Really Right

CRA Membership Secretary George Park has fired what could be his most devastating shot at Celeste Greig thus far. Here is the bulk of the email.

Contrast this with Chatsworth Northridge Republican Assembly (CNRA), a proported franchise of Congressman Buck McKeon’s just like the RAGSCV.  This unit fits the classic definition of a “Paper Unit” or “Zombie”, as it seems to come to life at the most special time of year. (Hint, anytime that requires delegates) Twice in the last 13 months, it has been “reorganized”.

This is also CRA President Celeste Greig’s home unit.

CNRA was born in President Celeste Greig’s living room in 1991, with the help of Steve Frank (View the original minutes here).

The most recent “reorganization” appears to have occurred on March 18th in CRA President Celeste Greig’s living room. She notified me 9 days after the fact on March 27th, the same night she headlined the Buck McKeon RA (RAGSCV) fundraiser (View the invitation here) with guest Democrat Ed Headington (who ran against SCVRA member and current Assemblyman Scott Wilk).

Her email reads, “Last Week as the highest CRA member in Los Angeles County and statewide President, moreover as the founder of the Chatsworth-Northridge R.A. it has been painful for me that for the last few years there has not been any activity with the Unit, there for I called and attended a re-organization night meeting, on Monday, March 18, 2013, in Chatsworth, CA.” ( View President Greig’s email here)

By her own words, she acknowledges that the unit has been dead for a few years.

CRA President Celeste Greig also indicated that the reorganizational meeting did not result in a board of directors being elected. In addition, she indicates that two of the eleven alleged members were going to join sometime after Easter. Furthermore President Greig did not report whoever these members were to the CRA Membership Secretary.  Where are the membership applications?  Why is there no roster?

So why did the President of the CRA call a reorganizational meeting without notifying a single other CRA officer except Steve Frank and why were there no officers elected at this alleged meeting!?  How can one hold a “reorganizational meeting” without electing a board?  Exaclty what was “reorganized”?  Another question that needs to be asked is this: Why does Congressman Buck McKeon view the CNRA as just another one of his “CRA franchises”?

There is a key issue that will play heavily in part two of the Greig-Frank Living room Dilemma – the By-Laws of the CNRA have a residency requirement.  (They are linked here)

Re-read Celeste’s email, you will see that she does not know the by-laws of her own home unit as she has accepted the transfer of Steve and Leslie Frank on behalf of the non-existent officers of the CNRA. (See Link) (Click here to read Steve Frank’s transfer request.)

This email and linked attachments illustrates that Greig is indeed treating the CRA as her little Cub Scout Den. Just like the Democrats that Steve Frank keeps claiming that we should be fighting, Greig finds the rules she has sworn to uphold as impediments to doing what she wants. No wonder the CRA is such a mess; we want to hold the Democrats to a standard that we are not willing to uphold ourselves. This is hypocrisy of the highest order.

Look at this extended portion of Greig’s email which Park quoted above.

Last week, as the highest CRA member in Los Angeles County and statewide President, moreover as the founder of the Chatsworth-Northridge R.A.

It has been painful for me that for the last few years there has not been any activity with the Unit, there for I called and attended a re-organization night meeting, on Monday, March 18, 2013, in Chatsworth, CA.

I collected individual checks (which you accepted last year), all payable to CRA for the amount of $25.00 each.

My neighbors are also going to join and will be given me their $40.00 check when they get back from their Easter vacation, so I know that you’ll join on my excitement that the Unit once again is going to be alive, functional and ready to work hard to elect and re-elect Conservative Republicans in the area, moreover to increase voter registration.

However, at this time we do not have a Board yet, nor a checking account (there was none at least for the last few years that I know of), my goal right now is to get more members, we are planning to have another meeting early in May and then elect a board.

So at this time we have 11 members (including myself and Mr. & Mrs. Steve (Leslie) Frank who live about seven or eight miles from Chatsworth.

