He’s OUT.
That’s the word I am getting from inside that meeting room in Raleigh — by a margin of 200 to 79. (If it’s any consolation, my sources are telling me Jim Womack has done a bang-up job as Harnett’s chief advocate.)
The next step is to find a replacement. Prior to the meeting, my sources told me there were 120 votes FOR keeping Hasan. There MUST have been some kind of deal struck on the replacement in order to get this kind of sea change.
So, a bunch of people — representing congressional districts that no longer exist — overthrew a man while THEY themselves could likely not survive a vote of confidence by their own local parties.
The arguments for firing the man were a joke. The hacking ch
arge was clearly a scam. Fundraising ineptitude? The party under Hasan outraised Robin Hayes. (Speaking of, here’s the big dummy himself babbling about the whole affair on video.) Inability to run a meeting? Anybody spent any time around Ma Cotten or her lovely daughter?
For either side, this was NOT about the man named Hasan Harnett. For the GOPe, this has been about protecting what they have from the rabble outside the beltline. For Hasan’s supporters, this was a rebellion against elites they saw as ignoring their will and trampling on their rights. The rise of super PACs and affiliated committees allow more and more politicians to simply ignore local party organizations. (T
he governor’s campaign has made it SOP to run roughshod over or completely ignore local parties.) But Super PACs don’t canvass door to to door, man phone banks, put out signs, or work the polls on election day.
In the end, this whole thing wasn’t necessary. If they didn’t personally like Mr. Harnett, they could have ridden out the two year term and run someone new. Doing this — they have made Hasan Harnett a martyr. They have PISSED OFF a whole lot of people they are going to need for the June and November votes.
This is yet one more blow to the valiant Tea Party / grassroots movement that was borne in 2009. The GOPe throws us a few rhetorical bones and loves our cash, sweat equity and votes. But they ANSWER to the PACs and their BIG campaign checks. We really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things — at least, to the GOPe. 
Now, it’s time to decide: Does the Republican Party still matter to you? Are you going to keep falling in line and serving these people despite their record of repeatedly ignoring you, disrespecting you, lying to you, and stomping on your rights?
WHEN is enough ENOUGH?
A third party now … there is absolutely zip to lose. The alternative is more serial betrayal by the GOP as it becomes virtually indistinguishable from the criminal Democrat Party, betrayal as far as the eye can see.
No need to start from scratch….the Libertarian Party has ballot access and we can walk right in and take over the joint, and start building us a new Party.
I am curious, do you agree that people of integrity should resign their positions of authority if they are not going to fulfill their responsibilities toward the ORGANIZATION they serve?
We call for Cooper to enforce the laws our GOP state government pass, Dont people of integrity resign when they cannot do the the job they are ELECTED to do? Just curious.
Tossing the Chairman was not about the Chairman it was about a internal power struggle and about the ones the lost the power during the last election getting the power back before the upcoming convention
Why rush to vote on a new chairman if they did not have a plan all along to get the person they wanted.
yes we had 3 nominees but the person that won was the gentleman who had a prepared speech to read from during his nomination speech
“people of integrity”
so who has more integrity John Boehner or Ted Cruz ?
well Boehner crew won this weekend and the Cruz crowd lost
Throughout this conflict, Tom Stark as General Counsel has failed to represent the entire organization, but instead just one faction. He even served as one of the prosecutors Saturday. In the past, we have expected the party General Counsel to be more neutral among party factions than that and to look out for the whole party, not just one faction. Should he resign?
HELL YES he should go when he called a group of people seeking the truth Confederates in a attack letter about this matter
Patrick – Are you saying he is a damnyankee using ”Confederate” as an attack word?
Afraid you may be right about a third party.
Now the Dems can claim the GOP is racist. I for one am not going to stop. Going to rethink what I am doing between now and Election Day.
