Newsroom

3/28/2020
Summary-Report
of
 Oregon Republican Party State Central Committee Meeting
 (and National Committeeman Election)
Salem, Or March 21, 2020

Subtitle: 63 Republican Knuckleheads

By Sam Carpenter

Overview: twenty-year incumbent National Committeeman Solomon Yue has been elected for an additional 4-year term

This was an intra-party/closed election. One hundred twenty-nine Central Committee members participated. At the end of my 6-minute “stump speech” presentation (which most delegates never saw or heard due to a “last-minute audio/technical problem”), I asked my supporting delegates to vote for John Lee. Although very few delegates heard my actual request that they vote for John, or my explanation of why I thought it was vitally important they do so, the request was carefully explained to delegates by Vance Day just before the voting. So, in the end, except for two of my delegates who didn’t get the message, John ended up with our combined vote.

Why did I do this last-minute maneuver? If I had not done it, we would have had a conservative-split-vote outcome…which is THE standard fallback for the establishment Oregon Republican Party contingent. John and I had quietly agreed upon this strategy weeks before the election (and it is why delegates never got a personal “can-I-get-your-vote” phone call from me in the weeks before).

But Yue defeated John by a 63-56 vote in the decidedly pre-ordained “election.” Some ballots were not counted. Others were not delivered to delegates in the first place. For technical, rush-rush, and exhaustion reasons, as I mentioned, there were two supporting delegates who never heard my request to vote for John. (They voted for me, effectively voting for Yue.) In another case, it seems a delegate voted twice, once for herself and once for her infirm husband. If all had been able to vote and proper protocol had been followed, John would have won. But, then again, even with that, it is my opinion that the numbers would have been tweaked behind-the-curtain in Yue’s favor and John would have lost anyway.

A tiny cabal of 63 Oregon Republican Party loyalists have determined the fate of this state…and the infuriating and unbelievable conclusion we’ve drawn is that, as illustrated yet again in this latest internal election, facts don’t matter to these ORP Ruling Class loyalists. (See five slides, below.) Never mind that our grassroots organization, MOGA2020 has ten times more online subscribers than the ORP, over 100,000. And never mind that 95% of the 704,000 Oregon conservative voters support our positioning – which means just 5% support the tiny RINO Ruling Class that has, over the last twenty years, effectively strangled the ORP to death. And in its slow demise the ORP has incrementally delivered state leadership to Democrat progressives.

And with this election, they confidently assume they will be conducting this impotent Oregon Republican Party for the next decade.

To the Republican Party nationally, Oregon is a bigger joke than ever before.

In the face of the ORP’s immediate self-congratulations regarding the “great success of this innovative, ground breaking, new-way-of-voting,” this report is my view of what happened in the election. Also, included here is a re-creation of my muted 6-minute stump-speech presentation. The 63, led by Solomon Yue, will continue to be our leaders/spokespeople unless the election can be voided and this leadership can be removed and replaced.

Trouble is…and our exit from Oregon Politics

Trouble is, there are few conservative leaders/fighters left, and Diana and I are simply no longer willing to carry this political grassroots leadership-load by ourselves. So, this is our last post regarding the ORP. We’re not sticking our necks out any further. We’re exiting Oregon politics. We hope someone will pick up where we left off. It IS worth the fight.

We’ll leave our website and Facebook Pages up and continue to blog, but not about the ORP.

BTW, it’s a bit strange how my personal political exit-decision came about. This last Wednesday morning at 4:00AM I awoke in my usual gung-ho/let’s-fight-back/never-give-up mode. All morning and into the afternoon, I churned away non-stop at a multitude of political-related tasks when, at precisely 3:05PM (I remember glancing at my watch), something swept over me just after reading yet another moronic email message from an ORP establishment clone. As per-usual for the “moderate” cadre, the message ridiculed me personally. I’ve dealt with these verbal-vomit attacks for a decade, but this time – in that very moment – it was all of a sudden just flat-out OVER for me. I immediately got up from my desk and told Diana, who was quilting in her sewing room at the time, that I was DONE. I’ve been hammering at this for so long, always feeling strong no matter what…and in one moment it was totally over for me. Yes, that particular insulting message was no more slanderous than the thousands I’ve received over the years, but it was the straw that broke this camel’s back regarding making any further efforts to fix the ORP.

Maybe it wasn’t what this guy said…it was the usual arrogant, nasty dribble. Maybe instead it was the extra-large, screaming type-face.

Who knows? Who cares?

Anyway, Diana was not displeased with my spur of the moment decision to walk away from the ORP politics, but continue to blog.

Other key points/conclusions

1. The meeting was horribly mismanaged and therefore the voting results should be voided.
2. Candidate presentations were not audible due to “technical difficulties.” Also reason enough to void the election results
3. For years, there has been a degree of unethical behavior involving Solomon Yue and a handful of ORP Executive Committee enablers. Yet again, reason enough to ask for their resignations or to remove them by SCC recall.

