2023 Legislative Score: 55
The North Metro & Cobb GRA chapters’ “Candidate Endorsement Convention” for the 11th & 6th Congressional District is scheduled for April 15th at 11am-2:00pm with registration opening today.
Location:
Cherokee Charter Academy
2126 Sixes Road
Canton, GA 30114
REGISTRATION
Includes Lunch!
$19.95 at door.
Early Bird Special (if registered before April 7th) : $14.95
Hear Candidates from 6th & 11th District to learn more about the candidates.
Become a GRA Member before April 7th to be eligible to vote. A 2/3 majority is needed for a candidate to be endorsed.
Please consider joining today!
The Fulton Republican Assembly chapter condemns the racist conduct of Fulton County Commissioners Khadijah Abdur-Rahman and Marvin Arrington, Jr., in their interaction with fellow commissioner Bridget Thorne. “I’m offended at your white privilege!” Khadijah shouted at Bridget in the meeting.
The comments were made at the March 15th Fulton County Commission meeting when discussing action item 23-0208. We also condemn the rest of the Board of Commissioners for not standing up for Commissioner Thorne when those racist sentiments were uttered, especially Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts, who failed to restore proper professional decorum to the meeting.
More importantly, we condemn the toxic ideology from which these racist sentiments spring forth: critical race theory. This utterly destructive ideology has infected the minds of far too many Americans and has led to a worsening of racial tensions, which hurts people of ALL races and social classes. It is a tragic shame that people like Commissioners Abdur-Rahman and Arrington are anywhere near the levers of power at any level of government since their concern is clearly not for the welfare of their constituents. They apparently prefer to grandstand with racially charged comments about a fellow commissioner rather than work towards finding common-ground solutions for the serious problems that their constituents face. Their constituents deserve better representation.
If a hospital is closing down somewhere in Fulton County, the Board of Commissioners has a duty to investigate why the fundamental economics of the venture made operating a hospital in that part of Fulton County financially infeasible. None of the other commissioners disputed any of the financial numbers that Commissioner Thorne provided in her statement. If the Board is legitimately concerned about the health care needs of its constituents, it needs to examine the heavy handed role that government taxes and regulations play in making hospital operations economically unsound in Fulton County – NOT to attack a fellow commissioner who is trying to solve the problem.
Commissioner Thorne is an equal voice on that Board and deserves to be treated with respect. In the face of the racist attacks against her, she continued to conduct herself in a professional manner and with the best interests of the residents of Fulton County in mind. Commissioner Thorne is a hero. The commissioners who attacked her based on the color of her skin are an utter disgrace to the seats of government they occupy. The other commissioners who piled on or otherwise stood by while that attack took place are cowards.
The Fulton Republican Assembly hereby calls for an immediate apology to be issued to Commissioner Thorne from the rest of the Board.
The Cobb County GOP sends close to the largest delegation to the state convention most years. It also sends delegations to four congressional districts conventions now.
In the past, elected officials have usually been placed at the front of the line to serve as delegates, even though many of these elected officials stand on the sidelines and don’t participate in controversial votes at the conventions, so as not to upset their constituents. Their delegate votes thus are often wasted.
This year the Nominating Committee for Cobb County adopted a new policy: “We chose to prioritize and give preference to our hard-working grassroots volunteers in the county who have labored to help the organization, the cause, and candidate campaigns completely at their own expense—without expecting any financial reward— over elected officials,” said Cobb Nominating Committee Chairman Nathaniel Darnell. Nathaniel also serves as the Chairman for the Cobb County RA chapter. Chris Deeb, the President of the Cobb RA chapter, served as Vice Chairman of the Nominating Committee. Nine other conservatives, activists, and former candidates from the county also served on the committee.
“This was not to disrespect any Republican elected official in Cobb County, but rather to honor the many men and women upon whose shoulders they stand: our grassroots volunteers,” Nathaniel continued. As a result, all Cobb County elected officials were placed on the alternate list by default during early Nominating Committee deliberations. By the conclusion, the committee voted to remove only one Cobb Republican elected official from both the delegate and alternate lists due to bad behavior in the state legislature.