Hell they are racist starting with Wayne Kung and Robin Hayes who treated Dr. TIMOTHY JOHNSON, the first black Vice Chair of the NCGOP and now this modification of rules, throw out the First BLACK CHAIR HARNETT. Sound like a bigoted white club that is hell hent on giving the governorship to Cooper and losing control of the legislative branches.
I don’t believe Lysol Man is going to have much appeal to the younger voters…of any race.
None of this crap started until Dallas Woodhouse showed up.
“New” Chairman is Robin Hayes.
Sheesh, I am starting to dislike “the party” enough that I wonder if I’ll even vote for the county GOP slate this year. What a pack of jackals.
I think I am going to move to Tennessee and stay out of politics and just spend the rest of my years fly fishing. Screw this state!
do you have room for me
So let me see if I understand this correctly…200 people voted to oust a chairman that how many delegates had elected? 700?
Hayes says in this link (ABC news) that he will unify the party. He is delusional.
I already heard him make a derogatory remark after the Barbour lunch at the Charlotte convention and he didn’t care who heard it. “….those TEA party people.”
I thought Collins would make a good chair but Harnett has been treated wrongly. I wouldn’t support Hayes for anything because of his support of Rev. Mark Harris running against conservative Constitutionalist Dr. Greg Brannon for Senate who was already in the race. So we have Tillis who voted to end debate allowing the appointment of Loretta Lynch as AG and yet they blame Lynch for all sorts of failures. You elected her.
It is clear the goal of the elites is to squash the grassroots, the TEA Party and put us in our place. The destruction of America doesn’t even seem to be on their radar. They can’t seem to look past the tips of their noses they are holding so high.
Well we are done holding our noses to vote for their puppets who vote the same as democrats.
http://abc11.com/politics/ncgop-votes-to-remove-state-party-chairman/1316846/
Had a bum knee, so to resolve the issue they shoot themselves in the foot. Amazing how petty and corrupt they can get when special interest money is at stake.
Right On! So disgusted.
Robin Hayes is his replacement? Night of the walking dead!
Robin is a perfect chairman. He is an old dude, not very vigorous, so he will be a good little figurehead who will leave the real power to me and the Central Committee. Why do you think we selected him?
We want a figurehead. The reason that some of those Central Committee members turned on Hasan was that they expected him to be a figurehead, but he showed he would not be, and they did not like that.
Robin also has a long history of playing ball with Karl Rove and the boys in the national establishment, and he was an establishment supporter in this year’s presidential primary. He also has a history of chumming with the progressive Republicans as shown by his involvement in one of the oldest progressive Republican organizations out there, the Ripon Society.
Even better, Robin is a rich dude, so if we run short of money, be can help cover our paychecks. That our pay comes on time is an important consideration. Winning elections, not so much.
Best of all, putting in Robin really showed those peons the little people who is boss. We wrote rules to move to an immediate election so that they would not have time to get organized to fill the vacancy. They did manage to put up two last minute candidates, Keith Kidwell, a county chairman from down east, and Jack Brosch from near Charlotte who had run for chairman before as a grassroots challenger. Brosch even had the brass to point out that if Robin was elected, the Tea Party would shun the NCGOP in November, which is probably true, but who cares?. But we knew we had that vote wired ahead of time and these last minute candidates would not have time to organize. Heck, they even had to make their speeches off the top of their heads while Robin came in with a written 5 page speech that he read.
One of those little people had the audacity to try to change Tom Stark’s rules to put off the election so that other candidates could have time to get their names out and campaign, but Zann Bunn rose to the occaision and cut off that attempt by opposing that effort and then moving to adopt the rules as Tom Stark had written them for us with no further amendments allowed to be considered. Someone from the other side, probably Womack had gone to the trouble of writing a rival set of rules, but thanks to Zann, they never even got a chance to offer those on the floor. It looked like someone was at the center microphone about to do that, but Zann nipped that in the bud.