Walk thru this email and marvel.
Celeste is highest ranking CRA member in LA County but she can’t attend the reorganizational meeting in Ventura which is right in her backyard while us poor shmucks in Sacramento are on the road before 4 a.m. so we can attend! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Celeste’s home CRA unit had no activity for last few years, so why is the club still on the books? Perhaps she has taken the same leadership skills used on her own unit and applied them to the State organization; after all it worked so well for Tom Del Beccaro in the CRP. Perhaps this explains Park’s assertion elsewhere that CRA has lost 1,000 members since the 2011 Convention.

Notice that the reorganizational meeting is noticed to others on the CRA Board only after it has taken place; contrast that with Ventura RA where about 90 Board members received multiple advanced notices.
Celeste then talks about collecting dues. This is the first of two mentions in the email where she admits to collecting dues from individual members. According to her account, she took them directly to the bank and deposited them. The good news is that she did make copies of the checks. The bad news is that she never had anyone complete membership applications because later she states,

“…therefore today I’ll be going to the nearest Wells Fargo branch and make the deposit for $200.00, I have make copies of the checks, and I’ll be sending them to our CRA Treasurer Mr. John Fugat for accounting purposes and send you a separate list, as I’m waiting for more of their information such as phone numbers and email addresses that are not on the checks.”

As quoted above, Park asserts that he is still waiting for the Chatsworth roster.

Then as Park points out, Steve and Mrs. Frank have a problem. They can’t be members of Greig’s phantom CRA unit because the Bylaws on file with the Membership Secretary require that Frank must live in Chatsworth-Northridge in Ventura County. This requirement dates back to model bylaws issued in the heyday of WordPerfect and MS DOS; it requires that members must be registered to vote within the boundaries of the local Republican Assembly; not eight miles away.

The bottom line is Celeste failed to revive her old unit with the necessary number of people to have an active CRA chapter. Technically this leaves both Frank and Greig as homeless in terms of a local chapter. They are members at large.

Steve Frank, the only advocate for the re-election of Celeste Greig as CRA President, has noticeable shifted his tactics in the last few days. While he has never attempted to rebut any evidence or allegations against Greig, he has—up until recently—tried to discredit the message by smearing the messenger; George Park. Park has crushed Frank & Greig with a tsunami of evidence that both have failed to act in a professional manner and in accord with established CRA rules and procedures. What I have published on this blog is only a portion of the available evidence.

Now each time Frank’s candidate is hit with another email from Park, his reaction is to release a copy of his resume. This is damage control for Frank but does nothing for Greig but let her twist slowly in the wind. Frank is distancing himself from Greig and trying to rehabilitate his own reputation. He is like a political consultant that has successfully drained the client of their bank account two weeks before the election and then left them to fend for themselves; while he goes off to a help himself to someone else’s campaign loot.

This is not just a metaphor for Greig’s campaign for President; this is what consults regularly do ever two years to their clients. Now you know why our guys usually loose. Every two years, our party hires the same consultants and gets the same results, only the candidate names change, the rest of the apparatus remains the same.

Frank is currently in strategic withdrawal and trying to position himself to keep his reputation in tact so he can live to fight another day. Whether Celeste realizes that she is under the bus yet is a debatable point. I think behind the scenes Frank will try to narrow the margin of defeat for Greig via his games in the Credentials Committee but there are very few uncommitted players left on the board.

My other reason that I think Frank is done with a vigorous defense of his client is that he has outed two key moles—folks funneling information to him. Here is the account from Aaron Park:

I have not seen a campaign as bizarre as this one has been.

Recently, Steve Frank exposed Bill Cardoza as the source of some of his information when he responded to en email from Placer CRA President Ed Rowen by forwarding an email Rowen sent to Mr. Cardoza complaining about the prospect of Steve having access to Placer’s roster. The only way he could have received a copy of that email would have been from Mr. Cardoza.

Last night – I received a forward of an internal Briscoe campaign email from Steve Frank that was forwarded to him by CRA Board Member Steve Macias. Mr. Macias admitted that to me in a phone call then emailed me to say that he was not going to pull his endorsement of Celeste, thereby confirming that his forwarding of the email was a deliberate act.

Why Mr. Frank exposed the leak in our (Team Briscoe) campaign team is beyond me.

Both Cardoza and Macias have been sources of valuable information to Frank so why did he burn them? Cardoza was likely leaking data and had been accused of such but Macias was operating below anyone’s radar and funneling inside info from Celeste’s opponent. Whether coincidence or not, Macias has ties with John Stoos but I am not aware that Stoos has any current interest or involvement in CRA.

