agree absolutely that the chair should not be able to dismiss an elected PCO on his own. This is wrong, for all the reasons you say. But whether it is illegal is unclear. I find nothing in the RCWs about removing PCOs from office, which leads me to believe it is left up to the party organization.
You're right in distinguishing the nature of the Republican Party as a private organization. However, a PCO is elected by the people who are (presumably) members of that private organization: Republican voters. Doug has it right, party leadership thinks of the party as a top down organization, when in fact it is the opposite.
Posted by: Michelle on February 16, 2008 02:08 PM I don't think its Paul supporters per say that there
afraid of. It has more to do with there disdain for conservatives and liberitarin
organizations than anything else
I think.
You see they have this misguided
Belief that in order to grow the
Party they have to be more mainstream. Which of course is
Absurd.
Unfortunately, if he becomes involved in any meaningful way in the McCain campaign, that just provides an additional reason to stay home this election. Well, that and the fact that Young's involvement will result in McCain getting pounded statewide by even bigger numbers than Bush.
Young was a disaster on the E Board, and a disaster as the KCGOP chair. He, like Vance, brought all those well-proven skills to their jobs; skills at getting destroyed in campaigns against the democrats, skills of getting their butts kicked in any fund-raising effort, skills of ignoring the minority vote; skills at losing seats to the d's... you know the type.
Young's involvement to McCain would be the same disaster his involvement in the WSRP and KCGOP has been. And why anyone would want that is beyond me.
Posted by: Hinton on February 16, 2008 05:40 PMI doubt very seriously that the Eastern/rural bloc would have allowed a different platform into their tent,and I also spoke to Young personaly about altering the king county platform,and he agreed with me that it needed to be changed to a moral acceptance ,fiscal conservative platform..
If he did that the eastern bloc would have seceeded.The eastern/Rural bloc loves their law enforcement and their moral high ground platform.It works in the eastern(rural) bloc..
Here in King County most prefer education over prisons and tolerance over a hard line.
It was all predictable.It started when the fiscal conservative less government types where kicked out of the tent.
The eastern/rural bloc needed more government than the fiscal conservative less government types,in order to conduct the moral crusades.
That split was the begining of the end for the R's here in Washington State.
Young was but a stain in the overall history of the Republican downfall.
If the R's can't get more seats in King County the R's fate is sealed.Somebody, who ever it is ,has to change the platform and stand up to the eastern/rural bloc.
Or they can keep walking out in protest down in olympia,which is all they are good for these days
I can tell you what shouldn't be hard.
Tolerance for the sake of not overloading the cart. Proving that a dollar earned is better than a dolar handed out.
The R's could never sell the idea of asking for less in order to get more.
A big reason why is that the R's were guilty themselves of putting stuff on the cart that we really didn't need.
The far right found it hard to achieve moral compliance without an overloaded criminal justice cart,then the D's made a living wage out of it.
The R's sold the fears ,the D's organized the fear into a living wage.(war on drugs/homeland security)
Then the R's tried to balance the budget after the criminal justice overload,and cut somewhere else..and come out looking like the bad guys(that still sticks with King County voters).
You just watch how Dino says he will go about balancing the budget.He will cut everywhere besides criminal justice.
The R's will not make wholesale cuts to criminal justice and divert them to education.
The R's just have to have a drug task force with military gear ready to bust granny smith with her medical marijuana.
The D's just have to have that living wage job of busting granny smith with her medical marijuana.
It shouldn't be that hard to take stuff off the cart that we don't need... but neither party can do it.
Both parties killed the sales tax golden goose.
Neither party is able to revive it with their current platforms..
Posted by: Publicbulldog on February 16, 2008 08:07 PM Just who are these fiscal conservatives that you say were
kicked out of the Gop?And who specifically kicked them out?I
would like to hear some names please. Because you see the state party has been run by moderates and liberals since at
least 1996. If the eastern/rural
Bloc had as much power as you
claim they do we wouldn't have
the same establishment crowd running the state party.
It would be someone like Mark Hulst or Floyd Brown.Not the poor excuses for leaders that have systematically ran the state Gop into the ground the past 10 years.
Posted by: Phil Spackman on February 16, 2008 09:27 PMI must re phrase that to the party left us fiscal conservatives in the 1980's,so we stopped coming to the tent.
