Shelby's terrible management plan

 Dear Friends,

Shelby Williams has distributed something that he calls his "315 DAY PLAN".  It is a badly flawed document because he does not appear to understand the Collin County Executive Committee (EC),  how it works, and its history.

At the bottom of this email I reproduce the portion of his plan where he proposes changing the party leadership. He says that he wants to "create additional leadership roles."  You need to understand that we have run across this thinking before.  Chairman Mark Reid, in the past, proposed changing the structure of the party in order to create a team of vice presidents that would help him run the party.  The party chair cannot change the structure of the party without the Rules Committee proposing changes to the rules and bylaws in order to implement the changes, and then the EC has to vote to approve the changes.

When Chairman Mark Reid wanted to "create additional leadership roles," the Rules Committee refused to recommend those changes.  I heard the chairman tell the Rules Committee that he would not permit the EC to meet until he got the rule changes that he wanted.  He would not call a meeting.  He broke the party.  We had a big conflict that resulted in his resigning as party chair.  We know that Shelby's plan is terrible because we have seen it happen before, and it broke the party.

We have a recurring problem within the Collin County Republican Party where the party chair gets "full of himself,"  declares that "I can do what I want because I'm the Chairman," and then starts to fight with the EC.  We had the same problem with former chairman Abraham George when he decided to side with the SREC Committeeman against the EC and our work towards endorsing in municipal elections.  The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) supports endorsements in municipal elections.  Mr. George delayed the EC from endorsing candidates in the Princeton municipal elections by not letting us meet for 3 months.  He had to quit for us to endorse!

In the SREC (State Republican Executive Committee), Rolando Garcia is Chairman of the Local Government Committee.  Mr. Garcia has written that Mr. George, "attended an SREC meeting last year for the sole purpose of urging us to stop endorsing conservatives in school board and city council races."   Here's a link to the full story:  https://twitter.com/rdgarcia03/status/1781439071060914478

I am telling you this because I believe that Shelby Williams, if elected party chair, will follow in the footsteps of Mark Reid and Abraham George in  trying to get the EC to bend to his will, and then picking fights with the EC when he does not get his way.  His "315 day plan" is full of ridiculous nonsense.  If you are outside the EC, or new to the EC, then you do not know our history and do not realize that the proposal for "additional leadership roles" is a disaster waiting to happen.

Voting Shelby Williams into the position of party chair would be like giving a loaded gun to a child -- it would lead to much grief.

Thank you for our time on this important issue.

Robert

Excerpt from the 315 day plan

(available in full here:  https://shelbyhwilliams.com/collin-county-gop-chair-my-first-315-day-plan/)

Expand the leadership base to bring additional people to the table. I want to work with the Executive Committee to create additional leadership roles–roles of real responsibility and accountability, not ceremonial titles, and bring people from the various factions to those roles to work together to advance our shared goals. This also necessitates a distinction between committees and teams. We don’t need more committees. We have enough, and they serve a specific and vital purpose. Committees are for focused deliberation, but by their very nature, they’re not action-oriented. Once the Executive Committee approves a course of action, a team, not a committee, is needed to take actual action. I always want to get people doing what they’re best at and what they’re most passionate about. That’s how we unleash organizational potential. We need specific roles for Legislative Action, which Brandon Burden of North Texas Conservatives did phenomenally last session, as well as Community Outreach, which Jessica Bartnick, President of Collin County Conservative Republicans, would be a natural for. We need leaders for Precinct Chair training and development, Toolkit Development, Recruitment, etc.

If you do not have Twitter (aka X), then here is a screenshot of Rolando's post.

Does the Collin County GOP need marriage counseling?

Friends and Neighbors,

Here is a copy of a letter I sent to my fellow precinct chairs.

Fellow Chairs,
Some volunteers have attended the CC GOP executive committee (EC) meetings and have been surprised at the conflict during the meetings.  They talk to me about it.  A visitor cannot begin to understand what is happening or why it is happening.  Some of the precinct chairs (PCs) in attendance, who do not understand Roberts Rules of Order, do not understand what is happening or why.  The meetings have taken on the appearance of a postal chess game, where the moves are complex but happen slowly.  First, I am going to give some "big picture" background by analogy to begin to explain what is happening and why.  Then I will explain some details of what has happened.  Be patient with me, please.

The analogy I am making is based on the Protestant Reformation.  You see, Martin Luther read the Bible and discovered that people are saved by their faith in Christ and not by the power of the church establishment, the Roman Catholic Church at that time.  This understanding of the Bible led to the Protestant Reformation, which led to the Scientific Revolution, which led to the Industrial Revolution,   Huge changes, you see, came about from reading and understanding.

