I supported the main effort over the effort Marc participated in but Marc made some valid points. I vehemently disagree with his decision to leave the GOP – I fight on as a Republican and I continue to make the lives of the CAGOP leadership a living hell.
For a national party that speaks so much about being for the common man, these days, the Republicans in California are still stuck in elitism. This dying breed in Orange County simply cannot engage with those in Los Angeles that are experiencing the real effects of Democratic overreach. This Gascon campaign is the perfect example.
I engage with many of these elitists in Orange County and hear their concerns. While they are well meaning donors, digging into the details is not their strong suit. They waste their time on minutiae details like complaining why Larry Elder has a live-in girlfriend, which is none of their business. Or writing blank checks to college kids who end up becoming Democrats in the end, or funding any candidate that is black and espouses something conservative, but without researching their background.
It’s funny but Republicans are acting like the Democrats they claim to hate. They are not practicing what they preach. Republican efforts are not run as a business. They don’t hold behaviors and results accountable. That’s why a consultancy like this can continue to drain money from the movement with no results needed.
They refuse to do normal things or engage with normal brands, sequestering themselves into micro communities that never touch the average person. Then they wonder why they lose elections big. They operate under too many rules. In a grassroots group, I was berated for sharing a picture with a girl in a bikini. Their priorities are whack when the ship is sinking.
They’ve lost the entertainment industry and now the churches. That’s on you, Republicans. You refuse to engage with the media or effect any change in the institutions that are impactful to the culture. You refuse to look at yourselves in church and examine your own hypocrisy. That is why your kids have been alienated and many of you are lonely. Maybe you should stop critiquing others’ lives and Karening, when you can look at yourself and your own efforts and audit the results. Maybe you should not be so obsessed with the titles and the glory which mean nothing in the end.
I was at a conservative fundraiser last night with Jesse Waters as the keynote speaker. He spent a good part of his talk, about the glory of being around President Trump. I get that it fired up the crowd. But I was bored. I do not like the sycophantry. I like results more. Democrats donate like conservatives. Republicans donate like liberals. Donors do not do their research and they just want to feel good, so consultancy firms and this crazy woman running “Recall George Gascon” get to run around wild. Maybe make the ones closest to you accountable for results first, and we can start winning elections?
Then came Heather Carbone.
Until recently, Carbone operated a Facebook page, Defend the LAPD. The Recall Gascón campaign was started there. After filing the paperwork in March, organizers had 160 days to obtain at least 579,062 valid signatures from registered L.A. County voters. Collecting such a large cache is no easy task. To succeed, organizers needed to raise between five million and eight million dollars to fund a small army of signature gatherers. But the campaign waited until the 160-day clock had already started before raising money and hiring professional consultants. This time-consuming gaffe garnered media coverage but little in the way of actual signatures.
A second story talks about the internal failures and the control issues of the proponent of the recall. This is more balanced and places blame where it should have been placed – an all too often phenomena of the founder of the movement having piss poor boundaries and becoming the movement.
But the campaign had bigger problems. After an impressive start, fundraising stalled. Police unions had spent millions to prevent Gascón’s election in the first place and balked at spending more to recall him, partly because their internal polling showed removing Gascón would be a tough sell. But they were also put off by the campaign’s infighting. A cryptically worded press release from the sheriff’s deputies union, ALADS, said the union was aware of “at least four different groups involved in the effort to recall Gascón. Are they working in harmony toward a common goal? No comment.” Adds a prosecutor involved with the first campaign, “Heather had all kinds of fights with the unions. It didn’t help that the LAPPL [the LAPD’s union] issued a cease and desist letter to her.” On September 16, with only 200,000 signatures gathered, the campaign announced they were forming a new PAC and yet another campaign, Recall District Attorney George Gascón, and letting the clock run out on the old petition. The new group’s organizers include all the same names from the first group—Andrade, Owen, Cooley, Zine, and former deputy DA Sam Dordulian—minus one: Carbone.
Yikes.