That is when the big criminal justice/military push started. We can look at Government growth at that time and pinpoint where the biggest increases came.
Business owners where not as thrilled about those increases.Most small business owners hooked up to long triple net leases where not at all happy with the war on drugs and the cold war at the same time.
That is what killed the sales tax golden goose right there...look no farther.
Most of those people belonged to the small business association,and most were R'S.
Including my Father.
That was a big voting block to lose.If you want the when and where that was it.
The who was the small business sector that felt betrayed by the suddenly moral theme happy at the cost of small business Republicans.
If you hit the rewind that is when the R's fate was sealed. The D's got control and added more education costs on top of all that moral theme stuff, mostly at the expense of the military.
The R's got control again and went back to waring on everthing again and lost the majority again.
Never once did the R's try and restore profitability after losing it and abandoning the small business sector.
The R's got hooked on moral themes and have never looked back.The small business sector is who they lost.Big Time...
We lost our party, we lost our customers ,we lost our businesses,the R's lost our votes.Washington lost the sales tax golden goose,and its checks and balances.
The small businees sector stopped going into the tent.
Moral themes sound good until you see the sticker price...then it makes you think harder about putting it on the cart...and about going into the R's tent.
Easy. I saw him up close and personal while he wreaked havoc on the WSRP during the 2000 campaign.
We have to look at what happened during his tenure as the KCGOP chair; how many times we got our asses kicked; how many seats we lost; how little was done to stem the arterial bleeding with the minority population, a now wholly-owned subsidiary of the democrats. We have to ponder how abysmal his efforts were for Bush or any of the statewides, where we started out 140,000 or so votes behind while the KCGOP was under his brilliant tutelage.
I can blame him because he was in charge, and if it had went the OTHER way, he would have demanded all the credit... because that's just the kind of guy he is.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Posted by: Hinton on February 16, 2008 10:15 PM I presume your talking about the Gop in the state of Washington. In all honesty I didn't live in Washington in the
80's. However I do know that while the R's did have control of the state legislature for a few years a couple of times.There has never been a Governor that has been remotely close to being a conservative in
Olympia. And no Dan Evans does not count. He was certainly no
Conservative and it would be difficult to characterize him as
a republican of any real worth.
What I'm saying is is that its. Very difficult when you don't
Have a governor of the same party on board to get anything
Done. Especially in this state.
He was running the franchise,he didn't invent it,nor could he alter the recipes.
I blame Ronald Reagan..the moral positive crusader that heaped the cold war and the war on drugs onto the cart for small business.
The votes have staggered away from the party ever since.
Posted by: Publicbulldog on February 16, 2008 10:47 PMI have a feeling the KC platform will be changing in the next few weeks/months. There are alot of Ron Paul delagates in the mix this year that are part of a larger movement. I do not think they will be leaving the platform alone.
Posted by: Lysander on February 16, 2008 11:10 PM"The eastern/rural bloc needed more government than the fiscal conservative less government types,in order to conduct the moral crusades."
This is all purest fiction. Liberals on every issue have dominated the leadership of the WSRP since the seventies.
The Social Conservatives ARE the fiscal conservatives and the ruling class is neither.
Evans/Gorton/Vance are all tax and spend pro abortion liberals.
Bob Williams, Dino Rossi and Reed Davis are the best contrast. They represent real social conservatism and real fiscal conservatism.
If you are only half conservative you might like the revisionist history PublicBulldog is pushing, but it has no basis in reality.
Not in removing them from office, no. The RCWs, that I can find, contain no provision for removing them from office, which means it is left up to the party.
However, the county chair choosing the LD chairs DOES directly violate RCW 29A.80.061, which expressly grants the authority to the PCOs to elect their LD chair: "the county chair of each major political party shall call separate meetings of all elected precinct committee officers in each legislative district for the purpose of electing a legislative district chair in such district." It doesn't explicitly say the PCOs shall do the electing, but it is absolutely implied, quite obviously.
So if the PCOs in the LD are not voting for their own chair, then this violates explicit state law, unless there's some other statute I'm missing. Am I missing something? Why hasn't this been brought up, if, indeed, the KC GOP is appointing LD chairs instead of having them elected?
No, the Democrat Majority in the U.S. Congress cannot hold a meeting of their leadership and expell a member of Congress.
