If you want to study history you soon find out that much of it is about war. Wars are the defining moment in most civilizations and politics is just another manner of war. War drives much of the innovation that makes lives better and longer. War and conflict in general gives as much as it takes, otherwise we wouldn't do it.
Just like in war people sometimes rise to the occasion and show courage and dedication to their cause or ideals. We see sacrifices and we are both ennobled and inspired. We seem the controlling principles of life, whether you call that religion, karma, or as Taoism puts it, the order, the principles that are the source, the pattern, the substance that underlies the very existence of everything that exists or occurs. You can call that God, Allah, luck, karma, or the Taoist grain of life and I think all would be closer to the truth than further away from the truth. Doors are opened or slammed, an order seems preordained as it unfolds.
The first example was the fight over the electronic voting at the Convention. Believe it or not David McLain's last convention as outgoing Chairman of the GOP was heads and tails above any we have ever experienced; it was a complete disaster on many fronts. First was getting the credentials done, that lasted until around 12:45 because the fight over the Convention Rules was between 12:49 and 2:30 pm.
So former State Representative Mike Reynolds led the fight over the electronic voting by standing up and making a motion for the ruling of the chair on the rules (look back in our older stories for those rules and how the new electronic voting was illegal) broken by the use on the electronic voting. Now everyone pushing Mclain's Dominion Style voting scheme was well aware of the rules violation and knew all the sides of the argument. The reason we first asked for a ruling of the chair was that it was his job, Nathan Dahm, to see that the bylaws and rules were followed, no need for a vote of those that might not be familiar with the rules, until the chairman ruled first.
Dahm punted to the parliamentarian Julie Daniels, a state senator. The ruling came back as we expected; nothing to see here folks, yeah, that's the ticket... sit down, shut up, put your mask on, and obey.
Reynolds was polite and civil but firm when he called for the chair's opinion. And in the process of that, Reynolds mentioned that ballots were already preprinted and on hand if needed. Few were aware of who had prepared for what turned out to be the inevitability of the need for paper ballots but it was Pam Pollard of all people that told Reynolds they existed and were on hand. Kudos for Pollard for doing that.
So the fight is on and others joined in the fight. Motions made, many votes by voice or by standing up to be counted. After see-sawing back and forth the vote is against following the GOP bylaws/rules, and we resigned ourselves to the hope that the voter fraud scheme wasn't too bold.
We had lost handily, a guesstimate would be one third to 40% to shut down the electronic voting to two thirds to 60% in favor of the scheme. Fair and square vote at least. Reynolds graciously accepted the loss as did we all.
Then around 2:30 pm with the fight lost the candidates each spoke around five minutes each so around 2:50 pm we were ready to vote on the Chairman election. A few minutes pass, nothing around 3;02 pm one of the Voter Science emails arrived, we could open it, sign in, verify that the pass code shown on the convention big screen was there, and we were ready to vote. Well, at least it was fast, right?
Nope, up pops outgoing Chairman David Mclain to the microphone doing his favorite thing; telling everyone how awesome he was. The man droned on and on for the better part of what must have been 30 minutes. My table mates were talking to each other or studying their phones, as were most of the tables spread across the room. The man droned on and on about himself while eyes rolled and the remarks of his character and ancestry grew more entertaining. But the electronic voting still showed open but that the polls were not open yet.
Sometimes around 4:00 pm there was a call for county chairmen to come to the podium where they started handing out bright green ballots. No announcement was heard on our end of the building of the change to paper ballots, we just found out we were going back to paper ballots after spending an hour and a half voting to use the electronic ballots.
As it turned out hundreds of delegates weren't getting their ballot link emailed to them so they could vote. This is no surprise, the Delegate contact list for the convention had hundreds of bounced email addresses due to sloppy data entry or sloppy processes of getting the emails. This became apparent after sending out delegate emails, hundred would bounce as undeliverable. Some were blocked by Boxbe, you sent their email, you got a reply that you had to click on, then maybe your email would be accepted by the asshole hiding behind such an email scheme. There was no way for the automated voting system to deal with this so those emails never got a reply. Others simply were not found, was the list tampered with to hurt the conservative candidates? Was it 2000 people being emailed in a small convention center and choking up the wi fi system?
Around 4:15 pm we received our first paper ballot and by 4:18 pm our votes were handed to the County officials to be tallied and the totals sent to the state GOP team that was tabulating the ballots. A few minutes later we find out that Bennett had won in a land slide, 56% of the votes, with Ortega coming in second at 23% roughly, and Jenni White at 17% roughly, and the abolitionist woman at around 2.5%. So Bennett won more votes than all others combined.
Meanwhile those on our side like were looking like geniuses for pushing back against electronic voting. Had they been respected and the rules followed so much time would have been saved.. But the RINOs like the conventions dysfunctional, it allows them to cheat and run out the clock so that things don't have to be voted on.
Former State Representative Mike Reynolds came out looking like the savior of the convention. First for starting the fight over the illegal rules and for letting the cat out of the bag that there were paper ballots printed and on hand. Had that not happened we might not have gotten out of that convention hall by midnight because the County Chairs might not have been complaining. He could have called for a paper ballot vote which would have delayed the inevitable. Instead Reynolds gracefully and wisely let it go and all the machinations by Mclain and those running the convention came to nothing for the skin it cost them.
