Opinion from an Active Arkansas Republican
“Rules for Thee, but Not for Me”
By Margot Herzl*
It is time to end the hypocrisy.
On July 25th, 2024, the RPA Executive Committee held a secret vote to “declare null and void” most of the business of the 2024 RPA State Convention. The alleged source of authority for this vote was Article VII of RPA Rules, yet Article VII does not have jurisdiction over conventions. This unlawful vote is only the latest in a long line of Rules violations by the State Executive Committee, beginning at least two years ago, and extending through the preparations for the June 8th 2024 State Convention and into the present.
Taking a big-picture view, we see a subordinate body of 23 voting members attempting to overrule the will of a body of over 600 delegates, which holds, by nature of its rank, the superior position. We see a body with delegated authority attempting to override the body which delegated authority to it. And this–according to a process which is completely outside both Robert’s Rules of Order and RPA Rules, and seems to have been invented out of whole cloth.
In short, the vote of the RPA Executive Committee attempting to nullify the June 8th Convention makes about as much sense as would a single county committee vote attempting to nullify the May 18th State Committee meeting.
The State Convention is not an entity against which an Article VII complaint may be brought.
Article VII concerns district and county committees and individuals. This should come as no surprise! After all, RPA Rules state, “The final authority in all party matters shall rest in the biennial Republican State Convention, which shall be deemed to have delegated such interim authority to the State Committee and Executive Committee as is necessary to carry out the purposes and objectives of the party.” – Article I, Section 1, Paragraph B. No individual or separate body is granted the power to alter or reverse the business of a convention, not in RPA Rules nor in Robert’s Rules of Order.
The entire idea is a farce. Article VII does not apply. The complaint, resulting opinion, and Executive Committee vote were all made with no legal basis. Additionally, the internal process that was used to handle the complaint bears no resemblance to RPA Rules.
Under RPA Article VII–
- A complaint made pursuant to Article VII should have been filed by no fewer than five members of the RPA, or State Chairman Joseph Wood – it was made by Barbara Tillman alone;
- The complaint should have gone to a Review Committee with specific membership requirements – it went to the State Rules Committee alone;
- The Review Committee should have solicited and reviewed written representations from the parties involved in the dispute – which did not happen; the side against which allegations were made was completely unaware of the complaint until Monday, July 22nd;
- Finally, there should have been at least ten days’ notice for Thursday’s July 25th Executive Committee Meeting – only three days’ notice were given. This would be acceptable notice if an Article VII complaint were not on the agenda, but Article VII requires 10 days’ notice “to the interested parties,” which in this case includes every Convention Delegate and Alternate (who of course, received NO NOTICE).
“In your admirable haste to ensure that the law is upheld, you appear, inadvertently I am sure, to have overlooked a few laws yourself.” – Professor Albus Dumbledore
From a legal standpoint, this argument should close the issue. The complaint was neither brought nor disposed of in accordance with the Rules, and in fact there is no process by which the State Executive Committee can erase the business of the biennial convention.
The vote of the Executive Committee was taken in Executive Session, which means that the proceedings were secret, and the members barred from disclosing afterward what took place. However, we do have this statement from RPA Chairman Joseph Wood: 
The statement claims that notice requirements were not met for certain items at the June 8th Convention, and therefore the Executive Committee has voted to overturn those items.
In other words, Joseph Wood claims that on the basis of notice violations, the Executive Committee has (in violation of notice requirements themselves) voted to “declare null and void” exactly those parts of the convention business which were not pre-approved by the Executive Committee, out of a desire to “protect the will of the [convention] delegates…and preserve required notice.”
As previously explained, the Executive Committee has no more power to nullify the 2024 Arkansas Republican State Convention than to prevent tomorrow’s sunrise – even if they vote on it.
However, I will address the above assertion regarding notice, because when there are concerns about Rules being followed, those concerns should be taken seriously.
To my memory, twelve Rules and Platform proposals were adopted at the June 8th convention. Of those twelve, eleven were submitted ahead of the convention. I will deal solely with those eleven first, and take the final rules change as a separate case.
Notice requirements for Convention are laid out in Article I, Section 6, Paragraph F of RPA Rules, which are summarized as:
- Submission of all Rules and Platform proposals in writing with the appropriate committee at least 60 days prior to the convention; and
- Transmission by the State Party to County Chairmen of recommended proposals only, 30 days prior to the convention.
Regarding #1: All eleven proposals met the first notice requirement.
Regarding #2: The additional notice requirement applies only to proposals that are recommended for adoption. This appears to have been done, with the distribution of the draft platform by the State Party to County Chairmen.
Regarding other timely filed submissions—they were handled under the common practice of previous RPA conventions and were allowed to be heard. All proposals which were brought before the convention body passed with overwhelming support. For more context, one has only to look back to the 2022 Convention where this practice was followed, allowing a Platform amendment in support of closed primaries.
Quite simply: Notice requirements for the Rules and Platform changes submitted ahead of the June 8th Convention were met, unlike the 10-day notice requirement for the Executive Committee’s phony July 25th vote.
Now for the single rules change which was proposed from the floor without having met the 60-day filing requirement. This proposal arose specifically in response to the preparations that were made for the convention itself. The RPA Executive Committee chose to hold the 2024 convention in the northwest corner of the state, making it prohibitively expensive for many from the southern and eastern counties to attend.
The rules change that arose in response to this restricts the location of future state conventions to within a certain distance of the State Capitol, which is centrally located. A vote threshold of 2/3 was required for this change because the convention was fully aware that this single proposal violated the 60-day requirement under Article 1, which would therefore need to be suspended. (Two-thirds is the vote threshold required to suspend Rules at a convention.) This was passed with a near unanimous vote.
Joseph Wood’s concluding statement on July 25, that, “Today’s decision is not about any one proposal or group of proposals, but about applying the Rules equally to protect the will of the delegates, which was to preserve required notice,” is laughable. Their plan was to “protect the will of the delegates” by overturning the will of the delegates? And if “applying the Rules equally” were truly the goal, this illegal Executive Committee vote would never have taken place.
The manner in which the State Executive Committee organized the June 8th Convention presented physical barriers – from the challenging location, to claimed insufficient rental time on the convention hall, to a fabricated “other event” which made extending the room rental impossible. There was also a distinct lack of transparency – the Credentials Committee Chair still has not shared the delegate list with any member of the Credentials Committee, or the Convention Secretary; the Rules and Platform Committee Chairs refused to convey a subset of the Rules and Platform proposals to delegates ahead of the convention, necessitating their full reading on the floor; the proposed Program, and Convention Standing Rules were not shared with delegates until they had already arrived on Convention Day and taken their seats. Delegates had to do the work of these preparatory committees themselves, at the convention, accounting for at least the first five hours of the 10-hour meeting, with only a single recess to change venues.
However, even in the face of these logistical challenges and gross derelictions of duty, the people transformed a bad situation into an expression of their will that has both moral and legal integrity.
The RPA Executive Committee has a well-established pattern of making up rules as they go, but this pattern cannot continue. It is time to end the hypocrisy. It is time for the Executive Committee to discharge the duties of their elected offices. They must immediately transfer the roll of delegates and alternates from the June 8th State Convention to the Convention Secretary and publish the 2024 Rules and Platform of the Republican Party of Arkansas, which were immediately effective upon their passage at that same June 8th Convention.
-Margot Herzl is a 2024 and 2022 State Convention Delegate from Searcy County. She is a homeschool mom of five, 2024 RNC Alternate, Secretary for her County Committee, Searcy County Election Coordinator, and President of the Ivory Tusk Republican Women.