You didn't say anything about "a meeting of leadership." When you said "pass a law," the assumption I made is that you were talking about an official act of Congress. I see now you meant pass a law that allowed them to do so without a further official act by Congress.
Setting aside whether two-thirds of Congress can delegate that authority in such a manner, the point is simply that an elected official CAN be removed from by body they are elected to, subject to whatever rules are laid out by the statutes (including the Constitution) ... and for the party, I see no statutory limitations.
So unless you can show me in the RCWs where it says an elected PCO cannot be removed in this manner, I won't believe you when you say it is illegal.
I was there ,I know what I saw.
I saw the gloden goose killed by the drug war and the cold war. The load on the cart was too much for small business.
Prices went up, sales dropped,small business was on the ropes.
The sales tax golden goose was seriously wounded...and died when the D's put education and social programs..property tax sales- tax-gas tax-b&o tax increases on top of what was left of the R's moral theme/cold war crusades.
At no time did the R's ever return to save small business overhead..at no time.
The Small business association used to be a big deal in the 70,'s and 80's.most of the members were R's.
Small business used to represent a vary large faction of employment,and sales taxes then too.
Now look at small business. lunch for $11 bucks ,dinner for $15 or $20. Smaller portions and higher prices.less sales, Less turnover of product,less sales taxes,less membership for the R's.
Demographics have a lot to do with the collapse.
Old people and young kids could not afford the price increases,and went to IGA or other non union grocers instead.
I just don't see how one guy Mike Young ,could have stopped it all from happening,nor solving the problem.
Most R's don't even know why they lose every year.
They don't remember those days when they had the small business associations numbers and support.
The R's are stuck on a course set forth in the Reagan era and could never recover those small business numbers and the small business association again...Mike Young was not going to do that by himself...I got him to acknowledge it all but I couldnt get him to start showing the sticker price of Reagan's crusades,and rolling back the crusades to help restore the bottom line..The Eastern rural bloc would have called for his head..
Reagan eliminated small business,forced corporate merges,and left us with corporate dominance here in our state.
All of the mom and pops are gone or far and few between, now made up mostly of asian,and spanish businesses that hold on for their lives.
Corporate chains owned by parent corporations is what we have now.
That explains it all for the R's. They lost the small business sector and have not acknowledged the loss of fiscal conservatives attached directly to the bottom line ...that were running local small businesses.
Now the R's are more moral theme happy and farther away from the bottom line...and farther away from a majority.
Besides myself and a select few others now outside the party,the R's don't have a person here in Washington that will stand up to the moral crusaders,and show them the sticker price for their crusades,and protect the bottom line.
Dino wants to manage the moral crusades and social programs better.... which means cutting where the smallest union is so they don't ramp up a candidate against you.
I say in order to fix the problem you need to go right to the spot were the mules are clogging the road,shoot them in the head and push them over the side...at the protest of some for the benifit of many
That would be The cold war/ drug war increases.
They are still on the cart.now homeland security is on top of all that.As long as it is on the cart small business has no chance,the sales tax golden goose will not be revived,the local small busnesses will continue to seek out the D's for subsidies.
The R's may get control someday without rolling back the cold war/ moral theme crusades,but they won't keep it for long.
The R's need to restore the bottom line ,and restore the local small business bloc.They need to have self control or its over for them.
They hate Ron Paul because he shows the sticker price and rubs it in their face.That is why they want him out.
Ron Paul would restore the bottom line, restore the sales tax golden goose,and restore the local voting bloc for the R's...but they wouldn't be able to lock up everyone for doing everything they didn't like and push democracy down the throats of other nations.
Mike Young knew it had to be said but never did say it.Ron Paul knows what has to be said and has said it.
That people like you seem to view him as some sort of, well, political messiah, tends to speak for itself.
Posted by: Hinton on February 17, 2008 11:50 AMPCOs are, indeed, because they are elected, given, by law, the right to vote in the GOP, but other Republicans, who have never been PCOs can run for that office. All Republicans who are registered voters can run for a Convention Delegate position. Young's rule gives his board the power to take that right away, not just from elected PCOs or Delegates, but from people who have never been elected to either office. It is not, as you incorrerctly assume, "removal from office" of a PCO.
