The Clownish Affair That Was The Fort Bend Republican Party Meeting

I'm just using their own words. The Fort Bend Republican Party had their first meeting of their new term last Thursday, May 18th. Here was the invitation that was sent out:

The first meeting of the new term of office for the Republican Party of Fort Bend County will be held beginning with a social time at 7 p.m. tonight, at the Fort Bend County Courthouse annex building at 4520 Reading Road in Rosenberg.
The business meeting will begin at 7:30. The public is invited to attend.

Apparently the public did attend. The behavior on the part of Gary Gillen and the precinct chairs was such that you might think they forgot that they invited the public, so naturally, there was media there and apparently at least one Democratic spy. Thorough coverage from Fort Bend Now can be read here. The spy report can be read at Juanita's.

Democrats in TX-22, if you think the Republicans in Fort Bend are organized and of one mind, think again. As one commentator on Chris Elam's blog, Texas Safety Forum, so aptly put it, "The whole affair was . . . clownish."

Highlights from the media and spy reports:

Gary Gillen, the new party chair for the Fort Bend Republican party, ran a poor meeting. He continually had to ask for help from those around him and from people in the audience. Someone please send the guy to a Roberts Rules of Order training.

Dean Hrbacek, former mayor of Sugar Land, scored a coup by bringing brand new by-laws to the meeting and having them successfully voted in by a vote of 30-28. These new by-laws take power away from the party chair and puts considerably more power in the hands of the executive committee, comprised of all of the precinct chairs. Some precinct chairs vociferously complained that they had not seen the new by-laws ahead of the meeting. The room seemed divided between those that supported the ideas and practices of the past chair (Eric Thode) and the Hrbacek faction.

There was an attempt to fill the 38 vacant precinct chair slots, but only about 6 were filled Thursday night. Several times during the meeting, one precinct chair attempted to force the party to not allow the new precinct chairs to be able to vote on the Fort Bend representative to the Gang of Four who will pick DeLay's replacement on the ballot in November. Gillen refused to entertain that motion and said that while Harris County was choosing to do that, that was Harris County and this was Fort Bend.

The biggest hoopla was over the surveys that were sent out to 18,000 residents in Fort Bend county who have voted in Republican primaries. They were asked to choose among listed names as to who they wanted to see on the ballot in November. At the Thursday night meeting, there was a strong contingent who wanted the ballots shredded and not counted so as not to give ammunition to the Lampson campaign. Gillen had the surveys at the meeting in a plastic U.S. postal service box and held it up dramatically for effect several times during the heated discussion. The intention all along was to count the surveys in public after the meeting for those who wanted to stay. The "shred the surveys" faction made their points about how the survey was not scientifically valid (only one per household when there was more than one voter per household, not all candidates running were on the survey, some households didn't get one, etc.), but in the end the arguments for counting the surveys (the public was promised they would be counted, people took the time to fill them in and mail them back) prevailed and the surveys were tabluated. Full results can be found here, with a disclaimer that the results are "inconclusive". David Wallace, Charlie Howard and Tom Campbell led the pack. Nick Lampson got 5 write in votes, 3 more than the 2 write in votes for Tom DeLay.

For fun, go to Fort Bend Now and read the several articles on this night of mayhem and be sure and read the comments below each article. The Fort Bend Republicans are eating their young. In public!

Also, read the comments on the Texas Safety Form blog where one comment included this:

It's a big public mess though that should have been contained before it made us all look bad.

Too late.