I took a few shots at the group Marc Ang was a part of during the recall effort but the common thread to everything I saw was the proponent of the recall being its’ biggest liability – Heather Carbone.
“I would not comment on any sort of personnel matters,” says Cooley. “A lot of people contributed to a lot of good things in the first effort. It got started late because it was strictly a grassroots, volunteer, Facebook kind of thing. It took a while to get the professionals. That will not happen with this effort.”
Those professionals include Tim Lineberger, the campaign spokesman, and Jeff Corless, the new campaign strategist. Both were hired while Carbone was still in charge, and both worked on Larry Elder’s campaign to recall Governor Newsom. They are staying on with the campaign and were recently joined by a new campaign manager, Gregory Foster.
WOW – Marc Ang NAILED IT. He recognizes that Peter Kuo is a straw man and that the CAGOP itself is a shell to pay consultants. See the original article here.
Swati Singh, Regional Political Director at Republican National Committee (moderator) Peter Kuo, Vice Chairman, California Republican Party, Bay Area Republican Activist Marc Ang, community organizer in Southern California and founder of Asian Industry B2B, and Jeff Wang.
LOS ANGELES, CA – This past weekend, I was invited to be a “trainer” for the CA GOP convention for a session called Asian Community Voices. While I am disillusioned by the GOP, which has slowly become a toxic fringe party that plays politics poorly, focused on infighting, and can’t achieve real results or tangible outcomes, I see glimmers of hope for the future.
I felt it was a good first step and I should be slightly encouraging but more importantly I needed to show up and speak my truth. Will they learn something new, break out of old habits and become a true viable opposition party to give checks and balances to the one party Democratic state or maybe that is just asking for too much? Walk before we run, maybe? I also know that enough people inside the party structure are hungry for the truth, many who are my friends and people I respect who are trying to save the sinking ship, but who are earnestly and honestly fighting the good fight. So I showed up.
Unfortunately, party leadership remains emblematic of just where the party is and has been for the better part of the last two decades, stuck in 1995 style campaign messaging. The party seems to have no clue how the brand is even perceived, and that’s the worst part. I have, in the past, stood up for Republicans and will continue to do so, but I’m under zero delusion that I’m contrarian to where the culture is. The insiders in the political party don’t seem to understand this, and are completely delusional about their own importance and think that anyone actually cares that they have some title for a brand that was beaten down by 25 points in an off year special election, when the opposition made it about the same brand they keep peddling nonstop, with no critical thinking.
I also really dislike the idea of “training”. Our segment was really a panel and I knew enough people in the room that did not need to be talked down to like they were dumb on who Asians are. My great friend and co-panelist, Jeff Wang, touched upon this simple fact and asked the question to the audience, “who are actually friends with Asians?” If you knew how to cultivate relationships as regular everyday people, all these racial barriers wouldn’t need to exist and I thought we achieved this in California. But political California Republicans seem to be lacking on regular social skills so I can fathom why this is foreign to them. This “training” should have been billed as a conversation. The word “training” comes off condescending, like I know better than you, emblematic of the political Republicans.
Asian community voices should not be about cynically waking up the dumb, but instead, gently guide people to vote Republican based on our values, something I have done in my organization, Asian Industry B2B, with business owners and those who have a freedom loving entrepreneurial bent. It should also not be about uninspired voter registration efforts when the greater brand is dying. Amplify a bad brand, and you’re actually doubling or tripling your work.
What the GOP has now attracted in the Asian community is those who are living in the past, or those who are interested in climbing some political structure or hierarchy. No wonder the Democrats have made so many inroads in the younger generation because they involve people and were previously low on condescension, though now, that is changing as they become more comfortable, lazy and hell bent on growing their power. Yet the GOP cannot take advantage of the opportunities of Democrats failing, because they themselves are doing similar things, unable to strike a real contrast.