Zann was a real champion for our establishment side. She also made a motion successfully to not even allow the Executive Committee to debate what they had heard in the presentations from the two sides. Who cares if that was extremely heavy handed. Billy Miller had done a good job interrupting and sowing confusion in Womack’s presentation, and debate would have given others a chance to repair that. We could not allow that.
Old Joyce and her daughter stayed pretty subdued at this meeting. I think Old Joyce was still miffed that we decided to give the chairmanship to Robin instead of her. But Zann Bunn made up for it. She really carried the water on the floor as our point person.
The establishment bunch gave a clinic on corrupt power politics. They also exposed themselves as inept, unfit, and unworthy leaders.
To Matt, the North Carolina Republicans can also say with confidence that we are a racist party. Just look at the room of attendees in this meeting, and the handful of black attendees, half who were guests and required to leave before business got underway. Who would subject themselves to this evil!
1) Robin Hayes, who never raised money worth a sh*t as the Chairman will suddenly raise money in the next few weeks. This will be the establishment’s way of saying Harnett wasn’t doing his job.
2) The best thing folks can do who are upset about this is to unseat every county GOP official, especially chairs, who supported this. They live to be players. It’s time they were taken out of the game.
3) There should be big time demonstrations at the convention next week. This BS about unifying the Party is nonsense. What is going on now is not worth unifying around. Change must be made.
*** Remember… I HUGE message was sent to the GOP establishment when Harnett was elected while every major player support Craig Collins. Today’s vote was the counter punch. The grassroots/tea party/true conservatives can either get mad and go home or flex our muscles just like we did at the convention last year.
If we allow this to go unanswered, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. #conservativevotesmatter
“Fundraising ineptitude? The party under Hasan outraised Robin Hayes.”
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
LOL
Take down McCrory and the “majority”. Make them pay for this.
Before we start taking this out on legislators, lets not paint with too broad a brush. Conservatives asked legislators not to come, and that is what many of them did. They stayed away. That should not be punished at the polls. A few of them came and supported Hasan. Those should be rewarded, not punished.
I may have missed one, but personally I did not see any Senators there. If someone did, please note it.
As to House members, those I saw were Rep. Pat Hurley, Rep. John Skoza, Rep. Skip Stam, Rep. Mike Speciale, and Rep. Larry Pittman. The key votes were by written ballot, but at least on the removal of Harnett, if not on the election of Hayes, there were public standing votes on some important procedural issues. Speciale and Pittman voted with the grassroots conservatives on those standing votes, while the other three voted with the establishment. If you are in Speciale’s district or Pittman’s district, they need to be rewarded, not punished.
If anyone saw any other House members, please report who was there and how they were voting on the open votes. There may have been an additional conservative or two that I missed who should get credit for standing up for the cause.
We do not need to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Already wrote my campaign donation check to Pittman!
Justin Burr and Jason Saine were both there and voted with the Establishment during the standing votes a and presumably on secret ballot votes.
Correction. While I saw them enter the McKimmon Center, I really don’t know how they voted, it’s just something I was told. Fortunately, I was also told that hearsay was permitted at the Trial.
Saine? I am surprised I missed his bulk waddling around. But he is one of the more disgusting establishment hacks in the legislature, so if he was there, there is little doubt he did it for the establishment.
Justin Burr has been pretending to be a conservative lately, but I guess we can see through that charade now if your information is correct.
I wish some of the unaffiliated types would get a conservative unaffiliated running in Saine’s district. Saine is awful across the board, and it would be great to try to bounce the jerk out of the legislature.
There were plenty of senators there, Sen. Joyce Krawic nominated Hayes, plenty of others there too, just no one knows what they look like unless you spend way too much time dealing with Raleigh.
The Republican Party’s favorable ratings have fallen once again, and the decline is largely due to broad disapproval among Republican voters who feel betrayed by party leaders.
According to the survey conducted by Pew Research, only 33% of Americans view Republicans favorably while 62% view them unfavorably.
