Who is in Control of the GOP Part II
It is no secret that former GOP Chairman David Mclain was deep in debt to Senator James Lankford and he repaid that debt by using the Oklahoma GOP to protect Lankford. There was overwhelming support for the Lankford/Inofe censure resolutions, over thirty counties had passed the resolutions in some manner or form, others like Oklahoma County saw a hostile County Chairman, Evelyn McCoy, torpedo any chance at getting a fair vote on the resolutions. Lankford is said to have given Chairman David Mclain in excess of $100,000 dollars in the two years that Mclain was in office.
The first time I met this Lahmeyer guy was at the GOP Convention in April. I had stopped and asked if he supported the Party Platform or the principles and got an earful from his campaign manager. It seemed that after paying big money for a booth at the event Mclain's team did everything possible to make it difficult for them to attend. Once I made clear that I was not a fan of Mclain but that I was asking about the Party Platform things calmed down.
One of the road blocks put in Lahmeyer's way was the refusal of the delegate list to the Lahmeyer campaign. We went over what the rules state two weeks ago, any registered Republican in the state of Oklahoma has access to the list of delegates AND their contract info. These are delegates, elected representatives of their precincts, they have to face the people that represent and are held accountable for their votes at the Conventions. Delegates do not vote personal votes and most of the voting procedures reflect this, standing votes or voice votes, sometimes walking up to a podium at a county convention and casting your single precinct vote for all the world to see.
Even after the convention the Lahmeyer campaign staff was denied the delegate list. The consultants had put in an official request in writing and a few days later were told that GOP legal staff had said that the lists were private, despite the rules stating otherwise in plain language. Before the Norman Freedom Rally I had become aware of this illegal act and I made sure to share the delegate list with the campaign.
Now at the time, actually even now, I do not count myself as a Jackson Lahmeyer supporter. I am encouraged by some of the things he has said and stands for but it is early in the campaign and who knows who might enter the race. But I am a supporter of basic fairness and human decency and following the rules. The man was entitled to the delegate list, and that is the last word.
So the morning of the Norman Freedom Rally I called the legal staff leader, of a legal team that I had recruited by the way and handed over to Bennett. Now the team represents the GOP, not John Bennett, so I asked the question carefully, asking has the team made any rulings on access to the delegate lists. I was told no, but to check with Johnathan Krems, a very talented local lawyer and someone that I thought was a good man at that point.
Talking with Krems I found out, when asked if anyone had made such a ruling I was told. “You are talking to him.” My reply was that we had a big problem on two fronts. First, he made the ruling on his own outside the chain of command, without input from his leader and the rest of the team. Second he was dead wrong about what the rules say and it was very clear that he was wrong.
Krems became defensive and abrupt, dismissive even. When told that his mistake gave cover to Communication Director Miles Rahimi's sabotage of the Delegate Survey Krems became even more defensive and protective of Miles Rahimi, exclaiming “He did nothing wrong.”
Well I am afraid Miles Rahimi did do plenty wrong, sabotaging a friendly group's survey simply because he feared the outcome would undermine his personal agenda and his hindering of a campaign that a large majority of the delegates supported.
The phone call with Johnathan Krems was recorded and at some point we will release it. For now, the man came across as a complete entitled jerk, power mad on his small position, refusing to inform anyone of his decisions even his superior who actually held the position of general counsel. When pressed on that issue, Krems boldly announced that he reports to John Bennett. No little man, there is only one appointed general counsel and it wasn't you.
Now Krems is kind of a strange guy. Some claim he is on the spectrum, others believe he has a bad case of ADD or ADHD, I always thought that could be true but I thought him a competent attorney with very, very, very, bad personal skills. Krems has trouble finishing lines of thoughts, darting down rabbit trails and not finishing his points. And those rabbit trails run long and far. At one meeting he criticized me for leaving out the Congressional District system when educating newcomers to the GOP system. I let him take over and ten minutes later I asked a simple question “Exactly what do these committees accomplish?” and Krems held up the universal symbol for a big fat zero, index finger and thumb displayed in a circle. My response was “Exactly, which is why I left them out of the discussion.”
In all I thought the guy was valuable to the Party but quirky as hell, to the point that I would make sure that anyone I sent his way understood that he could be a complete jerk but didn't mean to be that way, just zero personal skills. I thought traits like this were partially because of a high intelligence and a mind slowed down by the slowness of speech so things came out a bit funny. But again, he seemed to be single minded and precise on legal matters and that was what the Party needed him for.
After recruiting the legal team and turning over the spreadsheet of contact info to John Bennett I made a final contact with each lawyer. Of course all of them had been part of the discussion of forming the team, including Krems, but a final contact was needed to remind them they had volunteered and been accepted, on the condition of course that the State Committee accepted the General Counsel at the first State Committee meeting. They are the ultimate between convention bosses of the GOP and its direction.