No Law is required to specifically anticipate every possible violation of rights or powers conferred and mention them specifically in the legislation to cover the violation. The First Amendment, for instance, protects "speech" but does not mention electronic broadcasts, the amplified sound of loudspeakers (that are electronic reproductions of speech) or sound recordings of speech. Will you argue that they are not protected because they are not specifically mentioned? I can't claim to have the right to pilfer kumquats just because they are not mentioned in my state's larceny statues. Young's bylaw gives his board the right to remove the right to vote in Party proceedings from any Republican, PCO or not. In the case of public election to PCO, this directly and obviously violates the principle of the statute, but it goes way beyond that. It could be used, for instance, to prevent anyone who has publicly opposed amnesty for illegal aliens to participate in the Republican Convention Process, thus controlling the conventions' outcomes on that issue. It could be used to prevent supporters of Mike Huckabee from being delegates, but, of course, would be more likely to be used against Ron Paul.
Let us suppose I hold a joint meeting of my precinct. All republicans are invited and public notices are sent out. We'll call it a "Precinct Caucus." At that caucus we delegate to me, the chair, the right to hold certain Republican voters in my precinct to be "not in good standing" with the Republican Party and take away their right to vote in any future precinct caucus as well as any future Republican Primary for the next six years. They can't vote in the Presidential Primary or the September Primary. They can't vote me out as Precinct Chair because they are prohibited from participating in any Precinct Caucus or voting on the office of Precinct Committee Officer. They can't come to conventions or run for delegate.
Please find any RCW that specifically prohibits my Precinct Caucus from wielding that power.
This precisely duplicates the nature and process of the power Young's bylaw is claiming.
You really should spend some more time around the party if you're going to make these generalizations. The "Eastern Wasington/Rural crowd" (Spokane) voted overwhelmingly for Ron Paul. The elitist King Co. Republican party that is controled by fiscal and moral liberals voted overwhelmingly for McCain. That said, there is a remnant in the King Co. party that delivered a near plurality for Ron Paul, add that to the "uncommitteds" and "other" and you've got an overwhelming anti-status-quo.
Hinton,
You're right on Young and Vance, but wrong on Ron Paul. He's the only conservative left in the race.
Posted by: Michelle on February 17, 2008 12:12 PMYour darn right they voted for Paul,those farmers are watching the bottom line.
Now what was the tally over there for the D's. Obama.
As far as hanging around the party I have talked to some in and out of the party.Fred Jarret,John Gower.
Funny how most of the olympia guys(Gower) I know wanted Romney.
Mccain is a disaster.He is trying to push a fiscal conservative platform and a 100 year trillion dollar war at the same time. Where is Ross Perot when you need him..Those figures lie and that lier can't figure.
So its Reagan's fault they spent to much. Let's go back and
revisit history a little shall we. To start with congress was
was controlled by the democrats during both of Reagan's terms.
With the exception of two years in the early eighties when the senate had a small republican majority.
For every dollar that came into
treasury the democrat controlled
congress spent a dollar fifty.
Money was pouring in to the treasury at the time due to the
Reagan tax cuts. The democrats
simply couldn't controll themselves.
Reagan did spend a lot of money
on national defense but it was
the right thing to do and it worked.Every budget that was submitted to congress was dead on arrival. He tried to reign in
Spending but the democrats just
Went crazy with all that money.
The democrats created the deficit in those days not Reagan.
I might add that Reagan didn't kill small business
in the state of Washington. If anything with his tax
cuts and reduction in regulations in made it easier
to start a business. For example Microsoft as well as
Costco benefited from that.
What really hurt small business here were the
starting of the B and O tax and the mininum wage
requirements. Those things have helped to drive
prices up here. Bulldog who was it that actually
voted to implement these things initially?
Do I really have to tell you who it was?
Ok it was the democrats. Its apparent that you
don't really understand economics. It ceases to
amaze me that people don't seem to get the fact
that the money to pay for these things doesn't
come from the sky.
D's raised property taxes,sales taxes,gas taxes,and B&O taxes on top of criminal justice Living wage jobs that Ron Reagan helped say yes to.
People want to put Reagan on a pedestal and feel all good about what he did to the cold war.People don't like to look at the sticker price for the dual wars that Reagan ramped up.
Most of that stuff is still on the cart today.