In my view: pertinent details of the meeting and election process:

• Again, Candidate presentations were not audible to delegates who listened by phone. This was the majority of delegates. The remaining seven hours of online meeting were audible. (But…there were notable exceptions, including delegates waiting to make motions or to discuss points who were kept in silence until called upon…and many times they were never called upon thus leaving them in a mute isolation-limbo until they finally gave up and rejoined the conference call).
• And this, again: we candidates only were allowed 6 minutes to make our respective cases, and even that sliver of time was taken away by the “technical failure.” (My thoughts? BS. It wasn’t technical failure. It was deliberate silencing).
• Roberts Rules of Order: My understanding is that this protocol is to be used to conduct all meetings, including elections. The number of violations of those Rules in this meeting were astronomical. It was a hodgepodge. The Rules are called upon only when they are tactically useful for obtaining sitting OPB Officers’ objectives.
• The meeting was a confused fiasco: three ballots were cast that were not counted, two people never received ballots and didn’t vote, delegates “raised their hand” electronically and/or tried to make motions and were too-often never acknowledged (as noted above). Motion voting never came close to including the full list of credentialed delegates, with sometimes only 90 votes being cast.
• It took a full six hours to get to the election. (Who of us would not go borderline insane after six-hours on the phone?) By the time the voting process began at 3:00PM, delegates and candidates were exhausted and frustrated.
• Who was the audio/video “technician” in charge of the entire meeting? It was ORP Chairman Bill Currier, who had promised me personally the day before the meeting that “the only person in the room during your presentation will be the technical assistant.” In that conversation, he never indicated to me that that technical assistant would be Bill Currier (and at the time, it never occurred to me he would have the audacity to do something like that). Actually, Bill Currier was in charge of ALL computer, online and data systems/protocols including who received a ballot, actual voting protocol, number-crunching, etc. He was “everything for everything.”
• It seemed odd that Currier did not altogether postpone the meeting because of the health risks of the Coronavirus emergency. Everybody else living in the real world had postponed their organizations’ get-togethers. ALL the individuals in our small meeting room, perhaps ten total, were in VERY close quarters with at least two suffering from what appeared to be the cold/flu. On second thought, this was not odd at all. See next point:
• One former long-term Executive Committee insider (not in attendance at this meeting) said Currier and the Executive Committee top-leadership actively sought to NOT postpone the meeting, because “they knew exactly how it would turn out before the meeting even For this reason, it HAD to happen.”
• The electronic format gives multiple options for number-manipulations. (Yes, Judge Vance Day oversaw the meeting protocol but Judge Day would be the first to tell you he is not a software/hardware IT technician, and that he wasn’t brought in to perform those duties.) Bill Currier had hands-on control of EVERYTHING.
• Why exactly was the voting delayed for six hours? Technical snafus, bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, silly delegate pontification and multiple petty objections from “establishment” delegates (including discussion and voting on silly trivia e.g. whether it was OK for me to nominate Marylin Shannon for National Committeewoman). In my mind, these interminable, frustrating delays were intentional, promulgated so the election could be rammed through the exhausted delegate contingent at the very end.
• In the weeks before the meeting, as candidates dealing with the ORP bureaucracy, we had inexplicable delays and roadblocks and were given horribly outdated delegate contact information – with no email addresses – and had to send posts through Becky and/or Tracy to be delivered “when they had the time.” Over the course of the last month before the election, there were three different “updated” delegate lists delivered to us in near-unusable formats (including PDF, and another via a long email listing). And when I questioned that and other delays and obfuscations, both Bill Currier and Tracy Honl literally called me names and belittled me. (It’s all documented: they would never call me back and instead used email in their tirades.)
• In his role, Judge Vance Day did a fine job, keep things calm. Good guy. I’m positive he didn’t know this was all rigged…that more votes would be cast than credentialed, that some would not be able to vote, that credentialing itself would be a mess, that candidates would not get to make presentations that were audible, that the voting itself would be so chaotic, that Roberts Rules of Order were employed sporadically, etc. etc.
• If this meeting is to be analyzed for effectiveness, it should be done by an outside group, not by the ORP brass who have, of course, already labeled the meeting a huge success. They are already lobbying to have the next SCC meeting, in June, to be held in the same way. Electronic voting invites fraud. Everyone knows that.

Can legal action be taken to reverse the vote? YES. And it can also be done another way, without attorneys. And it would not be a big stretch to shut these people down so they can never do this again. I’ve talked to two lawyers about it. The question is, does anyone “out there,” in the grassroots, have the cajones or resources to take this on? Also, another thing, and I’ve referred to this already, too: there is the possibility of criminality – perpetrator and accessories – that I hope will be investigated (see Slide #4, below).

Following are the elements of my 6-minute presentation.

