Several of my readers have thanked me for explaining the basics of mass meetings and local committees in earlier emails. [You can read my prior emails below.] Today I want to talk about our upcoming conventions.

At the same mass meeting where local Republicans elected your local chairman and local committee, they also elected delegates to the Sixth Congressional District convention and to the state convention. As a delegate to a convention you represent all of the Republican voters in your city or county.

At the District convention you will vote to elect a new chairman of the Sixth District. You will elect a regional vice chair, three members to the State Central Committee (which is what I’m running for), three delegates and three alternates to represent the District at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and an elector. [If the Republican candidate for President wins Virginia in November, voters have actually elected Republicans to represent them in the “electoral college.” The electoral college actually elects the President in December.]

Now here’s an interesting thing. Delegates to the District and State conventions do not have equal votes. Each unit (city or county) gets a certain number of “delegate votes” based on how many people voted for Republican candidates for President and Governor in the previous election. So Rockingham County gets 157 delegate votes while Highland County gets 6 votes. But each unit can send up to 5 times the number of delegates as they have delegate votes.

As an example, Page County gets 40 delegate votes but they could have elected up to 200 delegates to vote those votes. They elected 24. If all 24 Page County delegates come to the convention, each of their votes would count for 1.67 “delegate votes.” If only 20 came, each delegate would vote 2.0 “delegate votes.” So the fewer delegates who attend from a unit, the more weight each delegate’s vote carries.

More importantly, if two candidates are running for one office and 12 Page County delegates voted for Candidate A and 12 voted for Candidate B, each candidate would get 20 “delegate votes.” But suppose half of Candidate A’s supporters decided not to come to the convention. Now instead of getting half of 40 “delegate votes” (20), Candidate A only gets one third or 13.3 delegate votes. That means that votes are calculated based on the percentage of delegates from a unit who actually attend the convention and cast a vote for a given candidate. One year only one delegate showed from one of our units. That one delegate cast every one of his unit’s “delegate votes.” The other delegates from that unit had no say in the decisions made that day because they did not come to the convention.

Several years ago the ballot for one office was so close that if one more delegate from Lynchburg had shown up to vote for the eventual loser, the loser would have won. Hopefully this helps you see how important it is for you to attend the convention(s) to which you have been elected as a delegate to represent the Republican voters of your city/county.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. Thank you for taking the time to read and learn how the system works so that you can use the system rather than letting the system use you. Learn what you need to learn in order to make informed votes at the Sixth District Convention at Cave Springs High School in Roanoke at 10:00 a.m. on May 21^st. You can find the address and a map by clicking the “How You Can Help” tab at the top of this page.

Page County Republican Committee Chairman Parker Gochenour, former Lynchburg Republican Party chairman and State Central Committee candidate Steve “Doc” Troxel, Staunton Republican Committee Chairman Matt Fitzgerald — who is also a candidate  to be one of the Sixth District’s three delegates to the Republican National Convention, and Sixth Congressional District Chairman candidate Scott Sayre meet up at the Shenandoah County Republican mass meeting on April 1st.

Many of my readers will have heard about the uproar surrounding Ralph Smith’s comments at the Roanoke County mass meeting Tuesday night, March 22. You may also have seen the email and Facebook post he put out. In his speech and writing, he insulted Party leaders whom you, the grassroots voter, have chosen to represent you in Party affairs.

I had thought to write an article to explain this all to you, but it would have been far too lengthy. So may I suggest that you go to “The Bull Elephant” which not only discusses the situation, but also has a recording of the last two minutes of Senator Smith’s three-minute speech.

http://thebullelephant.com/ralph-smith-declines-serve-caustic-environment-6th-district-gop/

Some may claim that “The Bull Elephant” is biased toward the conservative side of the party. May I suggest then an article from “Bearing Drift” (an establishment-friendly on-line news outlet).

http://bearingdrift.com/2016/03/22/ralph-smith-quits-as-candidate-for-6th-congressional-district-chair/

Please be aware that even though it sounds as though he is dropping out of the race for District Chairman, he has not officially done so. Until he does, he is still a candidate.

I knew Alicia Petska when she was a political reporter in Lynchburg. She is now reporting for the “Roanoke Times.” Her balanced story came out this past Monday.

http://www.roanoke.com/news/politics/roanoke/republicans-battle-for-control-of-party-s-th-district-leadership/article_3cc9e2ae-bb5e-5bd8-a9c6-16ecbadeceb9.html

I was at Roanoke County’s mass meeting, and I found Senator Smith’s comments to be petulant, arrogant, and misinformed. The day after the meeting I sent the Senator a lengthy email respectfully expressing my displeasure. In the ten days since then he has not responded to me or to the emails he received from a number of others regarding his comments. I include below a paragraph from my email to him that refutes his claim that people like me are “outliers.”