Steve Frank’s conduct in this whole mess is a mystery. Maybe for him all politics really is local and friendships transcend principle and common sense. Or maybe he has an economic interest in the outcome. However this election turns out, we are witnessing the last hurrah of people that Barbara Alby brought into CRA in the 1980s and 90s. I wish they would “go quietly into that good night” but they want one last bite at the apple. Perhaps Celeste’s motives to run for President are not too different than Jerry Brown wanting another turn at being Governor. I can hear Carroll O’Conner singing, “Those were the days.”

As I sit down to write this blog, the next step in the Celeste Greig/Steve Frank campaign for continued control of the California Republican Assembly is underway. Credentials Committee Chairman, Bill Cardoza, is emailing every club roster one at a time to others on his committee and who knows who else. This is not simply names of members but home addresses, telephone and email addresses as well. As of this writing over 89 such mails have been sent.

Cardoza and his committee have no need to review this information. He is charged only with credentialing delegates. The Membership Secretary, George Park, is charged with verifying chapter membership. Chapter membership is what determines the number of delegates that a group can have. They should be complementary in nature not confrontational.

Clearly, Cardoza is positioning the Committee to nullify all work done over the last two years by Park and trying to re-invent the wheel. As I have stated before, I believe Park to be fair and conscientious in his work as Membership Secretary. This effort is the latest attempt to give Steve Frank a lever to try and find grounds to disenfranchise delegates not favorable to his slate.

Again, Steve Frank should resign immediately from all three committees to which he is assigned due to the inherent conflict of interest not only as a candidate in the upcoming elections but as the campaign architect on behalf of Celeste Greig. He is not an impartial and disinterested party trying to see that the rules are evenly enforced.

The other issue that I must raise is that Bill Cardoza is needlessly and wantonly exposing the CRA to both civil and criminal prosecution for this data dump of personal information. As I keep saying, the CRA is a California Corporation not a Cub Scout Den. Cardoza is making public, information that should be kept private. It appears to me that he is violating the Statewide CRA Bylaws by doing anything with this information. Only the entire Board has the authority to do what Cardoza is unilaterally doing.
• Does Cardoza know if he just compromised any information about an undercover law enforcement agent?
• Or a just handed some identity thief your private information?
• Did he violate State or Federal privacy laws just so Steve Frank could have more ammo?
He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. I know that members of his committee have expressed these concerns and his only response is to continue emailing more personal information.

At the very least, he is a fool for not scrubbing the personally identifying information from these lists before making them public. He also, clearly does not have the technical expertise to operate Microsoft Excel or he could have reduced everything he is currently spamming into one file, password protected it and then sent it to others on his committee.

I know some people will think I’m harsh but I have been in, under, and around computers for twenty years. Cardoza is sending the information unsecured thru a public network to multiple public servers, to multiple computers that are not secured; furthermore, some likely have viruses and rootkits that enable other to view the contents of the hard drives. How many people that receive this info have unsecured wireless access to their data? How many will take their computer to their local Best Buy where the data will be backed-up and then viewed after the computer has been repaired? Public Wi-Fi at Starbucks? My point is that once all this has been released, he has no control where the info will go or to whom.

Cardoza’s unilateral actions are not good news for the Credentialing process. His Committee has still not met; even though the Convention begins in less than two weeks. He has released no reasons for this data dump. Several chapters have previously instructed Cardoza in writing not to release their information; but he did anyway. He has still not proposed written guidelines that will be used to perform the duties his committee. He appears to be out of his depth in his handling of the Credentialing Committee. He appears to be doing the bidding of others; following and not leading.

One Credential Committee member responded to concerns of this email tsunami raised by another member with the assertion that he couldn’t trust that Park’s info was accurate. My response is that Park takes his obligation as a Board Member seriously and knows that he has a fiduciary responsibility to be accurate. Park is a Board officer of a corporation. Park has the same responsibility for accuracy as the Treasurer does to make sure the bank balance is correct.