NO NO NO The R's can't say they didnt help make this happen, those mandates helped take King County criminal justice budgets from 59 to 74 percent,along with simular increases in other counties.. The R's have stood for criminal justice overfunding for years.The D's are too afraid the R's will say were not tough on crime...and the R's do say that. Criminal Justice overfunding was started by Reagan then sterilized and Homogenized into living wage jobs by the D's.
The R's said yes to dual wars,the D's said yes to putting them into the blue pages and growing the fear every year. Now the D's are stuck with those blue pages the R's are stuck with moral positives.
Posted by: Publicbulldog on February 17, 2008 03:31 PM I'm supposed to believe this whole beef of yours is about overfunding the criminal justice
system and national defense?
Let's not forget what state we
live in. The Democrats have ran it for decades and they taxed and taxed and taxed it into the
ground. Why do you think boeing
moved their headquarters to another state. There are states
like Utah, Arizona and Delaware
just to name a few. They are much more business friendly than
Washington.
After I confront you with the facts about Reagan's terms you
still want to blame him for all
this.Look I'm sorry for what happened to your
your father's business. I really am
but blaming Ronald Reagan for it
is ridiculious.
http://www.unodc.org/doc/enl/1983-46-E.pdf
Reagan signed the bill that allowed the Military to be used against civilians..medical marijuana patients today suffer from Reagan's moral crusades..
Reagan was not an Icon he was a civil liberty nightmare.
Take a good look at that link, then read about posse comitatus.
Like I said it is still on the books today.
Reagan ramped up the blue pages the D's grew the blue pages. Posted by: Publicbulldog on February 17, 2008 05:06 PM
Your very good at moving from one subject to another. Your hatred of Reagan notwithstanding. You can't defend your position once I come
to the table with undisputable facts so then you just move on to something else.
I can see its waste of time to go any further with this whole
thing. I will just end with this: Michael Young was not a
good party chairman. The reason
is this you can never successfully build a party by trying to the silence those that
don't agree with you all the time.
You are right that Young could never build a party,the election results don't lie,therefore he was not a good party chairman based on numbers alone..
Reagan's legacy is another issue.
I went to that issue to show how complicated this all gets when you try and pin the overall blame on just one guy.
I agree with you that silencing those that opposed him,that was wrong of him,and may be why the party failed.
Why the party failed I think has more to do with the butchering of small business by Reagan and the D's.
I realize that some people won't see the actual sticker price that I do.
Obviously you don't see the same sticker price for Reagans policies that I do,and that they will and can still hamstring the R's today.
Take a look at the blue pages in the phonebook next time you get a chance.
The R's have plenty to do with filling the blue pages,the D's just had to grow the R's creations.
Sit down and look at the blue pages..They are what is on the cart. Go to the library and get a 1980 phone book and look at the blue pages(government services section)..
That should be Dino's project..to look at the blue pages now and look at the blue pages then then start rolling back the blue pages to the 1980's..the last time the legislature statyed late spending the sales taxes...and watch the party be reborn with bottom line watching small business owning R's..
That is going to be a monumental task..and one I think is above the paygrade of mike young..all of your criticisms of Mike Youngs short comings as king county party chairman are well noted and acknowledged.
No Law is required to specifically anticipate every possible violation of rights or powers conferred and mention them specifically in the legislation to cover the violation.
What rights, or powers conferred? Conferred where? By which statute?
And if there is no legal right conferred, and no statutory prohibition, then there is an explicit grant of rulemaking authority to the party to do what it wishes (not that one is needed, since as a private organization, that authority is assumed).
Let us suppose I hold a joint meeting of my precinct. All republicans are invited and public notices are sent out. We'll call it a "Precinct Caucus." At that caucus we delegate to me, the chair, the right to hold certain Republican voters in my precinct to be "not in good standing" with the Republican Party and take away their right to vote in any future precinct caucus as well as any future Republican Primary for the next six years.
I see nothing in the law granting anyone the right to participate, and therefore nothing in the law preventing any of this from happening. It is subject to party rules, but not the law.
Participating in a caucus is not a legal right at all, it is something the party chooses to allow, unless you can provide the RCWs or some other actual legal precedent granting that right.
They can't vote in the Presidential Primary or the September Primary.
That is clearly disallowed by the law, because those are public elections that the party has no control over. Caucuses: party rule only. Primaries: mix of public and party rule.