The polls show over 60% of Republican voters say they feel ”betrayed” by the GOP leadership in Congress. There is a serious malaise in our party coming from the establishment brownnosing Obama and refusing to stand up and fight him. This is a real problem for the party to overcome. Additional attacks on the conservative wing of the party as occurred with the lynching of Hasan Harnett just add to the party’s perception problem among our own voters. Average voters are not going to ditch candidates on that action alone, but that action tends to confirm other negative feelings about the party leadership, and that is where it can damage us in November. It was a very very stupid political move by the establishment.
In 15 years, none of this stuff will matter. The GOP is dying and the Democrat Party is soon to follow. The power-hungry folks on the Central Committee have to satisfy their egos, but none of it is going to matter within the next few years.
All I can legally say is I hope everyone has safe travels home
I can say one more thing legally. Thank you for to this website and all the effort it takes to bring truth and transparency to North Carolina politics…
I just heard this on TWC news. It sounded like Harnett did just what he was supposed to do as a conservative. He wanted change. He wanted to lower the convention fee (which is an illegal poll tax by the way) to allow more people to participate. But the elites don’t want that.
We see that are more afraid of conservatives and the TEA party than being called racist or anything else. Ousting the guy when he is traveling on business and not there to defend himself is un-American and un-Constitutional. The parties have put themselves above the Constitution.
Our political parties have become like unions who bully the rest into submission. We didn’t have any political parties when our country was formed. That is nowhere in the Constitution. But cliquey people set themselves up to control our political process. They have begun to resemble mafia mobs. We have seen the destruction by unions of education, auto, steel airline and other industries. Now we are figuring out that the same thing has happened under our noses with our elections.
As a lifelong Republican who has sat through many executive committee meetings and state conventions I’ll be voting AGAINST McCrory and everyone with an R beside their name this year and I already have over a dozen other Republicans who have agreed to do the same.
Fuck you Dallas Woodhouse. You and your band of lobbyists and cronies will own the failure you’ve sewn.
Jim Womack was cut off by the meeting chairman Billy Miller repeatedly for things that the prosecution was allowed to do with impunity. Meeting chairman Billy Miller was very onesided in his handling of matters. He also had a knack for cutting things off before speakers from the floor were able to make their point. For example, there was a precedent from a NCGOP General Counsel ruling in Haywood County that went opposite of a key Miller ruling that helped the prosecution. When someone from Haywood tried to make it on the floor, Miller was obviously tipped off and ordered her to ”suspend” before she got her point out fully. Miller’s bias was very clear.
Womack would have done well to have studied Haymaker posts and learned something about Stark’s distortions of the Plan of Organization. He let Stark get away with a lot of things where there were very solid arguments against Stark’s position, as have been explained here.
From some comments after the meeting, Harnett lost some votes because he did not come to defend himself. The establishment’s underhanded strategy of setting this meeting at a time they knew Harnett would be out of the country worked for the stinkers.
I can’t think of a single Republican that will get my vote in Nov. This party deserves to die. They’re of no use to any of us and just as bad as the Dems.
I do believe, sadly, that I’m in agreement.
For the record, it appeared to me that Hasan was doing fine as a party chair. However, I recognize that there is a LOT that goes on behind the scenes that I do not know about, dont need to know about, and since i didnt have a vote today, I dont WANT to know about.
This is what I do know.
Our party has to have both wings to fly…the establishment and the grassroots conservatives.
Both wings have their fair share of nitwits.
The establishment needs to respect the grassroots and not view them as the enemy. Likewise for the grassroots toward the establishment.
The ONLY people who should EVER hold office within the party are those who work diligently with both wings and who work to build bridges between them.
Establishment types want our votes and our sweat, just not our say. However, if i hear one more jerk tell me why they are #NeverTrump or #NeverBurr, I will want to hurt somebody.
Anyone who holds a party office and refuses to support the party’s candidates up and down the ballot have forfeited their right to any office in the party. If that is YOU, then if you want to see the BIGGEST problem we face this fall, dont look to Raleigh or Washington, look in the mirror.