This policy represents a shift in thinking within the Georgia Republican Party: Instead of the grassroots being treated as being at the bottom of the totem pole with the elite elected officials, corporate lobbyists, and paid political industry riding on their backs, true self-sacrificing Patriots were given the foremost respect.
These are people with nothing to gain from their activism (other than just working to make the world a better place). We suggest that this group is more likely to be objective about what is best for the party, since they aren’t thinking about how to climb the ladder or make money in the political industry.
While some paid members of the political industry, such as Brittany Ellison from east Cobb (who has also publicly posted false and vulgar attacks about fellow Republicans on her social media), took to the microphone to complain about being nominated as merely an alternate behind grassroots volunteers, no one at the Cobb County GOP Convention complained about the elected officials taking a back seat. No one made a motion to move up an elected official in Cobb from an alternate to a delegate position. The Nominating Committee’s policy concerning elected officials was therefore approved by the body at the county convention.
Those who sacrificially give of their “three Ts” (their time, their treasure, and their talents) expecting no personal enrichment, should always be given such preference. They are the heart and soul of the Republican Party.
In Cherokee County, as the county convention was still going on into the evening on Saturday, several delegates reported that current District 11 Chairwoman Lisa Adkins from Cobb County showed up and began circulating a petition to collect signatures to have the convention results thrown out. “Our convention wasn’t even over yet!” said North Metro RA Chairman Richard Jordan. “If they thought something was wrong, we still had time to fix it, but instead they were working to have the convention thrown out because they didn’t like the results. Sounds like a big conflict of interest for the District 11 Chairwoman to be circulating that petition.”
Some delegates have reported that their names were forged on the petition document without their permission, and others have said that they signed it without knowing what it was and want their names removed from it now.
Ensuring Cherokee’s district delegates were thrown out could potentially increase Dr. Lisa Adkins chances of winning re-election at the District 11 Convention on April 22nd. Adkins had voted two years ago on the state committee to over-turn “America First” candidate Susan Opraseuth‘s election as Fulton County GOP Chairwoman, and has in other ways aligned herself with the interests of the Establishment in Atlanta. Her husband Roy Adkins has spread maligning material against the GRA on social media. Lisa was originally elected as District 11 GOP Chair not by a convention of delegates but by the District 11 GOP Committee after redistricting when the previous District 11 Chair was moved to a different congressional district.
She is being challenged for District 11 Chair by attorney David Oles of Pickens County. Oles announced his campaign for District 11 Chairman on Monday morning, March 13th.
When asked directly about her involvement in the petition that circulated at the Cherokee County Convention, Lisa Adkins denied personally initiating the petition or telling anyone directly to disseminate it. She did, however, admit to going to the Cherokee County Convention after the Cobb County Convention ended and admitted to advising a group on how to create such a petition before the Cherokee convention was completed (rather than advising them on how to correct the alleged underlying concerns with the county convention before it ended so that it wouldn’t need to be thrown out), including telling them how many signatures would be required, and what the process would be to submit it to review to her District 11 Committee for appeal. “Even that degree of involvement from her,” said a delegate, “makes her an accessory to the effort, which she had no business getting involved in. The conflict of interest concern still stands.”
Meanwhile, current 6th District Chairman Joel Natt is also reportedly looking to see if the Fulton County GOP delegation would be thrown out on a technicality because the previous administration supposedly was late in sending in their newspaper notice of the event. Such an error would have been by the previous administration, not the newly elected one, and arguably had little to no impact on the outcome, if it actually happened.
These cases seem to be yet another example of the Establishment refusing to accept an outcome where they do not win. It appears to be a repeat of the trick used with Fulton and Chatham County when they lost county elections there two years ago.
Saturday was a BIG DAY of successes for GRA chapters across the state as — even the uber-liberal Atlanta Journal-Constitution had to admit in an article that — the “Georgia Republican Assembly and its allies mounted a series of successful operations” in county GOP conventions. This represents a tremendous movement in Georgia to reform the party so that its elected officials actually enact their professed Republican principles.
Contrary to some strange mantras, the purpose of the Republican Party is to advance principles (which made American great) and Republican policies as they have been described in our platforms over the decades — not to merely win elections. Winning elections is a means to an end to advance the principles. We have won many elections over the last 40 years, and yet little progress has been made in enacting Republican principles into law. But the Democrats have advanced their agenda, and not been afraid that it would make them lose elections.
