2019 OKGOP convention thoughts

UPDATE: Generally a good outcome. David McLain was elected chairman. Former State Rep. Mike Turner was elected vice chairman. All of the rule changes were thrown out because outgoing state chairman Pam Pollard failed to provide the proposals to delegates by the 10-day deadline. Platform was on the agenda and approved without debate prior to the election of chairman and vice chairman. Hat tip to Katrina Crumbacher of the newly launched Oklahoma City Journal for covering the convention on Twitter. The usual GOP convention tweeps (myself and Muskogee Politico Jamison Faught) weren't there this year.

Saturday morning, April 6, 2019, Oklahoma Republicans will assemble in Moore to select a new state chairman and vice chairman and to vote on a platform and changes to the permanent state party rules. Unusually, the rules changes are the most important items on the agenda, as several proposals would further weaken an organization that is already ineffective in promoting a conservative governing agenda at the State Capitol.

I'm a delegate to the 2019 Oklahoma Republican State Convention, but because of a family obligation, I won't be in attendance. Nevertheless, as a few friends have asked for my thoughts about the chairman's election and other issues before the convention, here they are in summary, with details below. In the interest of time, I'm releasing brief recommendations now and will add details as I have time.

• State Chairman: David McLain
• State Vice Chairman: No recommendation
• Rule Change #1: YES. Dec 31 registration requirement for party officers:
• Rule Change #2: NO. Binds RNC members to Oklahoma primary winner at national convention
• Rule Change #3: NO. Allows budget committee to long-term contracts with consultants and other vendors.
• Rule Change #4: NO. Allows state executive committee to hire an executive director.
• Rule Change #5: NO. Makes state executive committee the supreme governing body of the state party, and changes its membership. Changes authority of budget committee.
• Rule Change #6: YES. Requires platform committee report to be taken up as first order of business at the state convention.
• Rule Change #7: Undecided. Blocks defeated platform floor amendments from being considered at subsequent conventions.
• Rule Change #8: YES. No quorum call allowed at convention.
• Rule Change #9: YES. Codifies rule that independents not permitted to vote in Republican primaries.
• Rule Change #10, #11, #12: YES, but amended. Candidates must mark up copy of state platform.

Of the three announced candidates for State Chairman, I would support recent Tulsa County Chairman David McLain. I appreciate his emphasis on shining a light on local, elections and facilitating the efforts of conservative Republicans to win seats on school boards and city councils. In a candidate forum before the Tulsa Area Republican Assembly (click to watch the video on Facebook), McLain was the only candidate to discuss the role of State Chairman as an advocate for the party platform with elected officials. He spoke of going to the State Capitol during last year's tax-increase debate to speak with legislators and remind them of their promises to Republican voters back home. He was able to get a hearing with them, because he had already built relationships with Tulsa County legislators. McLain strikes me as someone who can handle both the practicalities of running a party organization while not forgetting platform and principles, without which there is no motivation to give or get involved in the party.

McLain's opponents are recent Oklahoma County Chairman Daren Ward and Darren Gantz. In the TARA forum, both Ward and Gantz focused solely on electing anyone who happened to have an R after his name on the ballot. Yes, the party leadership needs to win elections, but winning elections should ultimately be in the service of enacting a platform of policies.

Regarding Gantz, I'll repeat what I wrote last year, when he ran for Tulsa County Assessor:

Gantz disappointed me in recent years and lost my trust as he assisted the efforts of the Leftist-founded and Leftist-funded National Popular Vote movement to make inroads among grassroots conservative activists. You may recall that NPV (which would have given Oklahoma's electoral votes to Hillary Clinton, had it passed) passed the State Senate in 2014, but was blocked in the House after an outcry by grassroots activists. Several state senators later recanted their support. Gantz's efforts were aimed at undermining grassroots opposition to this scheme to bypass the Constitution's Electoral College, so that the next time lobbyists tried to push NPV through the Legislature, legislators wouldn't be deterred by constituent backlash. If Oklahoma were to fall to NPV, NPV lobbyists could point to our example to persuade other conservative states to follow suit with this plan to undermine our constitutional method of electing a president. (Click this link for more about why Gantz's efforts were so dangerous.)

I don't have an opinion on the vice chairman's race. I've received mailers from two candidates.

Several changes to the permanent state party rules have been forwarded from the counties for consideration at by the state convention. Three proposals, numbers 3, 4, and 5, are intended to strip

Rule Change #1, from Harmon County: YES.Require party officers and committee members to have been registered as Republicans by December 31 of the year preceding the election or appointment. Currently, you could theoretically be a registered Democrat one day and Republican State Chairman the next. I would vote YES.

Rule Change #2, from Harmon County: NO. Bind the three Republican National Committee members, who serve as ex officio delegates to the Republican National Convention, to vote for the majority-winner in the Oklahoma Presidential Primary, and increase the threshold for allocation from 15 to 20 percent. I would vote NO.

