Category: Newsroom

Here’s part of the summary-report I am preparing, describing the Republican intra-party “election” that occurred last Saturday in Salem. John Lee and I ran for the ORP National Committeeman seat against twenty-year incumbent Solomon Yue. My short talk (which 90% of delegates didn’t hear because of an “audio glitch”)  revolved around explaining five separate charts/graphs/lists: measurements that illustrate the broad range of failure of ORP leadership since Solomon Yue became the National Committeeman and therefore de facto leader of the ORP Executive Committee twenty years ago. Chart #4 will especially blow your mind.

Chart #1: Fundraising: the ORP raised over $5,000,000 in 2000 just as Solomon Yue took power. In shocking contrast, the ORP raised less than $200,000 in 2020. Look at the steep and steady downward trend over Yue’s twenty-year tenure:

Chart #2: Relative Republican/Democrat power in our Salem legislature. Nearly at par with Democrats in 2000 when Solomon Yue joined party leadership, by 2018 both chambers had become Democrat supermajorities. See the constant trend downward:

Chart #3: In 2018, 25% of House seats had no Republican nominee (shown in red). Two years later in 2020, that “vacancy” rate was down to 10%. See maps below.*  With our large database of conservative Oregonians, and super-active use of social media, Diana and I pretty much single-handedly made that 15% improvement happen…from outside the ORP. Solomon Yue and the ORP showed no interest, with Chris Barreto, the National Committeewoman, declaring the ORP would “put no effort at finding candidates in districts that had a 15% or higher Democrat majority.” (Documented).

Chart #4: Through his role as ORP National Committeeman, Solomon Yue receives free guest passes to important Republican events in Washington, DC. He then sells those passes for profit through his private company, Republicans Overseas, of which he is CEO. Sales range up to $10,000 per individual membership. None of this income is returned to the ORP to assist Republican candidates. Some people would call this unethical if not illegal. We’re investigating all this now, including possibly making FOIA act requests of Yue’s various intermingled corporations in which financials and other documentation are not available via the regular public domain.

Chart #5: Facebook is the gold standard for measuring an organization’s “reach.” Page statistics answer the question, how many constituents does the organization engage? Below are the four most active political Facebook pages in Oregon, listed in order by number of total “subscriptions” (Page Likes).

1. Note our Make Oregon Great Again Page listed at the top. It has 93K subscribers. Drop down to the ORP Page. It has 17K subscribers.
2. Again, note the Make Oregon Great Again Page, at the top, and see “Engagement.” Two weeks ago we actively engaged over 89K Oregon Republicans while the ORP engaged 5K. (Facebook engagement is the sum total number of Likes, Shares and Comments over a given period of time. For more detailed information about these stats, including information regarding the Kate Brown and Knute Buehler Pages, see the homepage message on our website at www.makeoregongreatagain.com)

Kindred Spirits:
Our Oregon Republican National Committeeman and Republicans Overseas, Inc.

Solomon Yue is CEO of “Republicans Overseas, Inc” and his position there depends heavily on his Oregon Republican National Committeeman Position.

This is a serious conflict of interest: As Oregon’s National Committeeman, Solomon Yue receives guest passes from the RNC, certainly intended for his Oregon constituents. Instead, he essentially sells those passes to wealthy expats, receiving $750 for “Ambassador” membership. These “members” can then partake in quarterly conference calls, and are guests at quarterly RNC meetings and debates. Or better yet…Republicans Overseas, through Solomon Yue, sells $10,000 “Advisory Committee” membership and provides those “members” access to the regular conference calls, meetings and debates and to special RNC conference calls and VIP events.

Not one dime of this money comes back to Oregon to help our candidates.

Mr. Yue’s intermingling of organizations is no secret. Look at the signature block he uses:

Here’s the Republicans Overseas Membership page. (https://republicansoverseas.com/membership/)

So, if you’re an expat, give Solomon Yue $10,000 and he’ll get you big-time access to RNC events and people. You could expect to make some pretty good connections, don’t you think?

Bottom line, and it’s quite simple: As the Oregon Republican National Committeeman, Solomon Yue is selling access to RNC conference calls, meetings, debates, VIP events.

Could he do this if he wasn’t a National Committeeman?

No.

One might reasonably ask, does Bill Currier, current ORP Chairman, condone this?

Mr. Yue has been working the Oregon Republican Party system for twenty years. It’s WAY PAST time for change, and it’s coming in tomorrow’s intra-party online election for National Committeeman.

I’m challenging Solomon Yue for the National Committeeman post, and so is ORP Treasurer and businessman John Lee, a personal friend and a very good man.

Stay tuned Saturday afternoon for the results of the election.