But what gives me hope is that so many are registering out of Republican into Independent. Because in California, the NPPs are truly the “replacement” Republican party. Free thinkers who do not want to be associated with the party, which really is the “fringe” party playing politics instead of finding solutions. If you are intellectually honest, you cannot be a Republican or a Democrat, at this point. What finally made me register out of Republican was watching the good honest Republican grassroots donors donating $50 here, or a $100 there, sometimes, their own meager life savings, and then watching that same money spent ridiculously on salaries for consultants who actually were poor fiduciaries to the campaign and cause. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen this over the last few election cycles.
Right after our Asian Community Voices segment, the Vice Chair Peter Kuo, my co-panelist, posted his typical uninspired rantings on Twitter calling this training “historic”. It is this type of desperate hyperbole that turns off your average person. First of all, this is 20 years too late. The Democrats have made this outreach way back, and just now we are doing this? Second, do we even need to pander? I think issues like law and order, school choice, wildfires, affordable housing, etc., all affect all races equally. Using words like “historic” just made me cringe like I have never before. I reject this grandiose mentality – can we just be real?
Peter also had the nerve to make a quip that I should return to the party and not “sit on the fence”. That is laughable, if you look at my record of work in the community and in the media promoting conservative values. But this is par for the course. Meanwhile, Peter is symbolic of an out of touch older generation. My heart actually went out for him as he talked about not having a connection with his daughter. In contrast, I know so many parents, including my own late father, who actually took time to listen. After being around so many Republicans in my activism, I found a common thread: many had broken relationships with children. There was a disconnect because they didn’t bond and connect, and were too rigid and didn’t evolve with the changing world. It doesn’t mean throw out your values, but at least know what’s going on and talk to your kids. And this goes beyond race. This seems to be common in successful Asian families. I can certainly admire Peter’s immigrant story but this is not what we need in 2021, especially with a 2nd generation of Asian Americans who are intermarrying and overwhelmingly Democrat, breaking with their parents and concerned about other issues. I encouraged the party to start embracing things like cannabis or bitcoin, or at least having a conversation about it, to get to this new bloc of voters, who are open to not voting lockstep with Democrats. Stop thinking you know it all, Republicans.
A title doesn’t make you a leader. The current GOP leadership may look outwardly diverse, with a Latina and Asian as chair and vice chair, but after many years of poor results and no change in trends, is actually more indicative of how the CA Republicans seem to only uplift “yes” men and women. Can we practice meritocracy in a party that claims it’s all about it and the free market, and performance? Can we bring up leaders who actually have solid community connections and tangible credentials? Not titles, but true accomplishments.
Another person who attended texted me and told me to turn down my “anger”, focused more on the animation of my voice, while missing the point that she was projecting her own to me and that no one likes to be told what to do or condescended to. Funny that the ultimate response to my words on the panel was overwhelmingly supportive, because in the end, the convention goers and hardcore activists needed someone to match the anger and frustration. Once again, Republicans need to learn some humility and maybe look at results versus “Karening” what others are doing. I certainly wouldn’t have the nerve to tell someone else what to do with their own public presentations. Hey, you do you. But I’ll do me.
Both Peter and Madame Critique need to understand how out of touch they are, in general. The biggest takeaway is not that they are bad people, but that they are focused on being accepted by this dying structure and toxic political brand. I am not here to win a Mr. Congeniality award. I have never cared about that, and could care less about shallow accolades or titles, as I have turned down many opportunities to get involved in the political parties, because the community is my focus. There’s some serious work that needs to be done, in a state I have invested my life in. And the work doesn’t start or end in the political structures or elitist social clubs.
What the GOP has become is a cult of misfits, and has self-attracted myopic types of people, distracted by warped priorities, with a consultant class ripping flesh off the dead carcass of the roadkill. What is left are sycophants who are woefully clueless on how dead the brand is, and are busy brown-nosing other sycophants with titles that mean nothing, because the structure itself is compromised and is not even the 2nd biggest organization in California. The bottom line is the GOP in California isn’t even a viable party. Independents and NPP’s are higher in registration by 4 percent, while the GOP can’t even clear a quarter of registered voters, languishing in third place.
