Tag: Kory Boone

2015 Maryland GOP Fall Convention in pictures and text (part 1)

(All work and no play? You can skip to part 2.)

As I said before, like the prodigal son I have returned.

I counted 26 pictures in my folder. As a rule of thumb I try to keep pictorial posts under 20 so you get two parts, with this covering Friday night and part 2 looking at Saturday. While the latter was more contentious, there was some news from Friday night that I will get to in due course.

Upon arriving and checking in, I was greeted by a Ted Cruz volunteer and a cute two-girl welcoming crew. Bad time for a glitch on the cell phone camera, but it set the tone for the evening.

They were gone by the time I went down to register, but in the adjacent room I saw Ben Carson. Well, sort of.

You could meet his son at one of the suites, though. I just wasn’t sure where that was so, alas, it was one I missed. (I guess the younger Carson did, too.)

I didn’t stay in the exhibit room too long. Most suites don’t start right away so I usually attend the Executive Committee meeting to see what’s news.

Most of it is devoted to reports that are repeated to one extent or another during the Saturday session, but I did learn the party was working on another Student Legislative Day for kids around the state.

The best tidbit came from State Senator Bryan Simonaire, who, after relating how working with Governor Hogan was “tremendous” – in part because there were no tax increases on the floor for the first time in 10 years – he revealed a piece of legislation he was considering. (I think Bryan forgot the “travel tax” Hogan vetoed and the increased court fees he adopted. But I digress.)

Bryan went over some of the pros and cons he had heard about changing the date Republican Central Committee members take office. By law, we don’t start until after the General Election that occurs after the primary. This made sense with the old September primary, but leaves a long lame-duck period from a June primary.

Yet many of the county chairs argued “five months was no big deal” and added that it was unfair to those who weren’t coming back to end their term before the election they were working toward. They wanted the members who weren’t coming back to stay on. The proposal was “a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” added one party officer.

Despite the criticism from the county chairs, most of whom objected in a show of hands, Simonaire appreciated the dialogue but stated, “I am moving forward with it.”

A couple folks we did not hear from on Saturday gave reports. Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo, who now heads the Maryland Heritage Council, explained his goal was to change the narrative that “Republicans are racist” and convince Hispanics their “natural home” is the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, Kory Boone of the Maryland Young Republicans was pleased to report that they had grown to seven chapters with new ones in St. Mary’s and Prince George’s counties.

Speaking of St. Mary’s County, their District 29 suite was the first hospitality suite I stopped by. I was hungry to try some “SoMD stuffed ham.”

The District 29 delegation was there, including Delegate Deb Rey.

She was selling raffle tickets for a Beretta rifle as a fundraiser, to be drawn at another fundraiser on January 7. (That week or so will be busy for our General Assembly members, who can’t do fundraisers during the 90 days of session.)

Having my helping of ham, I could go get some seafood at Richard Douglas’s Senate suite. There were a number taking part, and to be honest it was better than the pizza next door at the Montgomery County suite.

If Douglas wants to be the “new blood,” one of those he has to beat was directly upstairs in a suite she was sharing with Andy Harris.

Along with the Congressman, Szeliga was there talking to the aforementioned Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo. I did mention to her that I was sad about missing her trip to Salisbury, but noted my cohort Cathy Keim covered it well for me. Hopefully Szeliga will be back here soon.

Just across a short hallway was the suite belonging to the Ted Cruz campaign.

Let’s get this out of the way: now that Bobby Jindal is out, among the remaining GOP field I would lean most toward Ted Cruz. They also had outstanding chili there. I just hope their field people are up to the task.

Their suite wasn’t very busy, either – not like Marco Rubio’s.

My photo doesn’t do their gathering justice.

I get the sense that Rubio is the “establishment” choice now that Jeb’s campaign is cratering. Maybe that’s just me, but it’s my gut instinct.

In taking so long to go through the suites I did and renew some acquaintances, I missed the ones on my floor – one of which belonged to this guy.

So it was not a slight on my part, as my plan was to do the ones on my floor last. Most of them respected the 11:00 or so closing time to get cleaned up and allow the neighbors some sleep, so I was just too late.

Since they were winding down, going to bed is what I did. In part 2 this evening I look at Saturday.

