The maneuver guaranteed 2nd district Senator Frank Wagner would win the district’s convention next month and become the district chair. Â From the PilotOnLine.com:
Over shouts and boos, a slate of 32 mainstream [Editor’s note: “Mainstream” means liberal] party members supporting Sen. Frank Wagner was chosen to take the place of Virginia Beach’s 552 votes at the party’s district convention next month.
The procedure, called a slate, virtually guarantees Wagner will win the chairmanship and prevents supporters of Tea Party favorite Curtis Colgate from getting a vote at the convention.
Del. Chris Stolle led Monday’s meeting and quickly ushered the vote for the slate, which included his brother, Beach Sheriff Ken Stolle, and Wagner.
Challenger Curtis Colgate said,
“I’m certainly disappointed and regret that a small minority of individuals have decided to use parliamentary procedure to steal an election instead of working to unify and grow the party.”
Grassroots Republicans across the state are infuriated at this power play by the establishment Republicans. Â Shame on them. Â It won’t easily be forgotten or forgiven.
More details of last night’s meeting here.
29 comments
[…] Virginia Beach, with Henrico, Richmond, and other areas in between. Ray Allen was the author of an orchestrated campaign of “slating” this year, a practice purposefully designed to shut out participation of minority voices in […]
[…] That leaves just Ray Allen. Allen’s chief patron is Rep. Eric Cantor (VA-7). Because Cantor appears to be next in line to become Speaker of the House, lobbyists and interest groups are all but throwing money at him, allowing him to fill his campaign coffers to overflowing, with plenty left over to lavishly fund the 7th District Republican Committee and YG Network/YG Virginia, the 501(c)(4) organization that staffed the slating operations around Virginia this winter and early spring. Allen is capitalizing on this ready availability of cash to ensure that there are plenty of paid staff to turn out Democrats and otherwise to corrupt GOP delegate selection processes in favor of his chosen candidates, and disenfranchising anyone who disagrees. […]
[…] defeating Byler’s endorsed successor, Curtis Colgate. As has been reported elsewhere, Wagner’s effort to disenfranchise almost all of the people who had registered to become delegates to the Second District convention was lent a great deal of assistance from his fellow elected […]
[…] procedural move (slating) that disenfranchised almost 900 potential delegates, including himself. As has been previously reported, Senator Wagner and Cantor’s Young Guns used a procedural move to hand-pick 32 well-connected […]
[…] last month in Virginia Beach by Eric Cantor’s Young Guns and Senator Frank Wagner. You will recall that only 32 mainstream party members were selected out of almost 1,000 grassroots members who […]
[…] across the state. They were originally on a roll, slating out hundreds of conservatives in Virginia Beach and Richmond City, hustling up Democrats and school employees in Campbell County to remove […]
[…] – a practice known as slating. We have discussed this in detail on The Bull Elephant. You can go here and here and here to read about just a few examples of this deplorable tactic that Cantor’s folks […]
[…] loyally serve Eric Cantor have received a tremendous amount of negative publicity because of their successful and unsuccessful efforts to slate conservative delegates. Slating is a parliamentary procedure used […]
[…] GOP meeting to stop a scurrilous practice called ‘slating,’ which Party bosses employ to assign votes to a particular candidate or cause when fellow Party members ‘fail to fall in […]
[…] of the Republican Party of Virginia. We have seen the destruction they have left in their wake in Virginia Beach and Campbell County. The fact that the conservative grassroots successfully pushed back against […]
[…] Byler’s endorsed successor, Curtis Colgate. As has been reported elsewhere, Wagner’s effort to disenfranchise almost all of the people who had registered to become delegates to the Second District convention was lent a great deal of assistance from his fellow elected […]
DEPLORABLE! I never thought I would witness such an attack of liberty coming from the Republican Party -aren’t they supposed to be adamantly opposed to this type of debauchery? The voices of 552 voters is silenced and they believe this is a VICTORY??? Pfft.
My position that job #1 for Republicans in Virginia is “cleaning house” continues to accumulate evidence.
This is not cool. I know Curtis and he is a good person and welcoming of all the different voices in the party. It is shame people like him are shut out in favor of the “good ole boys.” Slating happens formally and informally on many levels; I’m not a fan of it. I think delegates, at any level, ought to be selected based on who they are as an individual and not who they are affliated with. I hope Curtis considers a run for the State Senate in 2015 – against Wagner. I will gladly send Curtis a check.
Me too, Ryan. Run Curtis run!
count me in, too!
What happened last night was a travesty. Not only was it a deliberate and purposeful disenfranchisement of most Virginia Beach Republicans, but it was a slap in the face of all of us who think the Republican Party should be run by the grassroots and not the elected officials and the political class. At bottom, this is a minor skirmish in a larger battle, but it illustrates nicely just how divorced of principles some of our elected officials can be in service of their own power.