Lastly, if this release of personal information does go FUBAR, the CRA, its Board, and Cardoza (personally) will be held responsible in any judgment that is rendered.

I really tried to sit-out the email war today between George & Aaron Park v Steve Frank. However, the rhetoric has gotten to the point where I need to chime in again. Two issues surfaced today that deserve comment.

First, something I was aware of went public today in a big way. The Park brothers have been tracking the fact that Steve Frank is calling individuals to ask for their support in the upcoming CRA elections. It appears that Frank is working a list of delegates obtained by Bill Cardoza, the chairman of the Credentials Committee. This is based on two chunks of data: George Park didn’t provide the list to Mr. Frank and the persons contacted had requested to Cardoza that their names not be share with Frank.

The theory is that the only Board members with lists are Park and Cardoza. Park and Cardoza are both on the Credentials Committee. Cardoza is the Chair of the Committee. Park has the list due to his duties as Membership Secretary. Cardoza was going to work off info shared by Park but suddenly opted to request his own information. Cardoza has fumbled this task badly and kept requesting and countermanding information requests.

Please note that Cardoza has not called any meetings of the Credentials Committee and Cardoza is conveniently out of town for the next week on business. This leaves all the heavy lifting of the committee to be done at the last minute. Thus far, no materials have been shared with Committee members. They have not conducted any official business.

Many suspected Cardoza’s real task was to acquire lists for Frank to use to assist Celeste Greig. Some outside the Greig camp suspect that Frank would use data to find grounds to disenfranchise delegates using his powers on multiple committees related to the convention. Frank is on Bylaws, Credentials, and Rules Committees. He is also a candidate for one of the CRA Vice-President slots.

Is any besides me bothered by the obvious conflicts of interest bundled into Steve Frank? Frank can have his cake and eat it too. What a dream gig. He is both a candidate and a person able to select not only the people that can vote for him (Credentials); but the rules under which they can vote for him (Rules & Bylaws). He is not just a committee member but Chair of the Rules committee. One can’t help but utter the phrase, “Russian Election”.

Clearly the fact that Celeste Greig has to rely on Frank to fill three committee slots and be a candidate on her slate is proof the she either has a small bench of supporters or she needs Frank to keep his thumb on the scale to tilt things her way. You would think that a political operative of her vast experience would know to avoid such blatant conflicts of interest. Frank is reportedly an attorney and as such he knows to avoid such dilemmas.

The second issue today that is subtle but making a bigger splash is related to the Board vote on the Committee assignments mentioned above. Janine Heft, Corresponding Secretary, sent out a ballot for several committees that are related to the upcoming convention. These assignments were the choices made by Celeste Greig. The list was in the form of a consent calendar, it was up or down on the whole thing.

The vote via email provisions of the Bylaws require that a majority of Board members must vote or the motion is deemed to fail. As a result, many members purposely did not participate in hopes that this motion would be unsuccessful.

The rumor mill version of the voting was that with a day to go the measure was failing and the Greig team began calling in an attempt to get enough votes for the committee slate to be approved.

Heft reported that the measure had passed with 39 YES votes but what she never gives out is the size of the voting universe? How many people could have voted but didn’t? In this particular vote that is an important number. Yesterday Tom Hudson reported to me in the course of another discussion that the max size of the Board can be is 111. This number assumes that all 40 senate districts have both a director and deputy director.

Here are samples of this vote being discussed today.

Aaron Park

First off, in an email Steve Frank revealed that I did not vote on the convention committee appointments. The only way he could know that is if the corresponding secretary broke with her long-time policy of not revealing how board members voted on on-line board votes and told him.

Steve Frank

Aaron, what I said was you did not vote against me for the Credentials Committee.  The Secretary announced that the vote was 39-0—NO ONE VOTED AGAINST ME.  It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that.  Since no one voted against me, and you are a voting Board member, you could not have voted against me, since the vote was 39-0.

If the reports of lobbying for the vote had not happened, I think Park would have reacted differently to Frank’s comment. However, Aaron truly believes that since there were reports of members being lobbied to vote that Heft in fact did let someone know the vote was in trouble.