It is really just a matter of integrity. Dont take on positions of authority and the responsibilities that go with them if you know you will not fulfill them.
Really no difference between you and any of those people in the GOPe or the TEA party to so many are complaining about.
In my opinion.
Well said.
btw: as someone who attended the hearing, the reporting, above, is incomplete &/or inaccurate in places. Given the importance of this election cycle, both are critical, as is the FACT that the party “needs both wings to fly”. We now need to be building bridges, not walls!
What do we know about the Libertarian candidate for Governor? Who is he and what are his positions?
I told Robin Hayes (after he was elected (2010-2011)) that the impression he left me with was;
Thank you TEA Party for electing Republicans to the State Supreme Court,
Thank you TEA Party for electing Richard Burr again,
Thank you TEA Party for electing a Republican majority to the State House,
Thank you TEA Party for electing Republican majority to the State Senate,
Thank you TEA Party for electing Republicans to the vast majority of County seats,
F*** Y** TEA Party we have a Machine to run.
It is sad indeed that Central Committee thinks so little of us(the grassroots, TEA Party folks) who are the majority by a long shot, that they are willing to sacrifice our votes for their power trip.
We spoke very loudly when we elected Harnett and NIx last year. What I see is the Establishment is trying to drive us out of the Party.
This is the reason “Unaffiliated” is now the majority party in most Counties now.
I’m not sure you all were in the same room as I was. For those of you that were not there, the difference in the number of supporters at the beginning and at the end can be explained by the preponderance of evidence and support of evidence presented by Stark and Cumbie. Womack I’m so sorry to say did a terrible job. In two instances he agreed that Chairman Harnett was sponsible for what he had been accused. It was telling that Cahirman Harnett was not there to defend the allegations for himself.
While Chairman Harnett regardless of his good intentions has been for the past year a disastrous leader. His inability to run meetings with any order and seeming lack of desire to learn RRO, his lack of leadership in the face of party disputes, his lack of Compromise in regards to the cost of convention, his constant pandering , encoding racism, playing this out in the media all the way to Fox News and his actions surrounding the website are all evidence of his inability to effectively lead our state party. However, many of us are not without fault.
The constant barrage of emails, placing blame here and there are fueled with emotion rather than solution. Vendettas waged are NEVER a solution. Individual interpretations of the POO are NEVER a solution.
The fact of the matter is: when you are elected at any level you represent everyone not one interest or the other and gosh darn it we are on the same team. I have heard from copious amounts of emails that the CC is killing grassroots. I am here to tell you, we all are killing grassroots with our part in this ugly game. Let’s stop with the name calling. NCGOPe, TeaParty etc. I happen to be a proud supporter of both and both CAN exist in the same party. Let’s rise above the level of the Democrats and show the world we are the better party.
There are three sides in this story and regardless of the one you choose at the end of the day it is up to us to continue in unity and order so we can put together an army that defeats the Democrats machine in November.
I would love to debate the “evidence” you reference but due to the rules of executive session I cannot do this so once again debate is shut down
Hasan’s lack of experience showed in several respects. He seriously missed a trick by cancelling his April 9 ExCom meeting in the expectation that the other side would be fair and move the April 30 date. A much smarter move would have been to offer to cancel the April 9 meeting only if the circulator of the petitions for the April 30 meeting agreed to withdraw the petition. Then a mutually convenient date could have been agreed on to deal with matters that needed to be dealt with. That would have helped to avoid some of the bitterness over the way things were done.
When the dispute over the convention fee came up, Hasan Harnett should have responded with an emergency ExCom meeting rather than the way he did. I suspect the ExCom in that situation would have had some very serious questions for staff and the Central Committee on convention costs and why they were so out of hand compared to the previous year. Hasan should have explained what he was doing and why he was doing it, whichever way he went, at the very time he was doing it.
As to the computer hacker that contacted him, Hasan should have immediately turned that over to law enforcement.