For much more detail, see Joseph Rice’s brilliant expose, simple yet shocking, released last Wednesday: https://www.makeoregongreatagain.com/newsroom/how-yue-does-it-pay-for-play/

Memo from Joseph Rice regarding Solomon Yue, reprinted here with permission

CHAIR
2^nd Congressional District

March 17, 2020

Dear Oregon State Central Committee Members,

As a Conservative Republican, I have watched with pride as President Trump drains the Swamp in Washington DC. In my tenure with the Oregon Republican Party (ORP) as Chair of the 2^nd Congressional District, I have realized some of that same swamp draining must also occur in Oregon. That is, if we as Republicans are to gain stronger footing in the Salem political landscape.

In his private business, Solomon Yue has been financially profiting by leveraging his position as Oregon’s National Committeeman and selling access to Republican National Committee (RNC) meetings.

On February 18^th, 2020 the Oregon State Central Committee (SCC) received an email from Solomon Yue, forwarded by ORP Secretary Becky Mitts, with the following signature block;

Solomon Yue
Republican National Committeeman for Oregon
Vice Chairman and CEO
Republicans Overseas, Inc. and Republicans Overseas Action, Inc. https://www.facebook.com/republicansoverseas https://republicansoverseas.com

Look at Yue’s signature block and the website links below it. It is not just “Republican National Committeeman for Oregon,” it is also “Vice Chairman and CEO – Republicans Overseas, Inc”. Yue is advertising his privately owned company to the State Central Committee as if it is associated with the Republican Party, which it is not. It is a “for profit” corporation! I invite you to follow the web link in Yue’s signature block, to here: https://republicansoverseas.com.

It will lead you to his Republican Overseas website;

Select the “Membership” tab and it brings you here:

Especially note the “benefits” of the $750 AMBASSADOR and $10,000 ADVISORY COMMITTEE membership levels. “Sponsored Guest to RNC quarterly meetings and Republican debates.” This is what is commonly referred to as “Pay to Play.” Yue as Oregon’s National Committeeman is selling access to RNC meetings and pocketing the cash at the rate of many ten’s of thousands of dollars annually! Yue is not representing Oregon in this. He is personally profiteering from the elected Oregon Republican National Committeeman position and it’s morally and ethically corrupt. Complicit in this are some of ORP Executive Committee leadership, people who have attended these crucial RNC meetings and firsthand seen Yue’s “guests,” and have remained silent about it. Can you remember anytime Yue offered an SCC member an opportunity to attend an RNC meeting as his guest? Solemn Yue became so abusive of the RNC guest policy, bringing up to 40 “guests” at one time, the RNC has now formally changed the meeting guest policy to only “two guests per attending official,” except for immediate family. This new policy is known as the “Solomon Rule.”

We in the Oregon Republican Party, as members of the State Central Committee must come to terms: we have a swamp right here in Oregon that ALSO must be drained.
With this type of misbehavior and abuse of position going on and on, how can we as conservative Republicans believe we can move Oregon back to the right from the extreme liberal left? As Oregonians, we deserve integrity and professional representation at the national level. We will not be taken seriously by the RNC when they know the elected National Committeeman is using his title and position for personal financial gain and access. Yue’s timing of self-promotion activity always up-ticks during election time, giving the SCC the illusion he is hard at work for Oregon.

Just prior to President Trump’s election in 2016, Yue accused RNC Chairman Reince Priebuis of “institutional tyranny”, not a good representation for Oregon. As this became known and started to circulate at the SCC meeting in Newport, Mr. Yue flashed around a picture of himself and Mr. Priebuis standing together, smiling giving the impression all was well and they had a strong relationship. The picture was taken prior to Yue’s accusation of Priebuis.

I was personally subjected to one of Yue’s “whisper” campaigns, a “false-valor” accusation initiated by Jeff Grossman that I was not a former military officer, had never served in the Army as a helicopter pilot or served in Afghanistan. I had a direct interaction with Grossman telling him I would provide him the opportunity to validate his statement in a legal setting, which he declined. The Maoist tactic employed was only defeated when Daniel Crowe, candidate for Oregon Attorney General and a former Army Staff Judge Advocate drafted a report countering Grossman allegations after his full review of my military records and credentials. This is not the first time this tactic has occurred, Wally Hicks was accused of not graduating the United States Navel Academy or being a decorated Marine Officer.

I detest the Maoist Tactics Yue employs within the ORP and the RNC. This type of behavior does nothing to advance our conservative ORP Platform and the values of the ORP within Oregon. In fact, it works to the contrary and has had the detrimental effect of driving solid, conservative volunteers and potential candidates out of the ORP. The ORP should be recruiting conservative candidates and assisting them in their bid for elected office as a public servant. That is the ORP primary role as defined by ORP By-laws. I have watched good people destroyed and sidelined by Yue’s tactics he engages others to execute.