Slating is a process that should be heavily frowned upon now matter who you are. Make your case to the voters and run…trying to “rig” it so you can’t lose is ultimately a losing strategy and one that hurts the party and more importantly our conservative principles.
This was plain old stupid. More from the stupid party. I have an idea, let’s start a civil war within the party so the Democrats don’t have to break a sweat when they kick our ass. The Party or as some call it the establishment are more interested in Fiefdoms than electoral success through building of coalitions. While at the same time the Tea Party is too busy flailing around unorganized standing on the side of the road with home made signs thinking they are making a difference. Instead of competing in an organized fashion they just make noise. They had the momentum in 2010, and squandered it by poor follow through. Imagine if these two groups actually worked in tandum to defeat leftists. Instead leftists snicker as they beat the crap out of one another from DC to Richmond and beyond. Brilliant !
It was exactly as you said. In fact, I’d say many of us were blindsided by the events of the night, expecting to show up to vote for the VB chairman, and then seeing our delegate method of voting and candidate selection destroyed. The process appeared corrupted with cronyism and sleaze all around.
Isn’t there a regulatory violation with Wagner being an elected state official and a political one? ie. 2nd District Chairman?
Can anything be done to stop this? The Establishment GOP didn’t win what they think they won last night – people aren’t going to just go along and vote for the “R” person anymore…
Thank you Lady Penguin for posting and thank you for showing up to vote. You were robbed of your vote in the 2nd district chairman race. Wagner may have won this round, but will he retain his seat next year?
The party allows state officials to be officers in the local parties. Bill Stanley is a state senator who has also been 5th district chair for a long time. There may be others on this list. http://www.rpv.org/RPVSCC
Thanks for the info. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I mean why would a state official want to do that? It also closes off others getting involved in the party. In fact, possibly a conflict of interest…So does Wagner have his eye on Rigell’s Congressional seat? Just wondering…
It is somewhat amusing to look at the comment that states they were trying to rig the district chairman seat so they could win. This is from the same people who had no problem when Ken Cuccinelli’s people took over the State Central and reversed the decision to have a primary that had been established. You think that might have been done “to win”?? By the way, it was reported that the vote was 3 to1in favor of the motion to slate.
…
It’s easy to make the outcome “3 to 1” when you’ve planned ahead and bussed in your supporters to pull off the coup. This wasn’t the stated purpose of the Mass Meeting. In fact, I would say that there is an irregularity as the filing to attend the 2nd District Convention and vote was “closed” as of March 3rd. So any “changes” in how the voting was to be done for the 2nd Convention chairman SHOULD have been determined before they started collecting delegate filings. Basically, making a drastic change from individuals voting to a slate format is a change in an entire election procedure and absolutely does weight the outcome. If you blindside your opponents, you might win in the long run, but the revelation to the rest of us, who are principled, honest people, find that abhorrent.
How on earth can you say you were blindsided by the events of the night? That is a bunch of baloney. I am all the way up in NOVA and I was hearing and reading that Wagner was going to try and slate at the meeting.
It seems to me that the Colgate camp knew what was coming and still got beat almost 3 to 1.
Well actually, we had stopped attending City Committee meetings because we (husband and I) didn’t like what we were seeing with the GOP – essentially getting nothing done. We’re not insiders, just conservative, loyal Republican voters and so while many might have been aware, we weren’t. There were others too that were taken by surprise and the chaotic and aggressive manner in which it was sprung on the assembly left a lot to be desired. I can’t see that something as important as “slating” could or should be changed by a heavy-handed backroom deal and thrust upon people in the manner that it was. No call went out to show up because they’re going to manipulate the 2nd District Chairmanship convention representation and election.
We went to vote for the Virginia Beach Republican Party chairman. And, let me add a personal thought on ‘that’ race. We had intended to vote for Chuck Smith, but when he did his little “please vote for Ken Longo, my good friend and fellow patriot,” I didn’t care for the sense of bamboozling which wafted aft, it was just too pat and maybe had been a ploy all along to ensure Ken getting reelected vs if it had just been one opponent, Keith Freeman.
A preordained slate, which included the names of 3 couples along with 3 people named Wagner certainly lends itself to distrust and while it all made have been “legal” according to parliamentary procedure, it did not ‘feel’ right, ethically or morally. But that’s just my opinion.
Chuck Smith is the worst turncoat ever- he stabbed the very same people that helped him IMMENSELY on his city council run and this is the way he thanks them…
They raided local nursing homes (bussed them in) and strong-armed Stolle’s lemming army of sheriffs to vote for the “establishment” candidate. What’s next ? Raiding Mental Institutions?