The July 17th State Committee meeting turned into rejection for Oklahoma GOP Chairman John Bennett. His motion to censure Lankford and Inhofe failed 93 to 122. Now there were a total of 317 delegates and proxies registered to vote so around 68% of the votes were cast. Is that not weird? We will come back to that later in this story.
So a total of 215 delegates, or 43% supported Bennett's action and a whopping 57% rejected Bennett's leadership on the matter.
The second issue, having a fall convention to clean up three years worth of rule changes, bylaw changes, and resolutions (including the two county submitted censure resolutions) was actually pulled from consideration by the Bennett team. Smart move, with the censure resolutions as part of the package for a fall convention, that issue would have failed along the same lines as the censure vote.
Then the Fall convention issue was put back on the table with modifications, the motion instead called for having a Spring convention to deal with rule changes and bylaw changes, no mention of the resolutions at all! This motion passed by a voice vote. The Bennett team had read the tea leaves and went back to sanitize the second issue by stripping out any censure resolutions.
Now this completely screws over the Convention delegates from April of 2021 and the Lahmeyer supporters who wanted a censure vote at a convention before the June Primary election. Not only did the censure vote fail, the censure vote wouldn't have failed at an actual convention, and the failure removes any chance of getting another censure vote. Instead, Lankford had a huge win delivered by the Bennett team.
Overall though, this was 57% of the State GOP leaders telling Bennett that he has a problem and that they were rejecting his leadership. The State Committee is composed of 4 people per organized county, a Chair, Vice Chair, and two state committee persons. Figure 70 counties being organized, around 280 possible state committee members if all county slots were filled. Add to that the 149 state legislators and what, seven statewide offices, plus a few slots for the the small charter groups like the Young Republicans or College Republicans. That adds up to around 437 possible State Committee and 317 showed up. That is a very good turnout.
Now back to that weird fact that popped up in the first paragraph. There were 317 registered to vote, 215 actually voted. The missing 102 votes that were registered at the meeting but weren't counted, where did these votes go?
One clue was from several eye witnesses, delegates inside the room. The method of voting was people got up from their seats and joined a lines of people that were voting Yes or No. First one kind of vote was counted with those counting the votes going down the line person to person. Then the other kind of vote was counted. Several reports stated that the No line wrapped around three walls. The Yes line wrapped around one wall and around a quarter of a wall to a half of a wall depending upon who told the story.
Surely someone would have noticed one third of the delegates sitting in their chairs refusing to vote or heading for the restroom instead of voting?
There are several reports that state that the ladies checking ID and proxies were Lahmeyer supporters. When asked how they could know that, the answer was the ladies were seen hanging out with some of the red shirt wearing Lahmeyer supporters before the meeting started. I can say this, the first thing most men do when they walk into the room is to check out the ladies in the room. I can also say that the first thing that most women do when they walk into a room is to check out the other ladies in the room. This isn't an implausible story that some of those counting the votes were seen congregating with Lahmeyer supporters.
Every source we interviewed stated the same concern; did Bennett's endorsement of Lahmeyer influence his pick of vote counters or his staff's picks of vote counters?
Another complaint; there was a lot of movement of people and discussions being held while votes were counted and tallied. The concern was that why discussions were needed for a simple vote counting? Was there an attempt to make the final vote count less lopsided, resulting in 102 votes or a significant part of those votes not being counted?
One Facebook commenter, who by the way wasn't at the meeting, claimed that it was “establishment and their cronies” showing up to ensure the quarom was met but refusing to cast a vote. Surely an “establishment” person would have voted against the censure resolution of Lankford and Inhofe. Another point they claimed was that many of these establishment people and their cronies left the building. But that didn't happen, I would know, I was banished outside the building and chatting with people right in front of the entrance, there was no rush of 100 people leaving prior to any vote. Some of the banished folks waiting outside in the heat were keeping in touch via text or phone and they announced when the voting started and the results.
Now after the Lankford/Inhofe censure failed to pass there was a slug of people leaving, those that had showed up merely to support the issue. We noticed that rush of delegates leaving but even that was a few dozen.
So what happened to the missing 102 votes?
One possibility, the votes were cast or some of them were cast, but not counted. You can bet that since the Bennett staff wanted the censure motion to pass they would have counted every single Yes vote. And the temptation to not count the No votes might have been there. This is again why allowing a GOP Chairman to endorse a candidate is such a bad idea, they will not be neutral nor will their staff be neutral. That is asking too much of a human being.
The person that actually won big at the State Committee Meeting was Pam Pollard. Pollard has been advocating the idea of having a gubernatorial year convention for Platform changes for some years. The idea is to pull some of the need to vote on things away from conventions where we elect Chairman, Vice Chairman, and National Committee members. You speed up these conventions and you know what, our Platform or the Rules of the GOP probably do not need changing every year. Even every four years or two years is sufficient. This is a huge victory for Pollard. Pollard was also on record as being against the closed meeting and even came to the defense of those that were thrown out of the meeting.
Another point, the abolitionists leaders like Daniel Navajes were claiming that a motion was on the agenda to throw John Bennett out of office. This came out Friday and caused quite a stir. We rejected the idea as pure rumor, the rules of the GOP do not allow this to happen nor would Bennett put an agenda item on that would call for his own removal. A motion could be made during the meeting, then ten days later another State Committee meeting could be held so that Bennett could defend himself and then a vote could happen to remove him. But even the RINOs were dead set against removing Bennett for breaking the GOP rules against endorsing an opponent of a Republican candidate if they had to break the rules to do so. So this rumor of Bennett being in danger of being removed was a lie, designed no doubt to stir up the abolitionists and the Lahmeyer supporters to show up and protest.