I have never been in any organization which changes it’s by-laws as often as the ORP does and always just prior to a major election. This constant manipulation of our By-laws is intentional in order to aid in furthering the agenda of a small self-ordained few in ORP leadership as directed by Yue. Imagine if the United States Constitution was changed as frequently as the ORP by-laws. The country would be in chaos. The Oregon Republican Party is in chaos, and has been for a long time, which has rendered it ineffective in the state political landscape. These by-law changes always seem to originate from Jeff Grossman, Yue’s right hand man and have done nothing to establish a stronger Republican presence in Salem.

It is time for change and for Oregon Republicans to step up and support the President’s swamp draining right here in Oregon. After twenty years, It’s time for Yue to go and it’s time to elect a moral, ethical individual into the National Committeeman position. Someone conservative republicans can be proud of. When we make this happen, Oregonians will be able to rest secure knowing their interests are truly being represented to the RNC, instead of the current self-promoting, financial profiting agenda of Solomon Yue.

Integrity is earned by demonstrated actions, not by boisterous claims.

Preserve the Republic,

Joseph Rice
Chair – 2^nd Congressional District
Josephine County Precinct 21Committee Person
Credential Committee
ORP Executive Committee

Note: Over these last ten days before the National Committeeman election, I will continue this series of messages to our State Central Committee Delegates and to our MOGA2020 email list. This series, you can find the first five points, here, has to do with the direction of the Party as channeled by its most senior member and Executive Committee power-broker, current National Committeeman Solomon Yue.

6. The deadline for filing for Oregon public office was yesterday. As a whole, regarding the sixty House races, compared to 2018, how did things turn out? In 2018, twenty-five percent of our House races had no Republican candidate. This year? Just ten percent! It’s too bad we at MOGA2020 had to go over and above the ORP Executive Committee to assertively take up candidate recruitment – by far the most important task for any state GOP organization. For sure we are not responsible for all of the fifteen percent improvement – other people, including those in the House Caucus, and individuals in our county organizations – worked hard, too. But we sure as heck had something significant to do with a large chunk of this improvement…as well as the direct recruitment of a stellar Attorney General candidate, Daniel Crowe. And also, sure-as-heck, our ORP Executive Committee brass never did show much interest in recruitment.
7. And regarding candidate recruitment, current ORP top leadership, ram-rodded by Solomon Yue, does not abide by its own Bylaw Mission Statement. The result? We get unqualified candidates or no candidates at all. THIS is why we have Democrat supermajorities and still must cope with an outrageous governor. The suggestion that Oregon conservative political impotence is the result of Republican “voter apathy,” is a blatant lie. Nearly 90% of Oregon Republicans voted in 2016 – percentage-wise, more than Democrats – and no small thing, mostly because of Donald Trump.
8. In the first post in this series, I stated I was expecting to get five minutes to make my candidate presentation at the upcoming Executive Committee meeting. I was wrong. The Executive Committee is giving each candidate three minutes. In that regard, I sent this letter to Chair Bill Currier.
9. There are questions that the ORP must answer. I first asked these fifteen questions last summer, but today I direct them to Solomon Yue who leads the Executive Committee from “behind the curtain.” Only one of the fifteen has been addressed, having to do with improvements in the Facebook Page and the website. (And note that this attempt at system improvement has been horribly bungled.*)

* A website expert reported the following, after reviewing the new ORP site: “The website is not mobile-friendly. No process has been implemented to allow responsiveness to the client platform. This is a major setback for search engine indexing and ranking https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing. The site has a multitude of SEO issues, missed AMP version of pages and structured data, etc. I’d grade the construction effort “F” (or even “E”) in terms of SEO optimization and site structure.”

Great improvement! In 2018 we had fifteen House districts without Republican candidates. Now, in 2020, there only six uncontested districts. Great job everyone! And special thanks to our courageous first-time candidates! -sam

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Our Senate “vacancy” rate (districts with no Republican candidate) is the same as in 2018, about 27%. We’ll have to work on that…-sam

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I have four full-time employees in Northern Italy. Two of them are quarantined. According to them, and remember they LIVE there, the reason Italy is a “hot spot” is because Italy tests EVERYONE. France, and many other Women Western European countries? They only test people who are hospitalized.

And in any case, “the flu” is, and always has been, contagious. I think there is room to speculate that the panic is media-generated (and for one, Tucker Carlson should calm down about it. Watch this whole thing fade away by June. Your thoughts?

