The annual convention of the California Republican Assembly is scheduled for next month, where a new leadership election is scheduled. CRA is and always has been, since the 1930s when it was founded by among others former Governor Earl Warren, the most important Republican volunteer organization in the state. Almost all the leadership of the California Republican Party have had a run threw the chairs of CRA. But while the recent election of leadership in the CRP was quite harmonious, the situation in CRA is hardly the case. Just after the "record date" closed this last week for selection and disclosure of delegates to next month’s convention, the current leadership group, lead by President Celeste Greig, former Barbara Alby aide Tom Hudson, and Orange County volunteer Craig Alexander, apparently determined that they were destined to be turned out of office; so in what would have been their limited time left on the CRA board, they have concocted an emergency "bylaw" amendment that will disenfranchise scores of delegates to the convention and thereby, they hope, perpetuate what has become a very pathetic term of office for all three. An unusual, and in the opinion of several election lawyers, highly illegal, emergency "email" vote of the board of directors on Hudson’s and Alexander’s "banana republic" bylaw is scheduled for tomorrow. Celeste Greig is a fine person, who has contributed greatly to the California GOP, and many, including myself, are very saddened that she has fallen under the influence of the plotters and schemers. Hudson, who was turned out of office in the last election as Chairman of the Placer County GOP central committee, has stretched the limits of credulity far beyond reason in offering a tortured logic to justify why the bylaw needs to be voted on before the next election. His bylaw changes the election rules while the election is in the process of occurring, and as such it would be rejected by a reviewing court on basic principals of democratic rule. Hudson has put Celeste Greig in such an untenable legal position that Mike Spence, a respected former CRA president, has called on her to resign immediately. I’m not so sure Celeste should resign, but I do know that any CRA leaders who are elected at the next convention, if this bylaw is adopted, will be stigmatized forever more by this cheap and desperate attempt of people who really do not have the votes, clinging illegally to their positions. Character is worth a lot more than being "recording secretary" of CRA, and I hope Celeste will see that in the next 24 hours, think about her legacy in California politics, and simply shut this rogue operation down.