Every legally registered voter has an absolute right to vote in any primary, subject only to statutory limits, such as agreeing to the oath in the presidential preference primary, or picking a party in the summer primary.
This legal right to vote does not extend to caucuses.
Please find any RCW that specifically prohibits my Precinct Caucus from wielding that power.
You have it backward. I am saying that this IS NOT prohibited by law (except for the part about the primaries). YOU need to find some law that shows it IS prohibited.
Again: your job is to find a law that prohibits this, either by granting the "rights" you say people have, or by explicitly prohibiting those acts. We must logically conclude that, barring evidence to the contrary -- which so far has not been offered -- that it is not illegal for the party to bar people from participating, other than as specifically spelled out in the RCWs.
I am fascinated by your assertion that my (60% Ron Paul) Precinct caucus had the authority to remove the Primary Election elegibility of any voters they chose in our precinct. I think this power you've discovered could literally transform the whole Primary process in Washington State. Just four or five people (on average) per precinct, throughout the state, could disenfranchise more than a million "inconvenient" primary voters if they happen to support a candidate the precinct caucus majority opposes.
We could call it the "YOUNG MAJORITY" rule.
Here are the RCWs that Blacklist Rule 19 violates:
RCW 29A.80.041
Precinct committee officer, eligibility.
Any member of a major political party who is a registered voter in the precinct may upon payment of a fee of one dollar file his or her declaration of candidacy as prescribed under RCW 29A.24.031 with the county auditor for the office of precinct committee officer of his or her party in that precinct. When elected at the primary, the precinct committee officer shall serve so long as the committee officer remains an eligible voter in that precinct.
RCW 29A.80.030
County central committee -- Organization meetings.
The county central committee of each major political party consists of the precinct committee officers of the party from the several voting precincts of the county. Following each state general election held in even-numbered years, this committee shall meet for the purpose of organization at an easily accessible location within the county, subsequent to the certification of precinct committee officers by the county auditor and no later than the second Saturday of the following January. The authorized officers of the retiring committee shall cause notice of the time and place of the meeting to be mailed to each precinct committee officer at least seventy-two hours before the date of the meeting.
At its organization meeting, the county central committee shall elect a chair and vice-chair of opposite sexes.
RCW 29A.80.020
State committee.
The state committee of each major political party consists of one committeeman and one committeewoman from each county elected by the county central committee at its organization meeting.
I am fascinated by your lack of reading comprehension. I explicitly, in no uncertain terms, said that is one thing you mentioned your caucus did NOT have the authority to do. I repeat myself myself: "That is clearly disallowed by the law, because those are public elections that the party has no control over. ... Every legally registered voter has an absolute right to vote in any primary, subject only to statutory limits, such as agreeing to the oath in the presidential preference primary, or picking a party in the summer primary."
As to the rest, I already told you, that elected PCOs have certain statutory rights. But the crux of what you say is in the "Blacklist Rule" is not violative of those rights. You were talking about serving as delegate to caucus or convention; nothing in the RCWs implies the PCO can, or should be, a delegate to those organizations: just the central committee.
The elected PCO has the stautory rights to be in the central committee, and to participate in the election of five officers: county chair and vice chair, state committee man and woman from the county, and legislative district chair. The elected PCO has no statutory right, expressed or implied, to be a delegate to caucus or convention.
In all this time you haven't actually quoted the "Blacklist Rule." Is there something in that Rule which actually takes away a statutory right of the PCO to vote for those five officers or otherwise participate in the central committee?
Posted by: pudge on February 18, 2008 08:12 AMSorry, perhaps I glanced through your post too quickly. I got the impression that you thought that the right to disenfranchise Republicans Young claimed for his board was only limited by whether or not it was an exclusively Republican matter, which you assert to be exclusively private. Republican Primaries, Presidential and otherwise, are exclusively Republican matters in every sense that the Central Committee is. How can the candidates we choose to run for office (the whole point of a political party) be less our business than who can vote to elect our officers?
You keep assuming that Young's rule limits the actions of PCOs. It limits any Republican they choose to target, including PCOs:
"19.3 Denial of Good Standing Status. Precinct Committee Officers and other
Republican party activists may be denied the status of 'good standing' by the action of
the Elected Officers..."