None of this necessarily justifies the action that was taken, but it would have put Hasan Harnett in a much better posture to deal with the attacks.
As to the procedure at the April 30 meeting, one of the most glaring things was the cutting off of any discussion by the Executive Committee. In these situations, the Executive Committee functions as a jury, and in America any jury is permitted to deliberate before reaching a verdict. Often jury deliberation changes minds as jurors discuss the information they have heard. Denying the opportunity for the executive committee / jury to deliberate was just downright unAmerican. Even in many Third World countries, juries are allowed to deliberate, so Hasan Harnett was not even afforded the procedural safeguards that exist in many Third World countries.
There is fault all the way around on this fiasco – the chairman, the Central Committee, the Executive Committee, and the Executive Director. We did not need this rumble in a critical election year.
I would add that the rules that were passed out when members checked in did provide for discussion and deliberation by the executive committee that was functioning as a jury but a member of the Central Committee quickly made a motion to eliminate that opportunity. I can only conclude that some people did not really want to hold a fair hearing on this important matter or give ExCom members any chance to deliberate on the facts and arguments.
And if the events you highlight are true and because of the executive session rules republicans in this state will not get the chance to ever know
But had someone done what you say. That person would need to always be remembered as someone not willing to allow truth to prevail. Someone that acts anti republican shutting out the opportunity for things given as fact to be challenged to see if they held any truth
Basically this tactic is part of the same EVIL tactics used for years by the power brokers in the ncgop to keep their actions from ever being challeged
This is why the ousted chairman was nothing more than a fall guy so they could once again regain their power they love so much.
This has nothing to do with winning elections cause win or loose they will still hold the power in their hands
Message to Andy: Harnett noted on his calendar as early as January that he would be out of the country on April 30th so please pay attention to the facts! This was by no means a trial as the former chair could not defend himself. What a complete joke this session was!!!!
I’m a business guy and I would have cancelled whatever plans to be at this meeting if I was Hasan. It gave the impression that this meeting was unimportant to him and that all of the GOP was unimportant to him, which is probably close to the truth.
On some things in business, one has the luxury of doing that, but on others, due to other people’s schedules they do not.
I agree that not being there hurt Harnett, and that is why the plotters deliberately chose a date that they expected he would have trouble getting there. That was very, very dirty pool.
Womack had two particular problems in getting Hasan’s defense out properly. One was a lack of time with Hasan on the details due to Hasan being away. The other, of course, was Billy Miller treating Womack very differently from the chair than he did the establishment side, which chopped up Womack’s presentation.
Another example of bias from the chair which was not obvious to most involved one of Billy Miller’s rulings that contradicted a previous ruling on the same subject made by the General Counsel of the party. That was a huge overreach by a temporary meeting chairman of an executive committee meeting contradicting a ruling on the same subject made by the elected General Counsel of the party. Without Miller doing that, the establishment would have been dead in the water on their lynching of Hasan.
It was only in talking with someone who knew the facts after the meeting that I learned the full story.
The Haywood County GOP had a petition to remove an officer by impeachment, using the same PoO provision used against Harnett. The issue of whether it took 2/3 of the total membership to remove or just 2/3 of those present was addressed to the General Counsel at the time for a ruling. He ruled that this PoO provision required a vote of 2/3 of the total membership to remove an officer. That was the existing precedent of the official interpretation of this language in the NCGOP PoO when the April 30 meeting occured. It would have sunk the plotters.
The woman from Haywood who tried to raise the issue was repeated cut off by Billy Miller before she could get the issue out, demanding that she ”suspend”. He never let her get out that there was an existing official interpretation of the PoO provision by the party highest authority on what the Plan means. Once the words ”Haywood County” came out of her mouth, Miller seemed to have been tipped off to where she was going and cut her off. Miller’s authority was as a piss-ant compared to that of the General Counsel on this subject, yet he made a contrary ruling to keep the plotters in the game. Miller exposed his bias on this and other matters. He helped railroad the outcome of this meeting.