Many volunteers were drawn to the Republican Party by Trump.  In our training we were told that we precinct chairs are essentially free block walkers for candidates.  But some of us read the rules of the CC GOP, and we read Roberts Rules of Order, and we read the Texas Election Code, and we discovered that the county party chair is not our boss.  We discovered that we PCs in the EC are a deliberative body that makes decisions and sets policy.  The Trump activists want to win elections.  The EC voted to create a Candidate's Committee in order to evaluate and endorse candidates in municipal elections because the city charters do not permit us to have a Republican Primary in city elections. By endorsing candidates, voters have suggestions from the party on who to vote for.  The Democratic Party was endorsing their candidates and we wanted to do the same.  I have heard new voters yell during municipal elections, "Where are the Rs"?   We wanted to help our voters with suggestions.  We have new precinct chairs and they need to hear our history, so be patient if you know all of this.

Then EC voted to create a GOTV (Get Out the Vote) committee to help our endorsed candidates in the municipal elections.  The GOTV committee, during last year's election for the Collin College Board of Trustees, made a motion that was passed by the EC to provide "in kind" support for our two candidates in that runoff election, and we won the runoff in a landslide.  Notice that it was a GOTV committee member who made the motion, then the EC that passed the motion that led us to victory.  The EC made the decision and directed the party chair to carry out that decision which led to victory in this race.

The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) also endorses candidates in municipal elections, but the RPT waits for a request from the county party before endorsing.  In our case, a local person in the Republican Party who holds the position of SD8 SREC Committeeman used a new rule to veto our request for endorsements, and the municipal elections in May 2023 were probably the worst in the history of the CC GOP.   

The EC expressed its displeasure with the SD8 SREC Committeeman for vetoing our request for an RPT endorsement, and in the June 12, 2023, meeting, a motion was passed that asked the SD8 SREC Committeeman to resign, which he refused to do.  Was it  just a coincidence that the following EC meeting on July 10, 2023 was shut down by the county chair, Abraham George?  Much work that was planned for the meeting was called “out of order,” and then the meeting was dismissed abruptly by the chair, without a motion to adjourn.  It seemed as though the chair was punishing the EC for asking the SD8 SREC Committeeman to resign.

The EC members went back to read the rule books and discovered that if the party chair wrongly calls our business "out of order", then we can challenge the ruling of the chair.  When the EC members in the August 7, 2023 meeting challenged the ruling of the chair, the party chair became hostile, at one point Abraham George yelled at a lady, "You cannot out bully a bully!"  That was shocking.  The chair actually described himself as a bully.  This meeting was very disorderly because the chair seemed to be losing his temper and improperly used secret ballots to run the clock out on the meeting.  For the 2nd month in a row, the party chair prevented us from accomplishing our work

Then in the next month, in September, the party chairman cancelled the meeting for that month.  Now that the EC learned that it could challenge the ruling of the chair, it seemed as though the party chair was creating an Abraham faction within the party that would vote to support his rulings regardless of the issues.  People were coming up to me and saying, "I stand with Abraham."  It was very strange.  Meanwhile, we had been waiting for months to vote to endorse Republican candidates in the Princeton municipal elections.  

Finally, in the Monday October 9, 2023 EC meeting, Abraham George resigns to run for office, for HD89, and we finally get a chance to vote to endorse the Republicans in the Princeton races.   Later, the EC members from Princeton who got the CC GOP and the RPT endorsements reported that voters came into the polls carrying slate cards that showed the CC GOP and the RPT endorsement logos.  They believed the endorsements helped them win their races in Princeton.

There did seem to be a conflict between the EC on one hand, which wanted to be more competitive with the Democrats, and the party chair and the SD8 SREC Committeeman on the other hand, who did not want us to be endorsing in local elections.

Abraham George was a decent party chair until that month in which the EC asked the SD8 SREC Committeeman to resign.  After that, the party chair appeared to wage war against the EC until he resigned.  The party has been fractured ever since.

Perhaps some of the PCs are sore at the changes made by the newcomers.  The creation of new committees and changes to local elections might not sit well with some people.  Maybe the party does need to bring in someone like a marriage counselor to help the two sides talk to each other and patch up the differences.

Akira Kurosawa made a film named "Rashomon" where the audience is shown an event.  Then that event is seen through the eyes of all the people present, and we discover that they all had different recollections of what they saw.  You might very well remember the events differently than I remember them, but I did run my recollections past a few people to double check my memory.