He wrote,

“…on the night of vote deadline I got two panicked emails from Celeste forwarded to me. She was demanding people from the board vote. The verbage in those emails indicated that less than a simple majority had voted on the appointments. Celeste could have only known that if she was given the information by someone who was tracking the votes.”

I don’t know what to make of this whole thing. I can see both points of view. I know that there is more information that has not been released publicly but I don’t see an upside to dragging Heft into the presidential sparring.

After many emails over the last two days, I was able to get CRA to find a way to keep several members on the Board that were slated for removal.

This started by my asserting that the March 2 Board meeting was invalidly noticed 13 days instead of 14 as required by the Bylaws. By my math Feb 17 to Feb 28 was 11 days plus two in March equals 13 days. It helps when Bill Gates agrees with you. Try A3=A1 minus A2 in Microsoft Excel and you get this:

While the CRA was not willing to concede they blew the meeting notification, the leadership has pledged that they will reassign these wayward souls to the Board to fill their own vacancies. This keeps the March 2 meeting legit and keeps the Board mostly status quo. Had I not raised a ruckus, five to eight folks would have been tossed off the Board. This likely would not affect the outcome of any races for officer’s elections but it has the appearance of mischief.

Per CRA Bylaws, Board members are only allowed to miss two meetings during a two year term. The removal from office is automatic; thus when you miss the second meeting, you are never notified of the removal, it just happens. You are cut-off. It has been the practice that no communication is made with a person being removed. You just notice that your email box is quieter.

A few years ago, I was removed as Voter Registration Secretary after missing one meeting; not two as required by the Bylaws. I didn’t know I was off the Board until I heard I had been replaced. By then it was too late. It turns out that I was never marked as present at a Board meeting concurrent with a CRP Convention. After an hour of this two hour meeting, I had to attend a meeting with Steve Poizner held in an adjoining room. This was during his run for California Governor. My purpose attending the meeting was because I was the CRA Voter Registration Secretary. The irony was that doing my job cost me my job.

Once a vacancy occurs, the President has the option of filling the vacancy with the person of her choice or leaving it vacant until it can be filled. When CRA is less than three weeks from their Convention and the deck chairs start getting shuffled, it has the appearance that people are trying to tinker with the vote.

Once I got word of the offer to restore people to the Board, I began to dial back the rhetoric. I went from napalm to small arms fire. I was about to get nuclear on the subject but thankfully that was not necessary.

I am grateful to Tom Hudson and Karl Heft for engineering this arrangement. Furthermore, Celeste Greig had to sign-off on this in some capacity. Thanks for finding a way to do the right thing.

The Sith Lord says he’ll believe it when he sees it but I will give the Board the benefit of the doubt.

The way money is handled can be either an orderly process or a chaotic, clumsy and haphazard one. Order prevents fraud, disorder invites it.

I have twenty years of experience in accounting including payables; receivables; payroll; sales and employment taxes; just to name a few areas that I have worked. In business, anything received in the mail is opened, date stamped, and routed to the appropriate person for further handling. When handling money, tasks should be divided between various employees and subjected to processes that verify correct handling of funds.

In offices where I have worked, all checks were copied twice. One copy was kept with the deposit slip and the other attached to the invoice that the check was paying. This was kept in a vendor file. In a matter of minutes I could lay hands on any invoice or payment that I ever touched and present it to the boss or outside auditor.

In volunteer organizations, these types of practices are important to maintain. When, I was a treasurer in my local CRA chapter, I have made copies of all deposit slips and all checks that make up the deposit. I also kept copies of membership applications for all people joining the club. I also have copies of all checks written and invoices that were paid with these checks. When these types of practices are not followed then you lose control of the funds and chaos begets more chaos.

This is a tale of chaos resulting in people in CRA not following Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) or the governing Bylaws.

As currently written, membership dues and applications are sent to the Membership Secretary. The Membership Secretary updates the records and verifies applicant’s voter registration and stuff like that. The funds are sent to the Treasurer to be deposited.

As a result of the 2011 leadership fight, the Membership Secretary is on the look-out for mischief. Red flag items include large checks that pay dues for large groups of people instead of individual checks from members, unsigned membership applications, and the like.