Grassroots volunteers are getting tired of Republican elected officials ignoring policies such as real meaningful election integrity reform, medical freedom, gun rights, preborn equal protection rights, parental control over education, free markets, fiscal responsibility, and small government!We are ready for a change of direction. Republicans at the Gold Dome have been behaving too much like Democrats. Indeed, they vote with Democrats most of the time! The grassroots volunteers are moving the GOP away from the Establishment sycophants and toward a more accountability-minded administration.
“In Cherokee County, GRA-backed contenders swept leadership posts after a roughly nine-hour meeting,” reported the AJC in its recent The Jolt piece. “In Chatham County, GRA-backed delegates engineered a … takeover of the local party.”
The AJC went on to acknowledge that the GRA “scored wins by electing party leaders in Catoosa, Chatham, Cherokee, Coweta, DeKalb, Fulton, and Whitfield counties.” Actually, the AJC article failed to mention victories in many more counties besides these such as in Hart County where GRA-member Tim Roberts was elected the new county party Chairman. His brother Silas Roberts (President of the Hart County RA chapter) will serve on the local GOP board with him, along with former GRA-endorsed State House candidate Dylan Purcell.
In Cobb County, GRA-member Salleigh Grubbs won her re-election handily without opposition for Cobb GOP Chairwoman.
GRA Northwest GRA chapter President Eddie Caldwell was elected as the new Whitfield County GOP Chairman. His RA chapter’s Vice President Joanna Hildreth was easily re-elected as the Catoosa County GOP organization Chairwoman, and GRA-member Jackie Harling was elected Chairwoman of the Walker County GOP.
Some RA chapters had held endorsement conventions for party leadership candidates ahead of the county conventions. In DeKalb County, for example, Marci McCarthy was endorsed by the DeKalb RA chapter, and she was re-elected as DeKalb County GOP Chairwoman. Stephanie Endres was endorsed by the Fulton RA chapter and she also won election as the new Fulton GOP Chairwoman.
In south Georgia, SEGRA President Brittany Brown pulled off a win as the new Chatham County GOP Chairwoman. Winning in Chatham and Fulton was particularly gratifying since the Establishment had narrowly held these two counties two years ago, getting the county conventions either thrown out or re-done on appeals to the GA GOP State Committee.
In Fulton two years ago, the Establishment had used tiddly-winks to count the votes and declared a victory for the Establishment candidate with more votes than had been credentialed! (No wonder Fulton has such a problem with election integrity!)
A week earlier, GRA 1st Vice President Brant Frost V was re-elected as the Coweta County GOP Chairman, and GRA-member Jennifer Tudor was re-elected as the Chattooga County GOP Chairwoman.
Reports of more wins from GRA chapters and our allies continue to pour in from around the state. These wins send a clear message to Governor Brian Kemp and Speaker Jon Burns that the grassroots will not be ignored.
But the political industry and their sycophants decried the results, slinging mud at the victors by calling them “purists,” “white nationalists,” and other derogatory terms hypocritically in the name of “unity,” while suggesting that the GA GOP has become “irrelevant.”
As one party leader said, a complainer “tried really hard for 45 minutes on Saturday to become the precinct chair in his local GOP organization, and at the conclusion he declared the party ‘irrelevant.’ In other words, he lost.”
This spin seemed tailored to reinforce a message the AJC had reported two weeks earlier from the Governor’s office: “Governor urges donors to ditch ‘traditional’ party. Gov. Brian Kemp took his most significant step yet to break from the Georgia GOP and bolster his own growing political network, telling high-dollar donors that the 2022 midterm was a sign ‘we can no longer rely on the traditional party infrastructure …’. It seems that the folks in Atlanta had already seen the writing on the wall after the Precinct Caucus and knew that this was not going to be a year in which the Governor won a network of “yes-men” to run the GA GOP.
“Politicians are going to keep serving lobbyists,” said GRA President Alex Johnson, an attorney from DeKalb, “and ignoring the people unless and until politicians are accountable to the party and the people. If they don’t like accountability, they and their sycophants should go collect the signatures to run as Independent candidates instead of destroying the Republican brand.”
Now the next step in the effort proceeds to the congressional district conventions which take place on April 22nd.