When I came to Krems he reacted strangely, surprised that he wasn't the General Counsel, quite surprised and put off. Krems is a local lawyer which is nice to have but he is a very young lawyer, with little life experience or court experience, much less political savvy. The man selected as General Counsel was widely respected throughout the state, had ran for public office twice, had served as one of the U.S. Attorneys for Oklahoma that had sent dozens of corrupt county commissioners to prison. Plus being a wealthy and respected attorney with some record financial wins under his belt. That is the kind of man you want for General Counsel.
At the time I wondered who had told him he would be general counsel? Why was he so shocked to find out he wasn't?
Not long after the handover of the legal team to Bennett we saw Bob Dani installed as the Executive Director of the Party. One of the reasons I was told was that staff, including Dani, thought that the last person that talked to Bennett carried the decision. At the time I thought that was a weird statement, Bennett was the Chairman, his staff was there to serve him, not control him. But knowing Bennett for over a decade I saw that it could be frustrating for a staff to come up with a plan and see it over ruled. That made me think that Bennett's staff was already making plans for installing Johnathan Krems as General Counsel, despite Bennett having me recruiting an extensive legal team starting back before the State Convention.
A week or to later out came the announcement that told who the staff and appointees were and up near the top there was Jonathan Krems listed as co counsel. Way down in the executive committee appointments was the real General Counsel. This was not good and I pointed out how disrespectful it was and how it created uncertainty on who was in control of the legal matters.
Why does this all matter? Because it explains why GOP Communications Director Miles Rahimi went behind the General Counsel's back and asked for a ruling on the delegate list release to the Lahmeyer campaign. Anyone with an eighth grade education can read the actual rules below and understand that there is zero prohibition of releasing the list and in fact the release of the list is mandated to any registered Republican. Why would this happen? Because Miles Rahimi wanted a ruling that fit his agenda, not a ruling that protected the Republican Party or followed its rules. The three paragraphs below were sent out in the updated Survey cover letter and explain the first rule very well:
The third paragraph from Mr. Rahimi's email flat out lied to the delegates: “The delegate list and it's information are considered Proprietary Information by the OKGOP and has not and will not be disclosed in any manner to any third-party. “
That is a bald faced lie. Rule 16 h 3 of the GOP Party rules says otherwise: “3. Delegate Contact Information: A list of authorized delegates and their contact information shall be made available to any delegate requesting said information within seven (7) days after the date of the Convention from which a list is manufactured.”
Rule 19 e also makes the delegate list public before the convention is held: “e) Delegation Lists: County, Congressional District, or State Convention, lists of proposed delegates to said conventions shall be available for inspection by any registered Republican voter upon request to the respective Chairman at least ten (10) days prior to the time the respective convention is scheduled to convene. If a permanent County office is maintained, such delegate list shall be posted in an appropriate location for inspection by registered Republican voters. “
Nothing in the actual rules places an expiration date on the sharing of the delegate list, it gives a minimum amount of time for the contact info to be available before a convention so the candidates and any interested parties have time to mail information to the delegates or email them or call them.
There is not a shred of other rules in the Party Rules that says otherwise.
Now keep in mind that Communications Director Miles Rahimi was a hold over from the Mclain administration where he was most likely involved with the decision to stymie the Lahmeyer campaign, no doubt on the order of Senator James Lankford who was being attacked by Lahmeyer. One doesn't have to have a degree in rocket surgery to understand that some of that misplaced loyalty would have bleed over into the Bennett administration. In our opinion, Miles Rahimi wanted to prevent Lahmeyer from communicating with the delegates and he found a friendly fool willing to claim the rules of the GOP supported not handing over the required info.
The result was that our GOP Chairman was very vocally supporting Lahmeyer while his staff was doing their best to disrupt their campaign by withholding delegate contact info. And breaking the rules of the GOP doing it. Now we are not fans of Bennett supporting Lahmeyer, the GOP rules state that he is to remain neutral in primary races. This is another area where it is obvious that Bennett is surrounded by either fools or people willingly attempting to cause him to fail. Or it could just be sheer indifference to the GOP rules and people more interested in pushing their agenda than they are in seeing Bennett run the GOP and remain Chairman.
Does the attack on the delegate survey now begin to make sense? Lankford was being protected, so was the measurement of the support for the tiny religious radical group that appears to have taken over leadership of the GOP, and any chance of enforcing our Party principles and Platform upon the elected officials is held back.
Next week we are going to go over another couple of staff members that appear not to have the interests of the GOP nor Chairman Bennett at heart. At this point we have Bob Dani that appears to be trapped in a vice between factions which doesn't give him reason for not doing his duty and Communications Director Miles Rahimi and Jonathan Krems flat out breaking the rules and disrespecting Bennett, the State Committee, and the delegates of the convention. This is flat out poisonous behavior and ought to be grounds for removal.