Additionally, certain clubs have a reputation for bouncing checks. Checks received at conventions have even a higher rate of being bounced. In the past, it has been possible to show-up at the convention, pay dues with a fraudulent check, vote for the officers of your choice and go home leaving CRA holding the bag.

Instead of supporting processes that are designed to protect individual officers and the group as a whole from fraud, certain officers try to circumvent this process. When that officer is the statewide President then it becomes a bigger problem.

It is not unusual for an owner of a small business to take shortcuts when it comes to money; oh the stories I could tell about that…; however, the President of a corporation with franchises all over a state like California is another matter. This is effectively what CRA is, a California corporation with many franchises. For the President to ever touch a check from a member is a violation of established procedures. She may occasionally cosign a check that pays a bill—I’m assuming two signatures are required to write a check; this may not be the case but should be—but generally check handling should be left to others.

The current CRA President is frequently handling money from members and depositing funds in the corporate bank account. By doing so, she is bypassing both the treasurer and membership secretary and thus the system of checks and balances established to protect the organization. From what I know, she does not make copies of these checks and deposit slips; instead she simply sends an email as the mood strikes her stating that Bob, Mary and Steve paid their dues. If she happens to forget then the treasurer has to hunt her down and see what she has been up to in order to reconcile the account.

Along these lines, another money handling screw-up has surfaced.
On February 22, 2013, Membership Secretary George Park sent an email about paying dues and other deadlines to chapter Presidents and Board members. The applicable portion for this discussion appears below:

6. When mailing membership dues to me, please use the following mailing address, with no signature requirement. My mail box is locked and very secure; I will not accept FedEx, UPS or any US Mail that has been sent with a signature requirement. Again, use regular US Mail with no signature required.

On March 14, 2013, this email was sent to CRA President Celeste Greig and others:

Please see the letter that has gone out to all CRA Units. Please also note Item #6. I just rejected a certified mail envelope sent to my office. I will not accept certified mail or any postal mail that requires a signature. I also will not accept Fed Ex or UPS packages. All membership mail must be sent to my home address and not to my office. I have consistently reiterated these details in multiple communications since I have been membership secretary. I wanted to bring this to your attention as an FYI. Thanks

Yesterday, April 9, 2013, Park sent out an email that included the following:

(Click Here) to see an email sent to CRA President Celeste Greig after I rejected a Certified Mail Envelope that she mailed me. This email was cc’ed to the entire CRA executive board on 3/14/2013.  Why was Celeste collecting the RAGSCV unit dues?  Why did she send their dues registered mail with a signature required?

Once again, Greig is interjecting herself into the money end of the corporation. Why is she handling dues for a local chapter? Where is the treasurer of the chapter? Why can’t they send in their own dues like the other 50 odd chapters? Why send money to Park with a signature required? For about seventy-five cents—which is cheaper than the postage Greig paid—she could have sent the money with a delivery confirmation that requires no signature. Again, she should not be handling money.

Yesterday Steve Frank again interjected himself into this controversy. Please note that Frank is a past President of the CRA Corporation. As someone in the business world and a past president, he above all people should know that the president should stay out of the business of handling money. Instead he fires back at Park stating,” Now he is upset that a club did not trust him to accurately record their membership and instead sent its membership checks to the CRA State President.”

Besides Frank again re-inventing the Bylaws to suit his bias, this is a personal attack on the Membership Secretary. Some folks may not like the stuff they hear George Park say but I have known him for a few years now and he impresses me as a man of integrity. Park took a shoe box full of junk and has done a good job of rebuilding the mess left by Peggy Mew. Somehow, I think that if I was to research it, that Mew was likely the Membership Secretary when Frank was CRA President. Thus one could say that Park is cleaning up the debris that Frank and others failed to deal with when they had the chance.

George Park is doing his best and is trying to get local chapters to follow the rules that have always been there, just not enforced. He takes his fiduciary obligation as a corporate officer seriously; others like Frank and Greig treat CRA like a Cub Scout den leader meeting.

Update
Sith Lord thinks Steve Frank Presidency was before Peggy Mew was Membership Secretary.

The CRA elites have been hard at work behind the scenes to insure that the status quo is maintained. As stated earlier, part of this strategy is keeping clubs that violate the rules—but vote the right way—in good standing so they will vote for the Greig Slate. (Please note that challenger John Briscoe has no slate.)