Falling on hard times

For the last month (and some time beyond) there has been a war of words between supporters of the former Chair of the Maryland Young Republicans, Brian Griffiths, and backers of the current Chair Kory Boone. It’s a situation which brings back thoughts of the Ws being missing on the computer keyboards when George W. Bush came into office in 2001 – in fact, Boone’s reaction is reminiscent of Bush’s as he is being rather silent about the whole thing.

On the other hand Griffiths continues to speak out, admonishing the new leadership by saying on his Red Maryland website that “(i)t’s a shame that they are wasting their time in office with minutiae and nonsense instead of being the ‘competent’ slate that they promised everybody they would be. Maybe it’s time to drop the vendettas, stop focusing on national YR politics, and see the big picture.”

Let me preface this by saying I was once in a smaller pair of shoes in my life – for a year (2000) I was president of the Toledo Metro Area Young Republican Club. And I’ll cheerfully admit that it was a learning experience for me and they probably would have done better if someone else had stepped up to the plate. But I was asked, so I accepted – maybe if my life at the time had been more settled it would have gone better.

One thing I learned, though – and the same thing is holding true in Maryland – is that Young Republican clubs tend to be cyclical. A crop of interested people start the club and they become the core group which runs it for a half-dozen years. But then that group ages out, moves away, or actually succeeds in winning elective office and suddenly no one is there to take over. About 6 to 8 years ago we had a Lower Shore YR chapter but it eventually became inactive. As it stood, dwindling interest meant the time was right for new leadership, and Maryland will get it.

But the change isn’t coming easily, and Griffiths doesn’t seem to be embracing it. Despite his promise that “I intend to make this (recent MDYR convention) my last Maryland YR event,” he’s since spoken out about proposed bylaw changes and fretted about losing the opportunity for Annapolis to host the 2017 national YR convention, an event which Griffiths admitted he was skeptical about in the beginning.

Meanwhile, questions have arisen about the financial state Boone inherited when he took over the leadership of the MDYRs. In a recent audit made available online, MDYR treasurer Eric Beasley essentially threw up his hands:

Given the lack of information (about the recent financial past), the MDYR Treasurer cannot establish a historical trend and create realistic goals for the organization to prosper in 2016 and 2018.

These issues highlighted above can be directly linked to a lack of efficient record keeping and management within the organization. Due to the severity of the issues, The MDYR Treasurer will be requesting all bank statements which are not available online and sending the entirety of financial information to a 3rd party auditor for review. The auditor will not be an active official within the Republican Party or any Republican-affiliated organization, elected or appointed. The individual will also have extensive experience with maintaining financial information.

Even if you chalk this up to sloppy record-keeping, the fact that the group is down to one chartered local group and a dearth of members (a paid membership which allegedly excluded Griffiths) is enough to make one believe that, first of all, the group really can’t be damaged anymore by the actions of its current leadership – if that were indeed the goal, which I doubt – and secondly, at least someone gave enough of a damn to want to steer the group in a new direction. Perhaps their fundraiser was a failure, as Griffiths charges, but they at least tried to have an event and spread the word that the YRs are active in the state.

When he came to our Central Committee meeting last month, Kory noted his goals for his tenure were to “establish local chapters (and) get local people elected.” First of all, the fact that he came to our local meeting to introduce himself was an improvement over the previous chair, who only seemed to show for events where he could somehow promote the Red Maryland brand, and secondly, Boone expressed goals that seem rather attainable with some field work and promotion.

The last crop of Lower Shore Young Republicans had among them a current staffer for Congressman Andy Harris (who also serves as president of the Wicomico County Republican Club), a former WCRC president who is now a County Councilman, and another who attempted to secure a Delegate seat in a difficult district but put up a good race. With Salisbury University being the logical feeder group of College Republicans (their incoming President went to WiHi here), there’s no reason a YR group can’t make it here if the state leadership shows some support – and it will eventually accrue dividends for the local GOP.

Brian Griffiths had his time in the sun, so it’s time for him to let someone else lead.

Oh, and by the way, those who harp on reaching out to the minority community may wish to know Kory is a member of same, from the desolate frontier (at least in GOP terms) of Prince George’s County. It’s not important as to how he does the job, but to those for whom perception is reality that’s a bonus.

So I look forward to seeing what Kory Boone can do.