I was on hand back in the early 1990’s when the a schism occurred within the Young Republicans in this state. Rather than suffer the loss of control of the California Young Republicans, then Congressman Bill Thomas, his protégé Kevin McCarthy (who would go on to take Thomas’ seat in Congress over a decade later), and their allies cheated and thusly a larger number of activists fled the CYR’s to start their own organization, the Young Republican Federation of California. And so for fifteen years there were two YR groups in California — the Thomas/McCarthy controlled CYR’s that stayed small and was controlled from the top-down, and the YRFC which continued through the entire “split” to demonstrate themselves as the “real deal” — a bottom-up activist group that made it’s mark through walking precincts, registering voters and electing conservatives to office. From time to time, the feud between the two groups would bubble up to the California Republican Party Conventions.
This split might have gone on until the end of time, but for the fact that after over fifteen years, perhaps because McCarthy’s eye was elsewhere (pardon the Lord of the Rings metaphor), the McCarthy-controlled CYR group had someone become Chairman who had not drank the McCarthy Kool-aid — Jenniffer Rodriguez. Rodriguez stood up to the Bakersfield mafia and among other “heretical” actions she and her allies voted against the McCarthy-backed candidate for National Chairman of the YR’s (a post McCarthy once held himself) — a contributing factor to McCarthy’s candidate losing. At the next CYR convention McCarthy put up a slate of his own candidates, led by Bakersfield resident (of course) Andy Stanley to challenge Rodriguez and her slate — in a very lopsided vote Rodriguez and her team won the day. After this convention, serious merger talks that had been ongoing between Rodriguez and the CYRs and the YRFC headed up by it’s State Chairman Adam Abrahms resulted in the two groups merging back into one organization — the California Young Republican Federation. Since the merger, that organization has thrived and is in capable hands under the leadership of Chairman Joe Sanchis and Vice Chairman Chris Mays. Just this last weekend the group held a high-profile, successful townhall event at the State GOP Convention.
To most Republican politicos in the state, it appears that this issue of a divide in the Young Republicans in California has been resolved — with 100% of the focus of the state’s single YR organization focused on electing Republicans in 2012. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Because while the new organization has brought most everyone in the YR’s back together, those most loyal to McCarthy hired a high-powered attorney (no doubt with some advice and resources from the House Majority Whip himself) Glen Summers to sue what was his former group. Jenniffer Rodriguez the President of the then-CYR’s could not afford an attorney and suffered legal set-backs for almost a year. McCarthy’s displaced former CYR leaders were only one week away from a resounding win in an arbitration that was set to commence in January of 2011. That said, Rodriguez working with Adam Abrahms and fellow YR Dave Bartels, both capable attorneys, put together a new legal team to represent the CYR’s — a team headed up by former California Republican Party Chairman Michael Schroeder. This legal team went to work, and quickly obtained an injunction (about a year ago) against the arbitration continuing until procedural objections could be heard including their arguments that the actions of McCarthy’s minions, with respect to the arbitration were illegal from beginning to end. Craig Alexander then joined the legal team representing the merged YR entity.
Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican Whip, continues to engage in divisive YR politics...
Just recently the trial took place and McCarthy’s band of sycophants were soundly defeated. The Los Angeles County Superior Court issued an order removing the arbitrator from the arbitration and voiding all of his prior orders. The Court also required that if Team McCarthy wanted to continue with a legal vendetta, they would need to do so from scratch in a legal arena where they have literally not received a favorable ruling in over a year.
The most intriguing question that FlashReport readers should ask themselves is why is McCarthy continuing to fuel this internecine legal battle? At this point, McCarthy and his allies are suing to try and remove officers from the CYR’s that are no longer even in office – as I reported above, now the two statewide groups have merged and have new leadership. As we go into the heat of the election cycle, one has to wonder when Congressman McCarthy will tell his people to stand down, let the lawyer go, and work with the thriving and well-organized CYRF group.
I, for one, am proud that the Young Republicans have worked things out and are unified as one organization again. And as for McCarthy, instead of supporting a lawsuit against the organization, he should be supporting their efforts, and demonstrating that he has moved beyond YR politics. We have big challenges in this state as Republicans, and I am proud that the reunified Young Republicans are focused on helping us to win elections.