Antelope Valley RA has been given a pass after disgorging two years worth of paperwork and dues. They sent in rosters for 2012 & 2013 and a check for dues and as a result, they have been declared as a chapter in good standing. Please note that they were given a pass on paying any dues for 2011 and submitted their dues after the paperwork deadline for the upcoming convention. The stated reason for being given a pass on 2011 dues is that no current members have records that go back that far.

Antelope Valley did not follow the rules set forth in the State Bylaws but was given a pass in part because they have powerful patrons that neither faction in CRA feels they can afford to cross; in particular, George and Sharon Runner. Runner and his wife are listed as members of the Antelope Valley RA. AVRA claims a few other elected folks as members also.

Putting his best spin on this yesterday, Membership Secretary George Park released a statement praising the return of the prodigal son.

For over two years, the previous leadership of the unit simply never communicated with the CRA Membership Secretary and had not paid dues to CRA. Thanks to the efforts of CRA VP Tim Thiesen, we were able to make contact and in a conference call were able to resolve all the issues that existed.

The AVRA is one of the oldest units in the CRA and the new leadership is now fully reconnected with the CRA. VP Tim Thiesen made this possible through multiple phone calls. Thanks to Tim’s efforts AVRA is now go to go.

“I am truly grateful to Tim Thiesen for helping bring the Antelope Valley Republican Assembly back in to the CRA fold”, said George Park, CRA Membership Secretary, “It is gratifying to see the earnest commitment from their new president toward growing CRA and the Conservative Movement in the Antelope Valley!”

“Leadership means connection”, said Tim Thiesen, “and connection means sharing information and treating everyone fairly regardless of their opinions. To move CRA forward, the era of suspicion and stealth need to end.”

Reconnecting with the AVRA, on the heels of the wildly successful reorganization of the Ventura RA are two serious signs of progress in the direction of building a stable, healthy CRA going forward in Northern L.A. County and beyond.

Park can sure make lemonade from lemons.

Being Steve Frank must be a lot like working as the White House Press Secretary for Barack Obama. Frank gets trotted out in public every few days to put lipstick on the sow that is the CRA Presidency of Celeste Greig.

Today, George Park dumped another steaming load of Greig’s past actions on her doorstep. An hour later, Frank was dutifully trotted-out to again attack the messenger.

In today’s installment, Park once again concentrated on the Republican Assembly of Greater Santa Clarita Valley. On their current membership roster, this group is claiming members:
• Living in Texas and Washington DC.
• People that never joined the club or paid dues.
• Not even registered to vote.

Frank and Greig defend the legitimacy of RAGSCV despite the fact that the Bylaws they are pledged to support require that CRA members must live in California and be registered Republicans in the Golden State.

Frank accused this malfeasance on the fact that Park is not doing his job.

The irony is that Frank and Greig are the reason that clubs like these are not disciplined for their failure to follow the rules. Park’s emails are informing the Statewide Board of the problems in the organization and making sure that the appropriate committees must confront these issues while not allow those enabling this aberrant behavior to sweep it under the carpet. In addition, Greig is exposed as failing to lead, thus building the case that she should be replaced as President.

Frank has ignored my advice to get a good rhyme to cover his crimes and instead opted for, “End the Fraud.  Let CRA grow—end the Drama.” You can tell what Frank believes by what he accuses the other guys of doing. He projects his values and tactics on to his enemies because he figures that they operate from the same motivation that he does. Let’s break down his slogan.

• “End the Fraud”: Park would agree that ending the fraud is his goal—the fraud perpetrated by Frank and Greig.
• “Let CRA grow”: The growth Park wants is orderly and organic, the growth Frank wants is cancerous and destructive.
• “End the Drama”: Ending the Drama is stopping the special treatment and exemptions allowed by Greig and Frank. If everyone followed the same rules there wouldn’t be any drama.

Being Frank is difficult when you have nothing to work with. He can’t defend the record of the incumbent so all that he can do is attack Republicans that desire to do the right thing. Being Frank is more like Obama’s press secretary than I imagined.

Maybe RINO should be Republican Incumbents Need Obfuscation.