David Van showed amazing grace and sportsmanship after the convention and after he lost to the incumbent Vice Chair Shane Jemison by about 11 points, a good respectable showing in a two way race against an incumbent. A lot of the crowd had left after the Chairman election as it was very late in the day at a convention that claimed in the rules to have a Chairman and Vice Chairman election start no later than 1:30 pm.
David Van wrote a short article in Sooner Politics Sunday morning covering the convention and giving the outcome of the convention and he recounted a meeting that had fallen through between the newly elected Chairman and the incumbent Vice Chairman. However David Van was too much the gentleman to point out a crucial fact in the story, whether by a desire to get along or a desire to be graceful:
“In one of the largest and most unusual OKGOP conventions, The Oklahoma Republicans selected John Bennett as the new state chairman, on the first ballot. The former lawmaker and career Marine received a 56% majority on the first ballot, despite a 4-candidate crowd vying for the favor of over 1200 delegates at the Oklahoma City Convention Center.
Shane Jemison was
returned to the office of Vice chair with nearly a 60% majority in a
two-way race with myself. Shortly after the elections I was asked to
arrange an 8pm informal meeting for Bennett & Jemison, at a
nearby hotel. The two men wanted to have an informal 'get acquainted'
visit.
Unfortunately, Vice
Chair Jemison was a 'no-show' for the meeting with Bennett. While
waiting, I had the opportunity to interview John & his wife,
Nicole.”
After losing the election, David Van approached Shane Jemison, congratulated him and recommended that Shane meet with Bennett that night. Shane agreed and requested David Van to set up the meeting that night at 8:00. So basically Shane stiffed the new Chairman with Bennett and his wife finally giving up and leaving around 10 pm we were told. Further down in the short article we learn that they did put the time to good use by interviewing the new Chairman for the story.
And I want to be careful here and state that David Van did the right thing in reporting this lapse of protocol. First to give Shane a chance to recover the situation, no one knows why he didn't show up, could have been any number of things. But David Van also recorded the lapse and now it is on Shane to make things right. Shane is the duly elected Vice Chair, the delegates have spoken, and the last thing we want is his talent, contacts, and experience being unused by the Party. David might have also considered that Shane politically is in a ticklish situation and might not have felt he was free to follow protocol and met with his new Chairman.
Rarely would anyone with political skills advise or encourage a candidate to betray or disrespect his political base or his mentors that got him this far in politics. To do so shows extremely poor judgement, class, and intelligence. As the old timers' put it, yah dance with the one that brought ya. The exception might be with a guy like Jake Merick, some of his supporters are ardent abolitionists that have shown a propensity to ruin their candidates before, during, and after the elections by demanding the impossible. Single issue activist or candidates are rarely successful as they are not pragmatic and do not look at the big picture.
Shane Jemison is in a bit of a pickle. His backers were the RINOs that backed Charles Ortega, Ronda Vuillemont Smith's pack of thugs,(AKA the RVS Squad), his former employer radical religious far right campaign consultant Holly Gerard, and of course politicians like the immensely corrupt State Auditor Cindy Byrd.
Indeed David Van lost Tulsa County heavily, by 121 votes, 40% of the difference between Jemison and Van was due to Tulsa County Chairman Ronda Vuillemont Smith (RVS delegation). Who by the way was not only in charge of the distribution of the ballots, she was in charge of counting the ballots and in charge of the unused ballots after passing out the ballots to her delegation. Roughly 96 delegates had left the Convention at that point according to the vote totals, how many of those ballots were from Tulsa County that would have been unused and thus able to be cast with a quick slash in the box?
So imagine you just retained your incumbent Vice Chair seat after having your backers candidates get slaughtered and humiliated. Now you have to reach out to your new boss, your new Chairman, and that might not sit well with the likes of RVS, Byrd, Gerard, and with the RINOs that backed you. You gotta make some phone calls and at least give these handlers notice in order to not be seen as disloyal.
So our recommendation is to withhold judgement on Shane Jemison until things shake out. I believe that David Van felt the same way as he did withhold the part about who requested the meeting with Bennett, Shane Jemison. We do not want a newly re elected Vice Chair being punished by their handlers and mentors. Time will tell if Shane Jemison has the best interests are heart and if his handlers will allow him to do the right thing. As for us, we are going to wait and see and hope Shane Jemison chooses wisely.
The convention wasn't without its entertaining moments. Right after the fight over the electronic voting had been lost a woman from Caddo County got up and just went after a man from Cimarron County about her size with her long fingernails. Our table was about three to four tables away but by the time you notice what was going on it was a pile of people pushing and trying to hold people back and a shout for the sergeant at arms. Next thing is we see what is likely the woman's husband guiding a very upset woman to the back of the room. Witnesses claimed that the victim had his face and arm raked up pretty good by the attacker. Here comes people with clip boards, followed a bit later by Oklahoma City Police officers. It looks like a report was written and witnesses said that charges would be filed on Monday.
This convention was a disaster. Mclain
rented a dang trade show building not designed to be used as an
auditorium with good acoustics so that people could hear without
echos. And expensive, $45.00 for each attendee. And much was made
of the free parking in Scissor-tail Park across the street but no
mention of the free parking right to the South of the convention.
Mclain had people walking a half mile across a park when they could
have mentioned the free parking fifty yards from the entrance of the
building. I supposed he was saving those parking spaces for the elites.
