Before I get into dysfunction I want to commend the leadership of Jim DeMartini and all the time, effort, and work he has put into the Stanislaus County Republican Party Central Committee (SCRP) over the years.  His leadership is missed.  I did not attend the 2 meetings after the 2018 elections due to conflicting board of education meetings. Whatever conversations happened that led to Jim DeMartini not being the Chairman was by far the biggest mistake the SCRP has made during my years on the committee.  Leadership matters!

To the members of the SCRP you are good people with good intentions and in most cases friends; you are at a crossroads.  I find that the right decision is rarely easy and often the hardest to make.  We are left with a dysfunctional committee and leadership that is rife with conflicts of interest, bad behavior, and an inability to engage not just SCRP committee members but the public at large.  My message to committee members is that you have two possible decisions.

The first option is allowing Chairman Joe Day and Vice Chair Nancy Hinton to continue using the committee for their own personal and financial benefit at the expense of everyone including candidates for office.  The second option is to stand up in unison and either force Chairman Day and Vice Chair Nancy Hinton to resign or make a motion and remove both by a nearly unanimous vote of the committee.

Prior to my resignation from the committee on July 2, 2019 I exhausted all internal means of addressing the continued verbal and written abuse of the current SCRP executive director by Chairman Joe Day.  The bylaws provide a means for committee members to address discipline problems internally.  To be crystal clear the charges I made relative to harassment by Chairman Joe Day were quite simple.  The behavior exhibited would have resulted in anyone being fired, and if the individual was the boss which was exactly the case here they would have been fired even faster.  The censure I requested was approved on May 6, 2019 by the SCRP.  The punishment was not and hence little or nothing has changed relative to the behavior.

In addition to the charges of harassment I made against Chairman Joe Day were the charges of violating committee bylaws by both the Chairman and Vice Chair which I believe continue to this day.  It started immediately when Mr. Joe Day decided that the position of chairman was not to run the meetings but to make his philosophical political beliefs those of the committee without ever having a debate.  The decision process starts and ends with Mr. Joe Day.  Any move to the contrary is either filibustered or simply ignored as he goes on his merry way destroying any chance of building consensus within the committee or relationships outside the committee in the community.

The SCRP officers except for the Treasurer Mr. Micah Rapier continue to make incoherent and incompetent decisions while Mr. Joe Day continues his abusive and derogatory behavior all while violating committee bylaws at will.  There is a historical precedent for both his abusive behavior and willful ignorance and violation of the rules which the local paper reported on in 2017.  Nothing is achieved without honesty, integrity, and transparency which is not possible under Mr. Joe Day’s leadership.

The most recent example of violation bylaws/protocols was the 4^th of July parade in Modesto.  As I was exiting the parade I noticed the SCRP parade entry driving by, so I took a couple of photos.  Chairman Joe Day is standing at the front and directly behind him is a Marla Livengood campaign sign.  The issue of candidate endorsements and the 2020 primary has been contentious and ignored because again all decisions start and end with Mr. Day. 

The committee hasn’t endorsed any candidate for the 10^th Congressional District and yet here he is on the official parade entry with a Livengood campaign sign.  Marla Livengood does not live in the 10^th congressional district and has already made a $20,000 payment to an organization called Citizens for Constitutional Government (CCG) which has long term direct ties to current Vice Chair Nancy Hinton.  This is just another example in a long history of conflicts of interest between the Vice Chair and political candidates that predates my time on the committee.  There was no committee vote on carrying candidate signs, but as is the case with Mr. Joe Day all decisions begin and end with King Day.

So, we are left with a dysfunctional committee and leadership that is rife with conflicts of interest, bad behavior, and an inability to engage not just committee members but the public at large.  King Day established what he calls the “Chairman’s Circle” which I call the “Kings Circle”.  It’s a donor club that requires a $1000 annual donation.  The are only two members of the “Kings Circle” one of those being his highness King Day.  The status has not changed since January 2019.  No one in their right mind is going to write a check to an organization that is rife with mismanagement, failed leadership, and known conflicts of interest that go back almost a decade. Add on the inability to engage in an honest forthright debate on the political and policy issues of the day and we have the definition of dysfunction.  People voting with their checkbooks have unequivocally not just said NO but “HELL NO”!

In closing, the message to my now former fellow committee members is you are down to the two decisions already mentioned.  The first is to continue allowing King Day and Vice Chair Hinton to use the committee for their own personal and financial benefit.  The second is to stand up and force the King to abdicate the throne or make a motion to remove both Chairman Joe Day and Vice Chair Nancy Hinton by a nearly unanimous vote of the committee.

My message to members of the community watching from the sidelines is to hold the line.  Do not engage, do not open your checkbooks, do not volunteer, and do not provide any material support until there is a wholesale change in leadership.

My message to fellow Republican candidates for office is the same which is hold the line, do not darken the door, do not request an endorsement, do not request help because unless you are going to write a check to “CCG” it is not coming.

To everyone who cares about the future of the SCRP demand that the Central Committee clear the decks of misguided, dysfunctional, dishonest, narcissistic, and morally bankrupt behavior at the top.

That my friends is the only way forward that results in a winning strategy for the committee, the community, and both current and future candidates.  Nothing is achieved without honesty, integrity, and transparency which does not exist in any shape, form, or fashion under King Day’s leadership.

The Right Way may not be the easy way and it is certainly not the broken “New Way” philosophy King Day espouses, but it is the only way to address the problems created by failed leadership in this case.

Stay tuned for my next post which will be on the March 2020 primary races which are coming up very fast, and thank you for taking the time to read, comment, and share.