Right On Daily Blog

I still love you guys, but you keep blowing it

Maybe I am wasting my time writing this blog. Some would tell me that the following passage of scripture applies:

“… nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.” Matthew 7:6 NKJV Bible

The concept is can your audience handle and act on the message? Or will they shoot the messenger? I have a lot of people in the opposition I consider friends. I am also of the belief that there are a few people within the ranks of the opposition that are unhealthy leaders at best, and at worst would have some sort of diagnosis.

The opposition will never win or achieve their goals of “taking back the CAGOP” when they are listening to morally corrupt people.

I chose the photo of me with the FBI hat on to commemorate that the FBI showed up at my front door after the CAGOP’s staff freaked out over me blowing my stack on them. I was working for Steve Frank’s ill-fated Chair Campaign in 2021. I have zero regrets about standing up for my principles, but that race and seeing the players involved started a process.

I was told by mutual acquaintances that just weeks after losing his bid for CAGOP Chair, Steve Frank characterized my working for him as a “Marriage of Convenience” and that he still hated me. This is the kind of behavior I used to trash David Stafford Reade and others for. Steve is a leader in the opposition, yet morally, is equivalent to any of the ‘bad guys” I used to trash. I damn near got hauled to prison by a couple of FBI agents while trying to elect the guy chair…

When you add the fact that Steve Frank’s column is full of outright lies, manipulated facts and opinions that should be in the DSM manual – he has decimated his legacy as a leader. Frank is 78 years old and should have retired several years ago. As he gets older and angrier, his destructive impact on the opposition increases… similar to a star going supernova when it dies.

I have learned a life lesson, I will retire from the political scene before I wreck my legacy. I will carry the memory of watching Steve spiral as he has aged with me the rest of my life… and I am not alone.

Secondly, forgive people. (more on that further down the post)

From an email sent to me by an opposition member:

I told Mike and will be telling Jack to drop kick Steve Frank and warned them about Sky Jones.  She is a grifter and scammer.  

Sky Jones is someone featured in one of my past posts.

And the next two came to me via text:

“…The vitriol and rabid behavior exhibited by the Morrell gang was ridiculous. The lies, the in your face coercion tactics were beyond shocking…”

“… it’s becoming clear that our MAGA base is being infiltrated by real conspiracy theorists…”

There were several that recognized that Steve Frank needs to go and the opposition would do well to marginalize Mr. Frank and make him go away.

A second toxic opposition leader is Tom Hudson. I have written about this guy a lot. When he gets up to speak at convention, it is a signal to the gathered convention to vote opposite of anything he said. His legal “advice” helped drive several county parties in to ineffective chaos. The democrats should put the guy on retainer. The older he gets, the worse his already clinical level of rage gets. He overcompensates for everything he lacks as a man with Anger. It is a sad waste of talent. As long as he has influence on the opposition, the opposition will be ineffective and morally corrupt.

We had a laboratory for when Steve Frank and Tom Hudson ran the CAGOP – Tom Del Bacardi. The Party was $2MM in the hole when Del Becarro was ousted as Chair after one miserable failure of a term. (It also included a lot of lost seats everywhere in California as well)

I have known Hudson and Frank for over 25 years and have ample personal experience and evidence with both of them. They both need to go and smart, disciplined people would do well to separate them from anything that matters, period.

Even now, Steve Frank is writing about how Tom Ross is a victim of Corrin Rankin. Almost every negative thing I ever learned about Tom Ross came from Steve. Ross is the consummate “Swamp” player if there ever was one. Steve Frank’s lack of moral compass shows clear as he is going to oppose everything the CRA ever wanted if it is Corrin Rankin doing it and he is defending team McCarthy swamp creatures as well.

The opposition has no clue who Corrin Rankin is, Steve Frank and Tom Hudson want it that way.

Rankin is going to clean up the CRP. Many things that I heard old now deceased CRA dinosaurs talk about 25 years ago are coming out of Corrin. She wants the party to follow its’ bylaws. She wants to increase participation and transparency. It sounds like Bill Back’s presentation to CRA in 2002! (Back lost to Duf Sundheim)

So do Frank and Hudson want a healthy CAGOP? Nope, they want control and are leading the opposition into the abyss in the process.

Corrin’s first batch of appointments tell the story:

Scott Winn manages her political operation. Scott and I have a lot of negative history – but nothing speaks to who Winn is better than the fact that he was willing to talk with me and work with me on her behalf despite our history. Several people tried to being David Reade and I together and Reade refused every time. Jessica Patterson and Andy Garakhani were the same way – cross them once and you were done forever.

Scott and I were able to connect, bury the hatchet and move foreword. He is an outspoken Evangelical Christian and lives like it. I don’t agree with him on everything, but he will serve us all well. More importantly, he can tolerate disagreement and work with people.

Ron Nehring, again Nehring and I have had some negative history as well in recent years. That said, Ron is capable, connected and accomplished. In my formative years in politics, I attended a Leadership Institute seminar he facilitated. The information altered the course of my career in politics and I still apply it to this day. Nehring has connections across the world, developed in the 20 years since he served as CAGOP Chair. I believe Nehring will succeed and add value to the CAGOP. And thank you Ron Nehring for that Leadership Institute seminar I attended in 1999!

Kevin Faulconer. Didn’t like him as a Governor candidate. Love him as a fundraiser and connection person. The role Corrin has placed him in is ideal for the GOP. I only know Kevin politically, I do not know him as well as I do Nehring and Winn. I hope Faulconer Succeeds.

Matt Shupe. He is a talented PR Guy and will be better than anything the CAGOP has ever had in that regard. Shupe is best known for his work on behalf of Harmeet Dhillon – soon to be confirmed as the #2 in the DOJ.