There is more to say, like improvements to how the two sides interact during the EC meetings, but this email is long enough.  That is a subject for another email.  I hope that this email sheds some light on what has been happening in the CC GOP.  I hope that we can eventually patch things up and work together.

The important take-away is that we have people dedicated to helping the CC GOP win elections and willing to work hard to make that happen.  Whatever divide we have in the party, there are good people on each side of the divide.

Thank you for your patience.  The details go back almost a year.  I hope this explanation is helpful as a starting point for working together in a better fashion.

Robert

Current Revolt spills the beans on Shelby Williams

 Dear Friends and Neighbors,

I subscribe to Current Revolt, an online political periodical.  You usually have to be a subscriber to read their newsletter, so it cannot be forwarded.  You should be aware of a recent issue, which came out Tuesday 4/9/2024.

Here's a quote from the article by Current Revolt about a letter from the Secretary of State's office to the office of the Attorney General.

         In the letter, it alleges that Williams, who is a candidate for Collin County GOP Chair, “engaged in actions aimed at coercing and bribing his runoff opponent Ellen Loveless to withdraw” from her race.

       The letter goes on to state that this offense would qualify as a Class A misdemeanor, and potentially a felony in the third degree. It goes on to ask that a criminal investigation be opened by the Texas AG.

You can download the image of the letter mentioned in the article if you have a subscription.  Assuming you don't, I'll attach a copy for you to read.

Here is the background to the story.  To a room full of precinct chairs (PCs), Shelby Williams explained that he offered Ellen Loveless an honored position in the party if she would quit the race.  He told the PCs that he made the proposition twice, before and after the primary race and he seemed kind of whiny that she refused the offer.

Then after this meeting, we all heard the new temporary party chair take the oath of office, which says that the party chair did not did not offer anything to anybody in the race.  A whole bunch of us thought to ourselves, "Shelby will have to perjure himself if he wins and takes the oath."

My understanding is that someone asked the State of Texas about the potential for perjury with the oath, and the response was that there were more serious issues than perjury with an oath.  The result was a letter sending the matter to the office of the Attorney General, which Current Revolt has spread far and wide.

As much as I personally like Shelby Williams, I've made my position clear that I believe Shelby Williams not only cannot do the job, but he would be a disaster for the party, making really big mistakes.

It looks like Shelby has exceeded my fears even before the primary runoff.  Felony or misdemeanor?   This is just the prelude to the disaster that would befall the party if the leadership role fell into his hands.

Robert

Click on the image of the letter to see a larger version, which you can download.

Why the nickname Backdoor Shelby

I have been asked why Shelby Williams, candidate for the Collin County GOP Chair, has the nickname of Backdoor Shelby.   It is because Shelby Williams tried to slip into the Chairmanship behind everyone's backs.  Here's the background.  When Abraham George resigned as Chair, the Executive Committee had a vote to pick a temporary Chairman until the 2024 Primary.  The candidates were John Myers and Cyndi Darland.  Shelby Williams could have run, but he did not.  John won the election, said he would lead us to victory in November, and asked for party unity.  Wanting to be a united party, we grassroots activists did not ask Cyndi to file to run against John Myers on the ballot.  We in the grassroots were willing to support John Myers.

Then on the last day to file, in the last hour to file for the ballot, we discovered a bait and switch.  John Myers did not run and did not tell anyone except Shelby Williams.  John Myers should have made a public announcement, but he kept it a secret.  The grassroots precinct chairs raced to headquarters and asked, "who is willing to run for chair?"  Howard Powers and Ellen Loveless both filed so that we would have a choice.  One of Shelby's supporters asked why we blame Shelby when it was John who seemed to plan the bait-and-switch.  One could say that Shelby shares the guilt of deception by being an accomplice.  Shelby went along with the plan.  It comes down to personal judgment regarding what behavior is acceptable.

If you have never heard of bait-and-switch, let me remind you of how in the book of Genesis Jacob made a deal with Laban for the hand of Rachel.  After 7 years of labor for the hand of Rachel, Jacob wakes up after the wedding night and discovers that Leah had been substituted for Rachel.  Jacob was married to Leah instead of Rachel in a classic bait-and-switch. 

Sometimes politicians pick up nicknames.  Richard Nixon had the nickname "Tricky Dick."  Shelby Williams has the nickname "Backdoor Shelby." 

President LBJ had the nickname "Landslide Lyndon" from stuffing ballot boxes in close elections.  Here's an article on that:  https://robertcanrightsblog.blogspot.com/2019/04/lbj-did-steal-election.html.

Mr.Williams failed to win the primary election on March 5, 2024. For the sake of the party, he needs to be defeated in the runoff.

These are my opinions on current political events.