Rule Change #3, from Harmon County: NO. Authorize the Budget Committee of the state party to enter into long-term contracts with vendors, contracts that a later state chairman would be unable to end. This change would also require hiring of an Executive Director. This provision would allow certain connected political consultants to be locked in to state GOP contracts, and grassroots Republicans would be stuck with them, even if they are incompetent or working against Republican interests. I would vote NO.

Rule Change #4, from Noble County: NO. Authorizes the State Executive Committee to hire an Executive Director to run the party day-to-day. This, in combination with proposed Rule Change #5, would effectively sideline the grassroots-elected State Chairman and the State Committee, which is dominated by grassroots-elected county party officials, in favor of an Executive Committee dominated by elected officials.

Rule Change #5, from Noble County: NO. Changes the composition of the State Executive Committee to be more heavily weighted toward elected officials and makes the State Executive Committee the supreme governing body of the party, ousting the State Committee from that role. Again, this rule change sidelines the chairman, vice chairman, and the county party officials who are elected by the ordinary Republican voters who attend precinct caucuses and county conventions. Currently the executive committee serves as an advisory board to the state chairman, and the chairman and vice chairman nominate 10 at-large members. These at-large positions would be given instead to any Republican members of the congressional delegation -- six at the moment -- with the remainder left to the chairman and vice chairman. The two Republican legislative caucus leaders would be added to the Executive Committee; the highest-ranking Republican in each house is already a member. The rule change also changes the powers of the State Budget Committee. This proposed amendment is a move to diminish the influence of grassroots Republicans on the party organization.

Rule Change #6, from Tulsa County: YES. Moves the platform committee report, typically the last item considered at the state convention, to the top of the agenda. This is in response to parliamentary shenanigans by Republican operatives and elected officials who would rather the party didn't have any principles at all. In years past, the platform committee's hard work has been tossed in the trash when a quorum call is made after many delegates start to leave for home at the end of a long day. The hope is that, by making this the first order of business, the platform will receive the attention it deserves.

Rule Change #7, from Oklahoma County: Undecided. Would prohibit a platform amendment from being brought to the floor if it had been considered and defeated at the two immediately previous state conventions. This would not prohibit the resolution from reaching the platform via the platform committee. I was opposed at first blush, but there may be some merit. I would want to hear debate on this issue before deciding.

Rule Change #8, from Tulsa County: YES. This would prohibit the use of a quorum call as a parliamentary maneuver to avoid taking up business on the agenda. Once the convention is convened, the agenda goes forward to completion, even if delegates begin to leave after their agenda items of interest are complete. The motivation is the same as Rule Change #6, to thwart a ploy that has been used in years past to block consideration of the proposed state platform.

Rule Change #9, from Tulsa County: YES. Prohibits independents from voting in Republican primaries, runoffs, or party elections. State law recently changed to allow parties to permit voters registered as independent to vote in their primaries. The Oklahoma Democratic Party now permits independents to vote in Democrat primaries. The Oklahoma Republican Party has not allowed this, and this change would codify that position in state party rules. A party's representative in an election should be chosen by voters who have at least made the very minimal commitment to register as a member of the party.

Rule Changes #10, #11, #12, from Cimarron, Choctaw, and Tulsa Counties: YES, but amended. Three counties passed an identical proposed amendment to the rules:

Rule 19 (i) Disclosure of Agreement of Candidates with Our Platform: For a Republican candidate for elective office to receive the endorsement and support of the Oklahoma Republican Party, he must read and mark up a copy of the current Oklahoma Republican Platform, indicating his agreement or disagreement with each plank with explanation as necessary, and make it available for review at the state Party office.

Legislators hate this idea. It would put them on the record on every issue in the platform, giving campaign fodder to Democratic opponents. Grassroots activists love this idea, because helps them figure out which primary candidates are worthy of their support. In this time when it's politically advantageous to run as a Republican, we need a tool to discern which candidates are committed to the party's philosophy and which are merely opportunists.

In order for this proposal to help weed out the RINOs without hurting good Republican candidates, the platform needs to be much more concise. I would propose amending the proposal with the requirement that the platform be no more than eight letter-size pages, in 10-point font with one-inch margins. This year's proposed platform is 35 pages long! Without a length constraint, the platform committee is susceptible to logrolling: I won't object to a plank on your obscure pet issue if you don't object to mine. The remedy is a page limitation, with page budgets for each section. This gives subcommittees and the committee as a whole an incentive to weed out obscurities and focus on those planks which speak to broad principles and which enjoy broad agreement. When I served as Tulsa County platform chairman in 2003, we used page limitations to reduce a 40+ page document (if I recall correctly) to 8 pages, and everyone in the committee felt that their issues had been heard and were pleased with the outcome. So yes, let's require candidates who want party support to tell us where they stand, but let's give them a more carefully crafted and concise platform to respond to.