Subscribers: Representative Stark has given us permission to publish this insightful, informative essay. -sam

The future of Oregon hangs in the balance!
-by Duane Stark, Oregon House District 4

The rural / urban divide continues to grow as the Oregon Legislature is dominated by Portland Metro Legislators who are advancing an agenda that is contrary to our way of life. The Democrat Party has secured a supermajority in both the House (38-22) and the Senate (18-12). This means they can now pass any policy or tax without a single Republican vote. We experienced the negative effects of the supermajority this past session when Democrats passed a $2 billion hidden sales tax on Oregon’s working families without a single Republican vote. Without a balance of power, there is little motivation for the Democrats to collaborate with Republicans to develop legislation that is beneficial to ALL Oregonians. Instead, they pass legislation catering to Portland voters and special interests groups.

This past session, Republicans fought fiercely while maintaining respect and thoughtfulness in our debates. We were able to halt some of their agenda but in the end, due to the lopsided numbers, they were able to advance much of their Portland-driven legislation. What is their next step? They would like to take out two Republicans in the next election so that they don’t even need Republicans to show up in order to conduct business.

That’s why I’m asking for your help!

We must protect the Republicans we have in office and then pick up seats to restore much needed balance in our legislative process.

Simply put: (in the House)

• Republicans Lose 2 seats = Democrats don’t even need a Republican in the building to do their business
• Republicans Win 3 seats = Democrats would need at least one Republican vote to pass a tax (like the $2 billion tax they just passed.)
• Republicans Win 8 seats = Democrats would need at least one Republican vote to pass any policy
• Republicans Win 9 seats = Republican would be in the majority

As part of my campaign for ORP National Committeeman, my presentation at the March 21^st Oregon Republican Party Central Committee election meeting will be an incredibly brief three minutes. There will be no way to cover everything that should be covered and so I will address those points this way, via email. Over the next two weeks I will send a series of messages like this one to SCC members. The messages will be brief, but I’ve added links if you want to go deeper (and I urge you to do that). Here are my first five points and they all have to do with the direction of the Party as channeled by its most senior member and obvious Executive Committee power-broker, current National Committeeman Solomon Yue.

1. Democrats are waging an all-out war against us, and we need to fight back. Why doesn’t our top Republican Party leadership see this? Ninety-five percent of our Republican base joins President Trump in understanding this key point. (One has to give credit to our Democrat progressive opponents. Despite their insanity, they fight tooth-and-nail, they never back down, and they never apologize.)
2. The Committeeman election is a critical fork-in-the-road for the ORP. Will our Party can keep going steeply downhill under the iron-grip leadership of National Committeeman Solomon Yue? Or will we elect new leadership, myself or John Lee, and dramatically change direction? Here in this homepage message, is an overview of our state Republican condition, and where I personally think the ORP should be headed .
3. Leadership must stop moving to the Left, trying to appease a fictitious “blue Oregon.” Let’s proudly and confidently go back to our conservative roots. Here are successful examples of this approach. But good grief. Just watch Donald Trump and follow his lead. (And, Diana says, “Donald Trump is packing around a sack of backbones and he’s giving them away for free.”)
4. The current top leadership’s enthusiasm for our president is thin and has a very short history. Don’t be fooled. After four years, it’s time to climb on the Trump Train like we mean it. We must stop squandering this incredible opportunity to take back power! THIS video says it all.
5. We need a professional, properly funded organization. At a minimum this means an occupied headquarters office, a full-time paid Chairman/Executive director, and a full-time paid office manager. Our underfunded ORP organization, headed up by too-busy-elsewhere Solomon Yue (and executed by part-time Chairman Bill Currier), is little more than a social club. Donors, mostly business people,  see this colossal organizational failure and so they stay away. It’s a vicious circle.
   -sc

Keeping in mind that this is a left-leaning OPB article (see link below), here’s the ultimate take-away…and it’s very good news: if Governor Brown moves ahead with an Executive Order on a new carbon tax, she will be guaranteeing the election of a conservative Republican governor in 2022. (And yes, whatever Executive Order Brown implements will be immediately rescinded by this new governor).

Boosted by President Trump’s electoral coattails, the House and the Senate will go Red by 2022, too.

We must stick together on this, and in our immediate outrage lets NOT institute another Recall effort or create any other distraction from what we can accomplish the simple and quick old-fashioned way, through elections.

And for sure, we must change our current Oregon Republican Party leadership to make this happen. We’ll do that the simple way too, this year, through our Party’s own internal electoral process.

THIS IS TOTALLY DOABLE.

One last thing: MANY thanks to our Republican legislators for courageously walking away from our current Democrat Progressive overlords. Now the people will be backing you up. Just watch!

https://www.opb.org/news/article/executive-action-oregon-governor-cap-trade-republican-walkout/