And this is not just limited to the establishment. The grassroots are just as misguided in a dying party. While I earnestly worked hard to get the grassroots engaged on our Facebook group for the recall election and in real life rallies, nonstop talk about electoral fraud became a quick defeatist excuse for those who are low on action, and high on rigidity, and are not even open to understanding the simple fact that our state is culturally liberal.In addition, there are many grifters who live on dead-end candidacies sucking up the money and oxygen from well meaning donors, and fake self-fashioned leaders who end up playing their own political games in the grassroots, the moment they are given a little bit of perceived power. This was so evident in the Recall Newsom campaign and I highlighted this on my Newsweek op-ed.
The fact remains that our once conservative state has had a huge demographic shift thanks to affluenza. Nowhere more evident than the formerly hardcore conservative Orange County, where the older generation is dying off and the newer generation is polar opposite liberal. Bottom line: electoral fraud cannot account for a 25 point loss in California, so it’s time we start cleaning house on the conservative side.
It’s not just about showing up, it’s how you show up. While Asian vice chair Peter Kuo is a nice guy, his flamboyant red suits and violin-playing as his gimmick, is once again a distraction from the real impactful work that needs to be done on a daily basis. It is almost poetic how in the Titanic movie, you have the people in denial playing music, dancing and having fancy dinners as the ship was slowly sinking. When Peter plays the violin, I picture Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet sinking into the ocean. The type of sycophantic hierarchy-worshipping behavior is also what I have seen in the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to infiltrate the San Gabriel Valley, which I have discussed in previous op-eds.
I had to also laugh at affirmative action hire, Latina Chair Jessica Patterson’s attempts to strip the California College Republicans from their charter status because they put out a few memes to make fun of her. I’m sorry but if you want to be a leader, you better learn how to laugh at yourself and maybe look at some harsh truths of why we are not succeeding in growing our movement. Humor does go a long way. Suppressing it is as bad as censorship in China.
Once again, we are post partisan and the GOP is playing catch up 20 years later, and now they’ve once again missed the pulse of the average person. The fastest growing bloc of voters in California are those with “no party preference”, mostly disaffected Republicans and Democrats, who don’t need to be boxed into partisan food fights and who actually want to work towards solutions. I am glad I went to the GOP convention to see exactly where the baseline is, but I see the enormity of the work that needs to be done. I will be fighting for my conservative values and commonsense solutions outside of their dysfunctional structure, but wish them all the best.
The September 2021 CAGOP Convention was indeed the worst attended I have ever heard of since my first CAGOP Convention in 1999.
There were about 500 bodies and 300 proxies. I believe that someday there will be more proxies than bodies at a convention. That day could be sooner than I’d have imagined. On that subject, Tom Hudson, everyone’s favorite windmill charger took an amendment to limit proxies to one per person (at that Associates only ones eligible to carry) to the floor and it was just a few votes short of a majority.
One of the major issues of the convention was Andy Garakhani, forever known as Andy Gimmecandy. Gimmecandy was said to be having anger outbursts the whole weekend. He was said to have stomped out of the proxies and credentials committee meeting when the Yuba County issue was brought up. (Remember Yuba was one of three county parties given delegates by the crooked CAGOP Leadership despite violating California Election Law)
Drew Mercy, a legislative staffer (and a friend of mine) is the chair of the committee. No legislative staffer or consultant should have any position of responsibility in anything state party, but I digress. Mercy and his crew ignored requests from the new and legitimate leadership of the Yuba GOP to undo the illegally selected delegates. Remember also, that Glenn and Tehama are in the same boat, but have both been given a pass because there was no effort to undo the cabals in those counties. Also note that illegitimate members of both Glenn and Tehama are on the proxies and credentials committee – while the same CAGOP Leadership talk about election integrity.