February 28th, 2012 at 7:21 am
YRs across the state are truly grateful for the leadership and support shown by Mike Schroeder, Adam Abrahms, and Dave Bartels. Why this dispute continues is inexplicable. We must be focused now on bringing the youth into our party — not only in this critical election year, but to ensure our party’s viability in the future. “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” and we need to stop the circular firing squad and focus on the real goal of defending our liberties.
February 28th, 2012 at 8:21 am
CYRF is a thriving, unified, and focused organization dedicated to electing Republicans across California. We’ve created new chapters, grown our membership, and hosted many informative events at CRP this past weekend including our first youth town hall. We are forever grateful for the hard work and dedication of our legal team. Mike, Adam, Dave thank you for working so hard to insure that this merger happened. Without you three there wouldn’t be unity. This article says it all. Thanks Jon!
February 28th, 2012 at 9:47 am
First thank you Jon for the mention of my helping the merged organization.
As some of your readers know, I was involved in defending the California Republican Assembly when it was sued last year by a former CRA officer. So when I was asked to help the CYRF fight off a lawsuit / claims against them, it was a natrual yes and an honor to help such a great organization. I have gotten to know Adam Abrams, Dave Bartels, Chris Mays and Joe Sanchis a lot better over the past year and I can say the newly merged organization has GREAT leadership (and I am sure I am leaving out some other great CYRF leaders I simply have not met yet).
Now on to a Republican victory in November!
February 28th, 2012 at 10:20 am
CYRF is committed to growing California’s Republican Congressional delegation. Why would the House Majority Whip and “young gun” California Congressman oppose that? What possible reason could there be? Could it be the same reason he took time away from the debt ceiling debate in DC to oppose an activist centric post-prop 14 plan for the party? At a time when this state is on the brink of a Democrat super majority, a time when the national debt annual INCREASES get measured in trillions with a ‘T’, this guy is more concerned with consolidating power and making sure no republican, state or federal, takes office without first paying fealty to him. We’re young, dedicated, agile, organized, and growing every day. We’re cheaper than consultants. We work on pizza and beer and no sleep and stay 10 to a room and we want to get more republicans elected. We could have taken what McCarthy’s spent on legal attack dogs and paper front organizations, and sent more republicans to Sacramento. And given him the credit (like he wouldn’t have taken credit anyways). But he wants more than the credit. He wants control. Well he can’t have it. That belongs to the voters and we’re going to make sure they decide who their republican representatives are. We’re not going to stop, we will keep expanding, keep recruiting, keep vetting candidates, and keep working to get them elected. Whether the “young gun” likes it or not.
February 28th, 2012 at 11:09 am
As the CYR Secretary at the time the merger was approved, I was named in the lawsuit along with Jenniffer Rodriguez. I’m very appreciative of the past and ongoing efforts of Mike Schroeder, Adam Abrahms, and Dave Bartels to defend the legitimate YR organization and its officers, and also appreciate Jon Fleischman for building support for our cause via this website.
February 28th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
It has been my personal experience with Assemblyman and now Congressman McCarthy that his personal power and not his allegiance to principle or party is paramount.
In this Y.R. matter he should have retreated and quietly licked his wounds. Instead, he and his troops are a party pain.
Let us hope that something more important such as keeping Republicans from losing too many Congressional seats in California diverts his attention.
And let us all remember in 2013 and beyond that McCarthy was calling the Republican shots in every California seat held this year by a Republican that was lost to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.
February 29th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
There seems to be a conflict of interest between the author of this article and most of the commenters here. The fact of the matter is, the California Republican Party was expected to retain its platform the last few times it’s been threatened. That is a given, not a victory. This “victory” is similar to professional team beating a college team. This issue is disguising the fact that Ingram/Mays/Bartels/Smith/Parks had a horrible weekend. Their “know your proxy” proposal was SHOT DOWN. This proposal was going to be the hallmark of whether their CRP weekend was successful or not, not this Munger battle that is so easy to defeat. The fact is that most Republicans did not have any problems with the status quo. It’s just this small group of minions who think they can just do whatever they lost. This small “know your proxy” group has FAILED and will FAIL the next election..
March 1st, 2012 at 6:55 am
Obviously didn’t fail since you’re talking about it…