NOTES BETWEEN PRINTED EDITIONS

by Lonnie Brennan

Forget about elections for Republican State Committee in Massachusetts. Under a new plan unveiled by MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale, the chair will be able to appoint 10 additional members to the 80-member board, bringing the total voting membership to 90.

Up until this moment, candidates for the committee are all elected to represent their senatorial districts: two members, one male and one female, from each of the 40 senatorial districts in the state. Carnevale’s proposal will change things.

MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale with former Mass. Gov. Charlie Baker – the best friend Democrats in the state have ever had (and a rabid hater of President Donald J. Trump, and a backstabber to conservative leaning candidates such as Geoff Diehl who Baker repeatedly refused to support).

Carnevale’s proposed bylaw change will create five new “districts” throughout the state, and two members from each district will get appointed as full voting members of the Republican State Committee. The qualifications? You must be a Republican state rep., senator, member of the governor’s council, a mayor, a city councilor, or a county-wide officer or “such other members who may be elected to fill a vacancy.” In other words, you must be someone hand-picked by Carnevale, and presumably she’ll only pick candidates who pledge their votes to her agenda.

But wait, it gets better. In addition to simply sliding 10 devoted toddies onto the elected committee, Carnevale seeks to remove a provision on page 11 of the proposed bylaw changes which would eliminate the tradition of allowing the new state committee (convened in an organizational meeting every four years after every presidential election) to ratify the Chair’s continued term in office. That’s right, a new committee would be unable to unseat a sitting chair, even if that chair was found to secretly plot to defame a prior chair, found to financially support Democrats, etc. You know, like the more than $30K Carnevale has been exposed to have donated to her company’s political action committee, a PAC that donates both both Republican AND Democrats, including New York’s Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), California’s Adam Schiff (D-Calif), Chris Pappas (D-NH), amongst others…

Oh, and officers of the MassGOP no longer need to be residents of Massachusetts if Carnevale’s proposals get approved at the upcoming April 6 organizational meeting to be held at 10 a.m. Sat. April 6 at the Burlington Marriott Hotel. That’s right,  the words “residing in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” have been crossed out of the current bylaws per the markups/proposed changes Carnevale has released.

Oh, and yes of course there are a slew of other proposals, including the apparent strange need to excise the word “membership” from a Registration and Membership Committee, renaming it to the Election Integrity and Registration Committee, and a slew of other minor and major changes, some meaningful to some, perhaps, and others apparent red herrings to make the poison pills less likely to be spotted.

The world of the Republican Party in Massachusetts has been a near disaster, and now, the MassGOP is about to vote to make itself irrelevant, or, rather, simply achieve the one goal Carnevale and her supports seem hell-bent to do: totally destroy the ability of the conservatives on the committee to have any sway in any matter, in any vote, by creating a super-majority pledged to the chair.

Meeting Agenda:

Massachusetts Republican State Committee Agenda
Organizational Meeting
Saturday, April 6th, at 10 a.m.
Boston Marriott Burlington
One Burlington Mall Road Burlington, MA 01803
1. Call to Order
2. Prayer
3. Pledge of Allegiance
4. Establishment of Quorum – Secretary Pro-Tem
5. Ratification of the Chair
6. Adoption of By-Laws
7. Election of Officers
8. Regional Caucuses
9. Ratification of Delegates to the Republican National Convention
10. Endorsement of Donald Trump for President
11. Adjournment

Meeting is open to all.

APPOINTMENT OF DELEGATES

Please note: Item #9 is a provision whereby last Fall Carnevale led a move to eliminate regional caucuses to elect delegates to the Republican National Convention.

Instead, interested parties were asked to send in their request to the MassGOP and somehow magically the delegates slate will be presented for an up/down vote near the end of what promises to be a lengthy meeting.  So much for grassroots and the days of now long-ago when folks arrived at regional meetings (for example, the Wakefield Elks off 128 in Wakefield, Mass.).

At those meetings of long ago, members of local Republican Town Committees and City Committees got to hear from candidates vying to go to the Convention, and got to vote for their choices.

An an aside, I vividly remember my brief exchange with Carnevale who was working the long registration/entry line outside the venue, talking to folks, pledging her support to a certain candidate. I asked her “ah, you probably don’t know me, but I’ve seen you in action, and it seems strange to me that you want to be a delegate for that candidate, when all the time I’ve observed you you’ve been 100% with the swamp establishment. What’s changed?”  She huffed, mumbled something inaudible, then rapidly shifted off about 1/2 a dozen folks behind me in line and started pressing flesh again. Needless to say, she didn’t get my one vote)….

UPDATE:   BYLAW MARKUPS FROM MASSGOP CHAIRWOMAN ATTACHED:

2024_03_21a Proposed Update to 2021_09_29 Approved MRSC-Bylaws.docx – Google Docs (2)