“Sir, I have been a Republican for over 40 years. I have voted for every Republican presidential candidate since Nixon. I have been a unit chair, and I have carried proxies to the State Central Committee. I have stood in the rain outside of polls, and I have spent all day observing and working inside the polls. I have done walk lists and phone banking. I have campaigned hard for several General Assembly members I can name. I take offense to your statement that people who want to see change in the Republican Party are “outliers.” There is no truth in your statement that people like me “would like to throw all the Republicans out and elect… new Republicans or Libertarians, or something else.” All I intend to do is see that our elected officials fulfill the pledges they made to the voters when they were elected as Republicans…. If you are telling me that we aren’t allowed to do that, then you are sincerely wrong in your beliefs. We not only can, and should, but we have a moral obligation to hold bad politicians accountable.”

I tell you all this so that you can understand some of what is at stake for Republicans in the 6^th Congressional District and especially for you, the delegates they have elected to represent them at the District Convention at Cave Springs High School in Roanoke on May 21^st.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. Since Senator Smith only moved into the 6^th District a scant five months ago, I wonder where he got his information about the people YOU elected to serve as the chairs of your local committees. He certainly didn’t bother to talk to the people whom he accuses of being “outliers.” I wonder whose word he took.

In my email last week, I tried to briefly explain how a unit (city or county) mass meeting gives Republican voters a say in how your Party works. Two of the agenda items in the mass meetings that are held in even years are the election of a unit chairman and a “local committee.”

Having served as a unit chair (Lynchburg), I know well what a chairman does. The chairman is ultimately responsible in his/her area for all legal matters involving Republicans in elections. This includes identifying and certifying Republican candidates to the State Board of Elections. Additionally, the chairman certifies individuals who, on behalf of Republicans, will observe inside the polls for both voter integrity and Get-Out-the-Vote purposes.

A chairman can delegate many of his/her duties, but still holds ultimate responsibility. These include fund-raising, campaign and election day activities, Party growth, and communication with the community and the media.

Many of these duties are delegated to members of the “local committee” which is elected at the same mass meeting. Under Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) policy, committees are supposed to be made up of representatives from each Ward/District (Ward Captains) and from each precinct (Precinct Captains and workers). Under RPV guidelines the number of committee members from each precinct should be determined by the number of Republican votes that came from that precinct during specific elections.

Committee members should be committed to 1) representing the interests of Republicans in their precincts when voting on issues that come before the committee, and 2) working to elect Republican candidates to all offices in local, regional, state-wide, and national elections. Committee members are the foot soldiers in the political process.

Members of local committees have an even more important say in how your Party works than do those voters who only attend mass meetings. I strongly encourage conservative-minded voters to become involved in their committees. Not everyone has to join, but we all need to work together to change the direction of our country back to the mission of the Constitution: protection of our liberties.

As Edmund Burke has been quoted: “All it takes for tyranny to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” Let’s work together to do the “something” required to preserve our freedoms for our children and their children.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc”Troxel

In every “unit” (city or county) in Virginia, all the voters in that city or county who “hold to Republican ideals” are invited to a Mass Meeting at least once every two years. We use the term “hold to Republican ideals” because in Virginia, voters don’t register by party affiliation. So in an effort to keep Democrats and others from voting in our business, we require voters to sign a statement of agreement when they sign in to their respective mass meetings.

Voters are invited to a mass meeting by way of a “Call.” This call is published by the local Republican committee following guidelines put forth by the Republican Party of Virginia. The Call states the date, time, place, and purposes of the meeting along with information on who can come and vote. It is published on the local, district, and state Republican websites; it is emailed to everyone on the local committee’s email list, and it is often published in the local newspaper – although that is optional.

The concept of a mass meeting is that all of the Republican voters in a given unit gather together to elect people to fulfill certain duties. A Chairman is elected to be the legal representative of Republicans in that unit, as well as to lead the “local committee.”

The local committee is also elected at the mass meeting. This committee makes decisions on behalf of all Republican voters in that city or county. Their decisions include candidate selection or endorsement, fundraising, and any other area that involves the Party.

Additionally, mass meetings vote to elect delegates to district and state conventions. The only people who can vote at these conventions are individuals who were duly elected as delegates from the unit in which they are registered to vote. [I will explain what happens at these conventions in a future letter.]

I hope this helped you better understand some of the workings of your party. As one of your representatives to the State Central Committee, I will work to help you better understand how your party is supposed to work, do all in my power to help it work that way, and help you improve our government by developing and electing quality candidates, supporting them in office, and holding them accountable to the values on which we elected them.

Please consider voting for me to be one of the three members of the State Central Committee that you will elect at the Sixth Congressional District Convention on Saturday, May 21^st, beginning at 10:00 a.m. at Cave Springs High School in Roanoke.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

P.S. Do you agree that elected officials – whether in a Party office or a public office – work for the voters? Believe it or not, some elected officials think it’s the other way round. More on this in a future letter.