Kevin Lincoln. Don’t know much about him other than his service as Mayor of Stockton and his recent near-miss for Congress. He seems to be an up and comer in the GOP scene.

The message is simple. Corrin Rankin’s GOP is not the CRA GOP. It is not the McCarthy GOP. If you decide to participate and be a part of it, there is room for you. That alone is a dramatic change from the last 25 years I have been around CAGOP politics.

You don’t have to compromise your principles, you just have to be willing to work with people… You have a choice: the same losing with Steve Frank and Tom Hudson – or trying something new?

Why does it always have to end this waaaaaay?

First off, your intrepid blogger would like to thank all of the people that have come forward with color on the events leading up to the convention and at the 2025 CAGOP Convention itself. It is heartening to know that several people that are not normally a part of the “establishment” are equally as appalled at the tactics being employed by the opposition.

The CAGOP officer election cycle followed the all-too-familiar pattern.

Step one: The opposition has high hopes, recruits a few good and a few bad candidates.

Step two: Everyone outside the group is labeled a heretic and a traitor to the GOP regardless of ideology

Step three: with the opponents dehumanized, the opposition begins running off the rails with their behavior

Step four: when the tactics fail, the coalition starts to splinter and there is infighting

Step five: Go to CAGOP Convention for a rage fest

Step six: WE WUZ ROBBED!

When I ran Steve Frank’s campaign in 2021 against the McCarthy Machine, I tried as hard as I could to break that curse. As you can see it did not work and the behavior 4 years hence is worse than anything I saw 4 years ago.

For those of you that read that are outside the CAGOP bubble – this post and posts are a synopsis of the of events that occurred at and leading up to the CAGOP Convention concluded last weekend. If you want to know why internal party politics are a mess (and other states have their own issues as well) this is a good primer.

ON Friday afternoon, there is the pre-convention board meeting. Leading up to the convention were fights in 20+ counties over leadership and who the delegates to the party from said counties were going to be. The fighting was fierce and made even more fierce because the legislative leadership did not endorse Corrin Rankin until just days before the convention. Their absence from the majority of the campaign contributed mightily to the false hope many in the opposition clung to leading in to the weekend. The late engagement also made the reaction to the weekend and the aftermath more severe as well in my opinion.

Said meeting started with the antisemite John Paul White serving every member of the board a legal demand letter with a variety of hyperbolic claims, but clearly attempting to set a narrative to undermine the legitimacy of the CAGOP convention. I thought “Conservatives” were against abusing the legal system to achieve political ends? Again, refer to step 3 in the process. As I wrote previously, White falsely claimed the CAGOP Staff was retaliating against him for distributing the letters. My guess is they were all laughing at him and the others behind this.

Also on Friday afternoon, the County Chairman’s Association Met. They elected a new chair. Former SFGOP Chair John Dennis was re-elected “Chair of Chairs”. Going in to the meeting, most observers believed John was going to win by a slim margin. The first vote was tied, meaning a couple of county chairs may well have lied when queried about their position. ON vote #2, Dennis won by 4 votes (or two people).

My experience running organizational elections is that upwards of 20% of the stakeholders will lie about their position on a secret ballot election. (FYI – under Robert’s Rules, officer elections are secret ballot)

I began to hear stories of arguments in the halls of the convention and the like almost from the opening bell.

Saturday Morning featured several “Regional Vice Chair” races.

Joe Day won in the Central Valley

Michael Greer (sp?) – whose son is a high ranking Trump admin appointee beat Charlie Schaupp for North Coast Vice Chair. The opposition supported Schaupp, not the dude whose son is a Senate-Confirmed Trump admin appointee… add that to the list of inconsistencies…

Bay Area – the opposition candidate won

Central Coast – the opposition incumbent, Randal Jordan was beaten handily. It should be noted that Randal took his own home county San Luis Obispo off of the ballot. One could only conclude that Randal knew his grip on power was tenuous or he’d have problems finding 21 people to file – or a combination of both. By not having an election for SLO County GOP Central Committee, this removed 4-6 potential delegate appointments from the opposition column. Given that Randal lost by about 13 votes, you’d think he had other issues as the universe in that tilt was allegedly evenly split.

This theme of hiding from election repeated in other counties as well, most notably Solano County, and a smattering of smaller rural counties. I thought Conservatives were all about voting, and eschewed insider party outcome rigging? My head hurts, make it stop…

In the Northern Region, Mark Wright hammered Tenessa Audette 81-38. You need to know nothing more about Tenessa then the fact that she’d challenge one of her biggest supporters in 2024 for his party office in 2025. I was told that there was some sort of split in the Audette camp late in her ill-fated blowout loss to Heather Hadwick in 2024 and she may well have been attempting some sort of revenge suicide mission against Mr. Wright. See also step four in the above list.

If Tenessa Audette runs for office again, I may well have to unload everything I have learned as I held 90% of what I knew off the pages of this blog. She needs to go somewhere far far away from any position of authority. But remember, she was the opposition darling until she wasn’t.

Effectively, the Opposition lost a board seat on this exchange as the outgoing North Coast Vice Chair was aligned with them. Then, there was a trade of the Bay Area for the Central Coast. The Bay Area Vice Chair is a guy I have known for a long time. He has drank the gerbil special kool-aid and was trashing the incoming CAGOP Officers to mutual acquaintances.

Do you have a headache yet?

On Saturday, one of the two people banned for life from the CAGOP attempted to gain entry in to the convention and was ushered out by security. (I can not confirm if the actual police were called)

… as we continue, we will discuss the elections in the four statewide offices + more garbage and some interesting notes about what happened after the convention was gaveled down.

Opposition leader Tom Hudson