At Recent Caucus to Pick a New State Committeeman – More Sleaze from RINOs Controlling the MassGOP

by Brian Camenker

by Brian Camenker

Charlie Baker may be gone, but his RINO Massachusetts State Committee operation is back in power and is as sleazy as ever. The recent caucus to elect a new state committeeman in the Norfolk and Suffolk district should scare everyone.

After the 2020 elections, GOP conservatives finally – for the first time in memory – held a narrow majority on the 80-member Mass. State Committee. This was achieved despite Baker raising hundreds of thousands of dark money dollars that year to support his RINO candidates. They elected pro-lifer Jim Lyons as Party chairman.

But with some conservative members subsequently moving out of their districts (and a few others becoming traitorous turncoats), the Baker people cobbled together enough votes to take over again this past January and oust Lyons in favor of one of their own, Amy Carnevale.

Normally when a State Committee member moves away and his seat becomes vacant, a special caucus of the district’s local Republican Committee members is held to vote on a successor to fill out the term. But it appears that process had been stalled last year when RINO members boycotted the State Committee meetings, causing a lack of a quorum. So, there were several empty seats to fill.

So this spring, under the new regime, they were catching up. In every race it’s been a heated contest between a RINO versus a conservative – to hopefully tip the scales in the State Committee.

The Norfolk and Suffolk district includes Dedham, Westwood, Norwood, and parts of West Roxbury, Needham, Hyde Park, and Dover. In 2020, conservative Tom Maloney beat incumbent Bill McKinney, even though McKinney got big financial help from the Baker people, including multiple mailings. But last summer Maloney moved out of the district.

In March, Amy Carnevale announced that the caucus to elect a new State Committeeman would be April 11, 2023. The venue was the Irish Cultural Center in Canton – which is outside of the district! That was the first red flag – and more were to come.

Bill McKinney, the Baker/Carnevale supporter who lost in 2020, announced he was running again. Patrick Humphries, a Lyons supporter, also began campaigning for the position. They both sent letters and emails to the RTC members in the district.

Then the RINO guns came out. Carnevale’s dark money contingent hired radio host Howie Carr, and also former sheriff Tom Hodgson, to make robo calls and send text messages promoting McKinney to the local Republican committee members.

Howie’s (and Tom’s) messages had no real substance. Instead, all of them were about Donald Trump! They said that Trump is “taking a beating” and we all need to support him by voting for McKinney, who Howie said is “Trump’s man in Massachusetts.” It was absurd and condescending, but that’s the RINO opinion of conservatives. The messages ended with Howie saying, “Paid for by the McKinney campaign.”

Right after one of the phone messages, I was on the phone with McKinney and asked him about that. He said it was a mystery to him – and that he didn’t even have a campaign account. He added that when he first heard about Howie’s calls, he wondered if Howie was campaigning for him or against him! That’s because in the 2020 campaign Howie was publicly bashing McKinney as being a Baker RINO.

Why the change? Howie now lives in Florida and none of this affects him personally. It’s all entertainment at this point. And Howie apparently realized during the 2022 election cycle that there’s a lot more advertising money from wealthy Baker RINOS (e.g., Chris Doughty) than working class conservatives.

And it only got worse the day of the caucus. On paper, Humphries seemed to easily have the votes. But suddenly there were a lot of unexpected (by our side) hurdles.

The Irish Cultural Center was difficult to find. And when you got there and parked, it was hard to find the building, and a long walk from the parking area. We were told that a few of Humphries’ people who were very old got lost and never made it.

The official notice said that the caucus was from 7:00-9:00 pm. But those running it only allowed a short speech by each candidate, with no discussion or other nominating speeches. The voting was declared “closed” around 8:00. Some Humphries people who got there between 8:15 and 8:30 were denied the opportunity to vote. No one was told there would be an early deadline.

The vote count was 26 for McKinney to 23 for Humphries, with 5 extra “provisional” votes still sealed. Provisional votes are from people who claim to be local committee members but for some reason were not on the state-supplied lists (which could easily happen). Thus, the official winner won’t be named until the State Committee meets in June to decide on whether to accept the various provisional votes.

We believe that most of those provisional voters are Humphries supporters. But since the State Committee majority is currently against us, and since they were willing to deny a quorum last year to get their way, we can see the writing on the wall. They’ll make sure Humphries loses. The whole thing is infuriating, but that’s the way RINOs operate. They hate conservatives far more than they dislike liberals.

Why couldn’t they have had the caucus at the VFW Hall in Dedham, where there have been other GOP events? Why couldn’t they have run this more fairly for people who came within the announced timeframe? Why couldn’t they have run their state lists by the local committees so there wouldn’t be “provisional” votes? And why is the state GOP raising sleazy dark money for State Committee caucus campaigns instead of legitimate money for actual Republican local and state candidates?

I think we all know the answer to those questions. We need to take back our Party.