Sunday, June 10, 2007

Another Question The Gill-Haters Won't Ask

Someone just reminded me that former Occoquan District Supervisor Ruth Griggs served as Elections Committee Chairman at the 51st District Convention held last Saturday, at which Faisal Gill was selected as the Republican nominee for November's General Election. She was Julie Lucas' choice.

It raises a question: why would Julie Lucas choose as her representative an individual who publicly attacked the GOP nominee, Corey Stewart, to succeed her?

At the time, Griggs claimed that her actions were high-minded motives. Knowledgeable observers knew that they were motivated more by petulance.

You see, Griggs was angered by the fact that GOP activists were disgusted in 2003 by the candidacy of a briefly-declared independent candidate for the Coles District Supervisor’s seat, Tom Burrell. While accusing the County GOP Committee of “driv[ing him] out of the race” (if they could, he never should have been a candidate), Griggs told only part of the story.

She failed to mention the part about Burrell using GOP resources to promote his candidacy among Republican Committee members, getting many of them to his announcement under the false pretense that he would be running as a Republican. Indeed, there were many Republicans who would have been happy to see him enter the GOP race, since they perceived the incumbent as having been weakened (both by personal problems and by a campaign launched against her by former Chairman Sean Connaughton), and her opponent and eventual nominee and victor Marty Nohe as a candidate whose ambition exceeds by several orders of magnitude his ability.

The County Republican Committee did not drive Burrell out of the race. His own dishonorable conduct did. That Republicans blew the whistle on that dishonorable conduct seems to be more offensive to Griggs than the conduct itself.

But the more interesting fact unmentioned in Griggs' letter attacking the GOP is why she cared so much about Burrell’s candidacy, one which revealed her own questionable conduct. In communications responding to my comments at the time of the contretemps, she admitted that both she and Connaughton had recruited Burrell for the race. It might have been nice for her to have mentioned that in her public comments, because it casts her actions and criticisms of the GOP — as well as Connaughton’s — in a decidedly negative light. And it explained her behavior attacking GOP nominee Corey Stewart.

With that background, one wonders why Lucas would choose as her representative an individual whose most significant preceding action regarding the GOP was to attack its nominee, and to endorse an independent.

For all the phony "scandals" alleged about Faisal Gill, Tom Kopko, and the Conservative majority of the County GOP and its Committee, it is far more scandalous that Lucas would chose such an individual --- whose actions as Elections Committee Chairman, it must be conceded, appear to have been wholly appropriate --- for her representative.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Jim:

Great memory! That is the way I remember it as well.

Bruce Baxter

Charles said...

Well, that's interesting. Lucas had the head of the Elections committee, and the elections went really badly?

That's funny. Almost as funny as who the Lucas representative was who was in charge of checking the credentials at the Lake Ridge precinct table, the one where those "monitoring" the elections supposedly screwed up and let 3 extra people vote.

The same person who was leading the charge, was in the position to make the errors that they used to try to take away Gill's best precinct.

In fact, if one were a believed in conspiracies, they might think that it was something that was planned.

After all, think of this. The RPV recommends throwing out an entire precinct if it is overvoted. One Precinct, Gill's strongest, is overvoted by THREE votes. The Lucas person monitoring THAT precinct is a long-time republican committee member, not one you'd expect to mess up by accident. And that person was also leading the charge that something was wrong with the election.

And the Lucas campaign was ready to call for that one precinct to be thrown out, and in fact made such a request.


If someone hadn't accidentally messed up in the other two precincts, causing THEM to have one overvote each, it is quite possible that the ONE precinct would have been thrown out and Lucas would have won.

I have two LOGICAL, non-conspiratorial explanations for the overvotes -- either the people monitoring were too busy checking signatures and ids to look at precinct names, or whoever counted the delegates messed up the precinct-level numbers so there really WERE 80 delegates.

But since the Lucas campaign is so big on conspiracies, maybe they aught to answer that one -- how did a long-time operative allow 3 overvotes, overvotes which, if not for two other precincts being overvoted, would have allowed HER canditate to win by removing Gill's best precinct?

James Young said...

Bruuuuuuce! Good to hear from you. Hope the family is doing well in Nevada.

History to these people is a lot like sunlight to vampires and cockroaches, an analogy that fits in more ways than one.

We wouldn't be talking about O.P. Ditch, would we, Charles?

That's too funny. One needn't believe in conspiracies to believe that the stink here is not in the result, but in the basis for any potential challenge. As for the other two precincts, I suspect there's a big "oops" at work.

I truly hope that Julie takes her defeat with dignity, and moves on. Should she not, I fear that she will be politically dead in the GOP, and rightly so.

Given some of those with whom she has affiliated in the past, and the virulence of the Gill-haters, I am not optimistic that she will choose the wise course.

Anonymous said...

Jim, actually it was NOT Julie Lucas who chose Ruth Griggs but Pat O'Leary who suggested Ms. Griggs and both campaigns agreed. You might want to do something wild and check up on your facts first prior to posting.

James Young said...

"Actually"? If seriously challenged on this, I could name my source. All I have to refute it is the claim of someone anonymous.

You'll have to do better than that.