Heard on the Tom/Toms
Stephen Frank, Exclusive to the California Political News and Views, 7/14/23 www.capoliticalreview.com
Harmeet eats at the Waffle House.
California Republican Party (CRP) Chairwoman Jessica Patterson, National Committeeman Shawn Steel and National Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon have proposed a by-law change to steal delegates from the winner of every congressional district in California, something I call PTSD, the proposal to steal delegates. I’ve covered this proposal here (HOTT 213) and here (HOTT Lucy Steals the Football).
This column is about the maneuvering of one proponent of PTSD, Harmeet Dhillon, and her waffling when confronted with the blowback to her proposal.
Five days after the Executive Committee meeting was called to pass PTSD (and which had a copy of the PTSD with her name on it), Harmeet Dhillon sent an email acknowledging that California can keep our “winner-take-all” Republican primary. It also included this “gem”:
“About three weeks ago, I was told by the state party that there was a very short deadline coming up by which to submit a rules proposal for an executive committee meeting to vote on the rules change. If we didn’t meet this deadline, it was said, California was at risk of losing delegates. This urgent request was accompanied by a plain vanilla proportional allocation rule proposal. I advocated at this point for a 50% threshold for awarding all the delegates in a Congressional district, and was told that this was not what the Chair wanted, and that this type of detail could be worked out in the Rules Committee process.”
It showed up in people’s email boxes about 15 hours (10:53 p.m.) after I published my initial take on the PTSD in Heard on the Tom Toms. But not before Harmeet had tweeted this at 8:36 AM that same day referring to my column as “fake news”:
Then again, since Harmeet used the word “looming” maybe she was referring to this post.
Obviously, Harmeet is are all over the map. She says she disagreed with the PTSD, but still signed on and let them use her name. Her excuse is that It was the urgency of the moment. Yet in her 10:53 email she learned only the day before that the deadline for the rule change was actually October 1st—enough time to let the fall CRP convention delegates decide.
She claimed reliance on representations of others. As an attorney, she gets paid to read the fine print. She tells us that she was any deviation from the “plain vanilla” bylaw proposal we object to was “not what the Chair wanted”. How was she able to take on the Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee but couldn’t take on the Chairwoman of the California Republican Party? When she started to get blowback, she “tweeted” that concerns about the PTSD was “fake news”? Why did she use a Democrat smear tactic against fellow Republicans? Did she really think the details would be worked out in the Rules Committee against the wishes of the Chairwoman who appoints the Rules Committee?
Her explanations strain credibility.
If she really wanted a 50% threshold for winner-take-all, she could have submitted her own proposal separate from the other two, or just update the 2020 “winner-take-all” rules for 2024. Then we’d have the winner-take-all primary in March like we expect. But she did not. And no amount of explanation is going to take that away, because actions speak louder than words.
California has more Republican voters than any state in the Union. When they see their leaders go against their interests, they will stay home. Our Presidential nominee will again fail to win the national popular vote—the 8th time in the last 9 elections—even if the Republican candidate wins enough battleground states to get 270 electoral votes.
If PTSD is not the final nail in the coffin of California Republican Party relevance, it’s certainly a knife aimed at the “heart” of California’s Republican electorate.
We are on a collision course to take 69 delegate votes away from California’s polling leader and likely statewide choice of Republicans in California.
Harmeet, you started it. What are you going to do about it?
NOTE: Soon I will report details on the plan to stop the PTSD. For now, plan on attending the rules committee meeting on Saturday, July 22nd at 10:00 a.m. It is open to all delegates. RSVP and register here by 5:00 p.m. on July 21, 2023.
(Periodically the California Political News and Views will publish tidbits of political news, to keep you in the loop of what the pooh bahs know. The phrase “tom/tom’s” comes from my mentor, Lorelei Kinder who never passed a rumor, just called to tell me what she heard on the “TomTom’s”. This column is named in her honor.)
