Tom Hudson has “buyer’s remorse” (or a bad case of jelly spine) after the local endorsing convention that he helped organize failed to deliver an endorsement for Tom McClintock. The endorsing convention was held in conjunction with the annual convention of the California Republican Assembly in Buena Park.
The organizers of the Buena Park convention were the Placer County Republican Assembly. Yeah, I know Placer County is at least 350 miles away from the convention site but I’m just the messenger. Anyway, the Placer folks (including Hudson) wanted as many local endorsing conventions held at the convention as they could schedule. These votes were scheduled on the morning of Saturday March 1st; the first full day of the annual convention.
Some people like me went ballistic and said they wanted local endorsing conventions held in or near the district. Those that felt like me argued that candidates, delegates, rank & file CRA members and the public should be invited. It was a way to endorse candidates in an open and transparent process. In addition, the filing period was still open at the time the annual convention was held.
Lastly, the club I belong to had not voted to select any delegates for an endorsing convention—only delegates for the statewide convention. We planned to select endorsing convention delegates at the first meeting after the convention (which we did.) Traditionally, delegates to the annual convention have a large economic cost to attend while endorsing delegates can carpool to the event since it is held closer to home. In addition, the announcement for the endorsing conventions in Buena Park also said that participants had to pay the registration fee of $40 in order to vote. I also protested this as being a “pole tax”.
I went so far as to tell the folks from Placer that neither I nor any people from my club would participate in an endorsement vote for any contested election in an area where we had jurisdiction. Buena Park was simply too far and too soon to hold such a vote.
Those that protested were able to pull endorsements in their area off of the endorsement schedule. Most races in Sacramento and San Joaquin Counties were removed within days of the February 14th call for endorsement conventions.
Hudson gave his full throated support for endorsement votes at the Buena Park convention. I know he was aware of concerns raised by people like me. Then at the Buena Park convention, he was present at many of the endorsement votes that were held on Saturday morning. Before, during and for the rest of the convention, Hudson was OK with the process and its results; then on Monday—his first day back to his job with the State—he has a change of heart.!?
Clearly someone contacted him and pressured him for reconsideration. Hudson decided that what’s in the past—that he agreed with at the time—was suddenly invalid and he had called for a new endorsing convention to redo the vote. This call was revoked by CRA President John Briscoe.
So on March 11th, Hudson sent an email blast to the CRA Board. To me this was the key sentence:
It is my position that there has not been a valid CRA local endorsing convention in the Fourth Congressional District and we need to hold one right away so that we can endorse Tom McClintock for Congress.
Please note, he does not say this is now a contested race and I think we should take another look at CD-4 but he says the purpose is “so we can endorse Tom McClintock.” Why? Both Republicans in the race are conservative.
Hudson is the parliamentarian of the CRA Board and he often uses this position to obfuscate issues with voluminous amounts of nonsense that sound good at the time but upon further analysis are distorts or outright fabrications to get him to the outcome that he desires.
Besides the famous incident that I chronicled on this blog with him and the Yolo County Republican Assembly many years ago, the most recent example was ironically on the last day of the Buena Park convention. Hudson argued for a good ten minutes that local RA chapters were not required to maintain minutes of their meetings. He stated this was not required under the CRA’s Statewide Bylaws or under Robert’s Rules of Order. OK so why is Secretary a required officer?
After insulting our intelligence at the CRA meeting with that whopper, he has the stones to claim the Buena Park endorsement isn’t valid because he didn’t have minutes from that endorsing convention!
Talk about talking out of both sides!!
This might become a major focus of the CRA Board meeting on Saturday in Burlingame. What a colossal waste of time if that happens. Tom, your side (whatever that is) lost, get over it and move on.
I have more I could say about this but I will keep my powder dry…for now.