OC Political

This morning, delegates at the California Republican Party (CRP) Convention in Anaheim voted to adopt the County-centric endorsement procedure for primary elections proposed by Mike Spence and Deborah Wilder, with the adoption of amendments incorporating portions of the Adam Abrahms procedure.  (See the original proposals in OC Political’s Friday report on the convention.)  These endorsement procedures apply to partisan offices (i.e. federal and state offices, but not local offices).

Under the new rules, for races for the U.S. House of Representatives, the State Senate, and the State Assembly, any Republican who is the sole Republican on the ballot is automatically endorsed by the California Republican Party, but if there is more than one Republican on the ballot, the following will apply:

1. With at least five days’ notice, a meeting will be held with all Republican candidates in the affected race will appear before a County Central Committee, and that County Central Committee will vote to endorse a candidate by a 2/3 vote.
2. If each County Central Committee that has at least 5% of the registered Republicans who can vote on a race endorses the same candidate, then the State Board of Directors may be a 2/3 vote endorse that candidate on behalf of the California Republican Party.  Any one County Central Committee that has at least 5% of the registered Republicans who can vote on the race may issue a veto by making an explicit 2/3 vote of “No Endorsement” in that race.

At the urging of Board of Equalization Member George Runner, the above procedure was applied to Board of Equalization endorsements except the endorsement votes from County Central Committees representing 95% of registered Republicans in the BOE district (instead of County Central Committee that has at least 5% of the registered Republicans who can vote on that race since in vast BOE districts, there are numerous County Central Committee that do not have at least 5% of the registered Republicans since there are dozens of counties in many BOE seats).

Jon Fleischman’s proposal to adopt a fusion of CRP delegates and County Central Committee members vote on endorsing statewide candidates was tabled.

In other convention news, Tony Krvaric of San Diego was re-elected to a two-year term as Vice Chair for the South Region (Orange, San Diego, and Imperial Counties).  Adam Abrahms of Santa Monica was re-elected as Vice Chair for Los Angeles County, and Adele Harrison of Temecula was re-elected Vice Chair for the Inland Empire (Riverside, San Bernardino, Inyo, and Mono Counties), .

Aaron Ginn of San Francisco defeated Liz Kolstad of Fresno for the Associate Representative position, also a two-year term. This position is unique among Board of Director positions, as only the Associate Delegates can vote for this position.  All other positions are elected by the regular Delegates.  (For those less familiar with the state party structure, Associate Delegates are effectively alternates to the voting members.  While there are specific formulas for the number of Delegates that can exist, there is no limit on the number of Associate Delegates.)