J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
@ Agorist.com
As a 2008 member of the Nye County, Nevada Republican Central Committee and an elected Ron Paul delegate to the 2008 Nye County Republican Convention, the most exciting political moment for me last year was watching the September, 2008 national GOP convention on TV when three Nevada delegates committed to Ron Paul prevented the Republican National Convention’s unanimous voice acclamation for the presidential nomination of John McCain when the three Nevada delegates used bullhorns to shout their objections.
Oh, wait. Silly me. That never happened.
What did happen in reality was almost as dramatic.
The April, 2008 Nevada Republican Convention in Reno adjourned without ever finishing counting the ballots to find out which candidate’s delegates had been elected to be sent to the national convention in Minneapolis in September. According to a Wall Street Journal article published July 18, 2008, “Citing a lack of interest, the Nevada Republican Party has called off its state convention and will instead pick its delegates to the national convention by private conference call. The state party broke up its original convention in April when supporters of Ron Paul hijacked the proceedings and tried to elect delegates for their candidate to the national GOP convention in September. Party officials tried to reconvene on July 26, but they needed a quorum of 675 and received only 300 RSVPs…”
Ron Paul supporters “hijacked” the Nevada Republican Convention? What did they use? Box-cutters? Did they demand the convention land in Cuba?
Uh-uh.
The “hijacking” of the convention was the duly elected delegates committed to Ron Paul demanding all the ballots be counted. The Nevada Republican Party leadership refused to count half the ballots and adjourned the convention without counting them.
On November 1, 2009 — a year and a half too late to matter — I received the following email from Robert Terhune.
Dear Nevada Patriots,
As many of you may have already heard, the ballots from Congressional District 2, that were cast on April 26th, 2008, at the Nevada Republican State Convention, were finally counted last Friday. I traveled with National Committeewoman Heidi Smith to the Peppermill, where we retrieved the ballots out of the locked box in the cashier’s cage. Nancy Ernaut, acting State Party Chair, was also in attendance.
When we got back to the Republican HQ, local media (including two camera trucks, numerous photographers, and the local political writer for the Reno Gazette-Journal) had arrived, along with over twenty vote-count volunteers and interested spectators. They were all eagerly awaiting the arrival of the long lost ballots. With media cameras rolling, three of the original witnesses of the ballot lock-up examined the envelopes. They determined that the seals were unbroken and the envelopes did not appear to have been tampered with or damaged. Then all the volunteers were divided into groups of two, and the counting commenced. There were over 800 ballots to be counted, but even so, the winners were very apparent from the start.
Here’s the results:
Delegates:
#1: Robert Terhune, 288 votes
#2: Marla Criss, 283 votes
#3: Pat Kerby, 283 votes
Alternates:
#4: Dean Heller, 231 votes
#5: Brian Krolicki, 118 votes
#6: Mike Weber, 95 votes
#1, 2, 3 were “Ron Paul” delegates
Although the National Republican Convention is long since over and done, the results of this ballot count confirm what so many of us believed: that Nevada was very possibly, even probably, on the verge of sending a Ron Paul supporting delegation to Minneapolis. There is little doubt that party “officials” shared the same opinion, and they shut down the convention to prevent a Ron Paul slate.
Even though we can’t go back and change the results of the Republican National Convention, we have been vindicated, once again, by the results of this ballot count. Please read this report in the Reno Gazette-Journal to see some of the excellent media coverage we have received:
http://www.rgj.com/article/20091030/NEWS/91030046.
Thank you all for your support throughout this saga. Your emails of encouragement and thanks have meant a lot to me and my family.
Sincerely,
Wayne Terhune
P.S.- And congratulations to Robert Terhune, Marla Criss, and Pat Kerby, legally elected national delegates!!
As we know, not only did the Republican Party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees John McCain and Sarah Palin go down to defeat at the hands of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but Republican loss of seats in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives were so severe that the Democratic Party achieved a super-majority which may well have given the Democratic political agenda irresistible force on issues such as taxation and spending, government ownership of major industry, nullification of private contracts, 100% government-controlled health care, nullification of the Second Amendment, as well as national defense, homeland security, and U.S. economic sovereignty.
I asked one of the elected Nevada delegates, Pat Kerby, what he thought of Nevada’s Republican leadership denying him his seat at the GOP national convention.
Pat Kerby summed it up nicely: “What the Republican party did to Ron Paul was like a sinking ship shooting torpedoes at the rescue boat.”
November 7, 2009 - 6:45 am
I’m surprised not at all, Neil. Major political party establishment apparatchiks are willing to cut their own throats and violate their most basic rules of procedure these days to keep their most “radical” members from being nominated: just as the Republicans would die, as a party, rather than give internal power over to sympathizers of Dr. Paul, so the same with Democrats and Dennis Kucinich or Libertarians with Neil Smith or Tom Knapp — which is why we get clone nominees: John McCain is Barack Obama is Bob Barr. While there are individual differences, to be sure, the methods of how they would govern are all the same, and I don’t mean with regard to the Constitution, but rather as a style of governance.
Dr. Paul’s nomination probably wouldn’t have changed the election results vis-a-vis Senator Obama, but would have made for a much more interesting campaign season. And think what a series of debates could have been with Dr. Paul, Congressman Kucinich and Mr. Smith or Mr. Knapp! Substantive issues! The meanings of the articles of the Constitution! Pledges to enforce the Bill of Rights!
[sigh]
November 7, 2009 - 6:36 pm
Everybody knows the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, rich get rich
That’s how it goes, everybody knows
~~ Leonard Cohen/Sharon Robinson
The stolen votes were 30 + = all three congressional districts plus at-large delegates.
We have a lot of work to do but in this age of atonement and truth we are up to the job.