Introductory note: I was distracted in the very beginning of my talk when candidate John Lee interrupted the proceedings, loudly declaring that “Delegates can’t hear Sam!” Bill Currier told John to leave the room and instructed me to continue. In proceeding, I had to assume the audio was fine and that John had been mistaken. At this point I was thoroughly distracted because I knew the audio was probably NOT fine. There would be 6 minutes only and so I could only hope for the best. But with the interruption and confusion, I had to discard part of my presentation. I had been preparing this mini-speech for weeks! It was my only chance to make my arguments to delegates, “in person.” In the end, it was true: almost no one heard what I had said. John had been completely correct. Do I think this “technical snafu” was deliberate? Yes. And I’ll mention this again: after being on line for 6 hours, delegates just wanted the meeting to be over, no matter the unintelligible candidate presentations. There is no question in my mind that the frustrating, endless meeting blather was – in itself – the major element of the distraction/silencing strategy. No matter, this election result should be voided and an electronic meeting format should not ever be used again.

• My first point in the presentation: “Are you satisfied with the ORP? If not, vote for change today.”
• I meant to add the following but due to the technical confusion right at the beginning (you can see it in the video), I had to skip this: “If there is consistent organizational failure – corporate, military, sports team – leadership is removed and replaced. The workers, troops, or athletes are not dismissed.”
• I said, “there will be an important announcement at the end of my presentation; do NOT miss it.”

My short talk then revolved around the brief explanation of five separate charts (see below) that, together, illustrate the broad failure of ORP Executive Committee leadership since Solomon Yue became the de facto leader twenty years ago.

Chart #1: Fundraising: the ORP raised over $5,000,000 in 2000 just before Solomon Yue took power. In shocking contrast, the ORP raised barely $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 nominees. Two years later in 2020, that “vacancy” rate was down to 10%. See map comparison below*. ORP leader Solomon Yue, and the Executive Committee, expended zero energy in making that happen, with Chris Barreto, the National Committeewoman, stated on social media (and I’m only very slightly paraphrasing) that “the ORP historically has not put any effort into finding candidates in districts that had a 15% or higher Democrat majority.” With our large database of conservative Oregonians, and super-active use of social media, Diana and I pretty much singlehandedly made it happen…from outside the ORP. (How do we know this? From feedback from new candidates who subscribe to our blog. They told us.)

Chart #4: For those with an intact soul and a functioning brainstem, this is a simple thing to understand. 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 (see chart below or website at www.republicansoverseas.com/membership). None of this income is returned to the ORP to assist Republican candidates. Some people would call this unethical, if not illegal. My recommendation? investigate all of this NOW, including making a FOIA request for 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, customers and potential customers does the organization engage?** Below are the four most active political Facebook pages in Oregon, listed in order of 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 Make Oregon Great Again Page at the top of the list. See “Engagement** this week.” In the week we measured, March 7^th through the 15^th, we actively engaged over 89K Oregon Republicans. The ORP engaged 5K, even less than CD2 primary candidate Knute Buehler.

After quickly explaining the above charts, I stated:

• “without a change in ORP leadership NOW, in November the legislature will maintain their super-majorities and the ensuing redistricting in 2021 will destroy conservatism in this state for the next generation.”
• Then I gave my announcement, taking one full minute to ask all my delegates to vote for John Lee. I said, paraphrasing, “John is the best man for the job, (experienced – he is the current ORP Treasurer, determined, fair-minded, patient, tenacious, likeable, etc.).” Why didn’t I ask my delegates to vote for John before election day? Two reasons. First, so I could maintain the gravitas of a candidate to the very end, and second, to be able to give the stump-speech presentation which I felt was compelling enough to get John over the top. This had been our strategy from the very beginning.
• I also did NOT get a chance to say the following, because of the time-limitations/fiasco: that “I am not at my best on a committee (impatient with BS, I hate meetings, I just want to get the job done, etc.). I am best at leading an organization (I’m decisive, don’t put up with BS, would better serve as a general, head coach, governor, etc.)”
• I said, in reference to ORP leadership’s new-found Donald Trump enthusiasm, “the ORP gave virtually no support, and hardly mentioned Donald Trump for two and a half years, until the second week of February 2019 in the ORP Executive Committee officer elections when I challenged the incumbent officers with a full slate of pro-Trump candidates. Our investigation of the ORP website, ORP press releases and the ORP Facebook Page was detailed, thorough and documented, back to the beginning of 2015” I added that, in contrast, “I had publicly endorsed Donald Trump in April 2016.”-

Diana and I are incredibly tired. We did our best to help fix our state Party, and we have great supporters everywhere, on the front lines and in the rear echelons. We’re done now with beating our heads against that particular wall. But moving on, if there is no actual Republican political grassroots leadership to carry on this fight against the Ruling Class, we are going to completely lose Oregon to Democrat progressives.

So, we encourage someone else “on our side” to boldly take up and continue this fight NOW. It’s a fight worth fighting. Contact me.

In the meantime, we’ll still be here in the background. -sc

*  Note that this representation of the 2018 final “vacant” tally is actually the 2020 map one week before the 2020 filing deadline. Both maps had exactly 15 “vacant” districts, 25% of the total of 60, but the specific districts illustrated on the March 3rd 2020 map differ slightly from the actual 2018 final map.

** Facebook engagement is the total number of Likes, Shares and Comments on a Page. For more detailed information about these Facebook-provided statistics, including information regarding Kate Brown and Knute Buehler Page statistics, see our homepage message on our website at www.makeoregongreatagain.com.

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

Click the image to enlarge