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.

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