Once upon a time, as a member of the California Republican Party State Central Committee, I 
would enjoy spending time at the hospitality suite of the California Teachers Association at State GOP Conventions. Why? Because they always hosted the most sumptious of tasty treats – an ice-cream sundae bar with all of the fixins. All convention-goers know that the most popular suites are the ones with the best taste treats!
One day though, I along with many, many others woke up to the fact that while we were eating this particular union’s ice cream, they were spending over 95% of their political dollars to elect DEMOCRATS. Suddenly those of us who had partaken of their high-calorie give-aways became resentful of this group that would come into state GOP conventions and feed our faces, yet were fundamentally opposed to our party and its candidates and causes. Their liberal giving policy was especially aggregious since they would market themselves at conventions by talking about how something like 40% of their members are registered Republicans!
Well, a group of us got together and decided that enough was enough. We asked the State GOP leadership to ban the CTA from our conventions until they gave at least 40% of their political contributions to Republican candidates. Ultimately, we ended up bringing a bylaw amendment to the floor of the convention, which passed overwhelmingly, creating an "Unwelcome Organization" clause, said status was then immediately conferred on the CTA by the GOP. The message was sent: if you want to be ‘welcome’ in the GOP tent, equalize your political giving.
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May 28th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Your article was very informative and enlightening. An additional little-known fact is that Shawna Adam and her CA group, including known Democrats recruited to vote me out, were not successful in ousting me as Chair of the Republican Educators Caucus. They were two votes short of a majority, even though many of the caucus members could not leave the floor to vote. Even so, they announced on the floor an erroneous success. I remained chair (however contested by Adam) until the next NEA caucus meeting a year later. She has recently notified some members of the caucus she does not intend to fulfill her term or plan to attend this June 2006. In her message to caucus members, her goal was to appoint someone to replace her, and have an election to fill that vacated officer’s position she appointed, in order to keep the prior chair from being elected. It now appears her sole intention was to wrest control of a Republican as Chair from the Republican Educators Caucus.
I will attend as a State Delegate again this year, and I am very proud to be the only Republican running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I truly care about kids, and genuinely want to improve education for all our students. That is what truly matters.
Diane Lenning, Ed.M. http://www.DianeLenning.com