Friday, July 26, 2024
There is a certain irony to this week’s proceedings coming from the RPA Headquarters.
On the afternoon of July 25th, twenty-three members of the Republican Party of Arkansas Executive Committee met at the party headquarters to take a vote immediately following their secret Executive Session, to affirm an advisory opinion written by RPA Rules Committee Chair, Bilenda Harris-Ritter.
The Executive Committee (made up mostly of establishment members) affirmed this advisory opinion and declared their decision of July 25 as one which nullifies and voids the acts of an admittedly superior body, the biennial State Convention, in spite of admitting the Convention is the body with final authority in all party matters (Article I, Sec1B)i.
This decision was passed by Executive Committee members by a vote of 18 to 5, after Chairman Joseph Wood (against Robert’s Rules and RPA Rules) continually ignored timely ‘points of order’ during this meeting regarding: violation of RPA Rules ii Article I, Sec 1B and Article VII; ballot voting despite precedent of voice vote; request for roll call; and the fact there was no discussion allowed on Harris-Ritter’s motion.
This one of a kind “advisory opinion” (meaning the RPA is without precedent for such opinions) found in favor of a complaint alleged to have been filed by Benton County Chairman Barbara Tillman on June 13, 2024, with the RPA State Chairman Wood, and his self-appointed Rules Committee.
According to Tillman’s complaint as recited in the Harris-Ritter opinion (a complaint which appears to be intentionally kept from the State Convention delegates), Tillman alleged Chairman Wood and the Rules Committee and Convention Rules Committee had authority pursuant to RPA Rules Article VII, Section 2 to set aside the actions of its superior body, the State Convention, and should do so because the State Convention did not follow the rules.
To the shock of any person who can read, this argument was taken up and embraced by Harris-Ritter, a practicing attorney, and then affirmed by the Executive Committee, in spite of the fact that RPA Article VII clearly has no jurisdiction in this matter. This Article VII provides for a “Rules Review” which not only provides due process for those charged of breaking rules but specifically applies only to District and County Committee members, with absolutely NO application to the superior body—the RPA State Convention.
This opinion and the decision to affirm and impose it beyond its jurisdiction comes as no surprise since the very people involved in the complaint and affirming this opinion are the very people who were outvoted at the State Convention on June 8, starting with the defeat of State Party Chair Joseph Wood as State Convention Chair, who lost his bid by nearly 17% of that total vote.
These same people who voted yesterday to nullify and void the actions taken at the State Convention are the same people who had schemed prior to the Convention to make sure most of the measures that were passed at the Convention (including those which will reform this Republican party and perhaps the state in part by closing the Republican primary) never saw the light of day on the Convention floor. As delegates to the State Convention another attempt to prevent these measures from being enacted, most of these same Executive Committee members left the Convention before these measures were brought to the floor—hoping to thwart a quorum. Now in one more attempt to snatch victory from the people of Arkansas, these same people deliver to our state a fake ruling that the 2024 Republican State Convention is now set aside.
The irony is impossible to miss.
It is strongly suggested that all freedom loving people in this state who care about transparency in government as well as the rule of law (starting with our own agreed to rules in our own back door), contact your friends in the Republican party at all levels and let them know of your outrage and commitment to not allow such behavior to go unaddressed and without remedy in our state.