The penalties take away all voting and participatory rights, including the ones specifically mentioned by statue:
"19.3.1 Any individual found not to be in good standing with the King County
Republican Central Committee shall have no further voting rights in any meeting of the
Central Committee, or any of its constituent parts such as Legislative Districts and
committees, shall be ineligible to hold a precinct caucus or to serve as an automatic or
elected delegate to the King County Republican Convention, or any District Conventions,
shall be ineligible to be elected to represent King County Republicans at any convention
called by the Republican State Committee of Washington, and shall be ineligible to serve
on any other committee established by or under the authority of the Central Committee."
Posted by: Doug Parris on February 19, 2008 12:30 AM
Nope. That simply isn't true. They are public elections and are subject to election statutes.
How can the candidates we choose to run for office (the whole point of a political party) be less our business than who can vote to elect our officers?
Doug, that is why the GOP and Democrats are free to IGNORE the result of the primary (presidential or otherwise), because it is NOT a purely party matter. And it is why the Democrats choose to ignore it. As a party, we have absolutely no power over who votes in our primaries, period, except for asking them to pick one party or the other (and with an oath, at our discretion, in the presidential primary, which is explicitly allowed by statute).
"19.3.1 Any individual found not to be in good standing with the King County
Republican Central Committee shall have no further voting rights in any meeting of the
Central Committee, or any of its constituent parts such as Legislative Districts and committees
This violates the statutes I cited. An elected PCO has statutory voting rights in both the central committee and LD committee.
shall be ineligible to hold a precinct caucus or to serve as an automatic or
elected delegate to the King County Republican Convention, or any District Conventions,
shall be ineligible to be elected to represent King County Republicans at any convention
called by the Republican State Committee of Washington, and shall be ineligible to serve
on any other committee established by or under the authority of the Central Committee.
As best I can tell, none of this violates any statutes. There is no legal right for anyone, including an elected PCO, to be a member of any of these committees/caucuses/conventions that I can find.
Posted by: pudge on February 19, 2008 09:12 AMYou say, "Nope. That simply isn't true. They are public elections and are subject to election statutes."
Yep. It simply is true. They are as public as conventions, in this State. Major Political parties are quasi-governmental, publicly elected creations of the State Legislature in Washington, like it or not. All elections are subject to election statutes.
Restricting access to a convention process that the State Legislature has explicitly placed in the hands of the State Party by the County Party is the assumption of un-delegated power.
The reason you have to sign an oath to participate in the Primary is the exercise of the Party's right to control who participates (at its current state of litigous and political flux). The idea that a non-representative sub-organization, like a County Party or a Precinct Caucus can disqualify a Republican from participating in a larger arena, like a County Party limiting access to a State Convention or a Precinct limiting access to a State or National primary is what is in question.
Posted by: Doug Parris on February 19, 2008 11:16 AMYep. It simply is true. They are as public as conventions, in this State.
We cannot exclude anyone from primaries. We can exclude anyone from conventions.
The reason you have to sign an oath to participate in the Primary is the exercise of the Party's right to control who participates
Nope. It is only because it is in the statute.
The idea that a non-representative sub-organization, like a County Party or a Precinct Caucus can disqualify a Republican from participating in a larger arena, like a County Party limiting access to a State Convention or a Precinct limiting access to a State or National primary is what is in question.
It can limit access to organizations and representation it controls, subject only to statute (so it cannot limit elected PCOs voting in the LD or central committees). It cannot limit primary access. It cannot limit participation in a larger body, except as a representative of its own: for example, it can prevent me from serving as a representative of the KC GOP at state, but it cannot prevent me from being nominated or elected as a delegate to national from state.
Posted by: pudge on February 19, 2008 12:11 PMRCW 29A.56.020: "a presidential primary shall be held at which voters may vote for the nominee of a major political party for the office of president." Being a part of Title 29A, "voters" necessarily refers to all legally registered voters, unless otherwise specified.
Posted by: pudge on February 19, 2008 04:54 PMWhere would I find that?
Posted by: Doug Parris on February 20, 2008 09:07 PM
"So unless you can show me in the RCWs where it says a [registered voter] cannot be removed in this manner, I won't believe you when you say it is illegal."
"I see nothing in the law granting anyone the right to participate, and therefore nothing in the law preventing any of this from happening." Posted by: Doug Parris on February 21, 2008 12:50 PM