The crooked CAGOP Chair Jessica Patterson is alleged to be in line to become RNC Chair. This is the underpinning of the systemic and gross violations of CAGOP By-Laws and election law. Kevin McCarthy is alleged to be trying to line up all of his proxies in party leadership positions everywhere. While the same leaders talk about election integrity.
Perhaps the Yuba GOP issue can become a national issue – especially with the insiders reloading to re-sell what is left of the CAGOP to Faulconer once again. What did Patterson and crew do to Yuba? Told them to go to hell multiple times and is making them wait until April for a hearing and even should they prevail, the 6 illegitimate delegates will be able to fill out their full term due to the delays. Imagine what kind of game playing and corruption will come to the RNC should McCarthy succeed in anointing Patterson.
(P.S. More specific details about McCarthy-Patterson coming later)
So – for those of you scoring at home, the summary of CAGOP Corruption under Jessica Patterson:
22 illegally appointed delegates in LA County Districts in violation of CAGOP By-Laws
Tehama / Glenn continuing to have delegates appointed in violation of state law
Yuba County
Several County Parties that got bonus delegates with zero oversight from the committee
Proxies and Credentials populated with conflicted delegates and consultants (and allowing bad proxies to stand at that)
CAGOP Committees run by political consultants and staffers
3 separate attempts to rig CAGOP Endorsement for Kevin Faulconer
Perhaps this is why Jessica Patterson was getting roundly booed from the floor of the convention repeatedly.
Of further note – the CAGOP Rules Committee, controlled 100% by Patterson loyalist consultants, staffers, donors and insiders killed all meaningful proposed CAGOP By-Law amendment proposals.
They killed Rule 10 to restore the permanent charter of the CCR – California College Republicans. I believe this is because the rival organization is aligned with Kevin McCarthy.
They killed a rule change that would have made county party secretaries automatic delegates similar to Treasurers. It is clear that they want to keep the party small and moribund in order to control it.
(and they were talking about election integrity at the same time)
In my opinion the most egregious issue was the re-election of GOP insider and mega donor Howard Hakes. I have written about my low opinion of Hakes and his apparent superiority complex and dismissive treatment of any convention attendees he thinks are beneath him. IN the case of the election Hakes beat David Hernandez 48-35.
With a margin like that why did it take 6 RECOUNTS? Did they change votes? Did Andy G. bully people in to changing votes? Why was Andy Gimmecandy running around the empty convention in a panic while the LA Regional Meeting was in session?
WHY DID IT TAKE 6 RECOUNTS to get a result?
Oh, and how many of the 22 delegates appointed to LA County Districts in clear violation of State Party By-Laws voted in that race?\
(and they were talking about election integrity the entire weekend)
From the dais, Jessica Patterson (the erstwhile future RNC Chair) said we can’t mention the “F” word because it will decrease voter turnout. Perhaps the Party of Election Integrity making a mockery of its’ own rules is the fraud that Jessica Patterson does not want to mention?
6 recounts.
Garbage delegates from Yuba County.
Rules Committee outcome pre scripted and determined.
Consultant-run proxies and credentials committee.
A party at 23% and falling. Quite the resume for RNC Chairwoman.
Two College Republican Clubs Emailed your intrepid blogger. It looks like the leadership was brow-beat in to sending a second release after the first well-circulated release blasting Jessica Patterson for her failure.
This sure beats a couple of weenies calling the cops on your intrepid blogger, but it also shows the glass jaw of the oligarchy of controlled failure. Don’t worry kids, your intrepid blogger has your back. The leadership of the CAGOP hate me more than pretty much anyone else in politics for exposing corruption and ineptitude. I’ve been told if I was homeless and they had a dozen cheeseburgers in the passenger seat they’d drive right by me. Just remember who you are dealing with and it will all be put in perspective – there is no making nice with these people once you’ve crossed them. That is my message to the kids that sent this second release, you will gain nothing from it at all.
There are some master meme makers in the California College Republicans.
This is the meme of Controlled Failure. Well done by the kids on this one
Keep ’em coming kids… You have a GenX Fan #REALTALK #MEMEWARS
