#ncgop Meet Valerie.
We reported earlier on a NCGOP chairman candidate’s forum in Lee County. Establishment favorite Craig Collins sent a surrogate
— a woman named Valerie — to speak in his stead. On video, she identified herself as an alumna of Campbell University and former president of The College Republicans.
A couple of well-connected moles in our fair capital city watched the video of the forum, and contacted me with some info that “Valerie” left out. She is Valerie Procopio, currently an employee of lobbyist Laurie Onorio. Onorio is a former VP of The Stewart Group, a political consulting firm run by Dee Stewart — currently running Collins’s campaign for chairman. (My moles tell me Onorio also worked in Tom Fetzer’s lobbying firm before setting out on her own in the lobbying world.)
Valerie is also a board member of Conservatives for Clean Energy — the Stewart directed vehicle fighting to preserve solar energy mandates and subsidies at the state level.
See how pervasive the progressive network is within the Republican Party since we hard core environmentalists hired those two progressive Republican consultants, Dee Stewart and Paul Shumaker as our rent boys? Sure our people are all over the Craig Collins campaign. Dee is our rent boy, and Craig is his rent boy. Why bother to try to hide it any more? Civitas found us out on Stewart and Shumaker, and the rest of it is not rocket science to connect the dots.
Campbell University huh. They forgot to wipe David Lewis’s fingerprints off her ass.
Wait, so you expect her to report her boss’s former employer? You are holding her responsible for the things her boss’s old boss did after her boss left? She didnt worked for Dee herself but you’re playing this ludicrous Six Degrees from a GOP consultant game. Surely attacking a young activist college educated Republican woman, something there aren’t enough of, isn’t the best use of your time.
Attacking is a strong word. Pointing out that she failed to opt for full disclosure is hardly that. And if this individual actually is a cog in the Jones Street lobbying complex, it’s rather appropriate for convention delegates to know that someone from this background is playing a role in determining who shall be the next leader of the NCGOP.
That’s unreasonable. You’re expecting her to disclose information about who her new boss worked for while she was probably still in high school or early in college. She was just a surrogate at one meeting.
Valerie is CURRENTLY a member of the board of one of Stewart’s front groups in his solar scam for the Green Left. That ties her a lot closer to Stewart than former employment. It also ties her to being a current useful idiot is pushing leftwing policy in the General Assembly, and Obama policy at that. If that is the type of person Collins wants as a surrogate, the NCGOP certainly does not need Collins in any capacity.
In Washington, the K Street cartel of lobbyists, consultants, and PR guys is a horror story of manipulation of the GOP, and a big source of problems in the party. Now, we in North Carolina are being invaded by our own mini K Street. We do not need to let them get their evil claws into our state party.
Whether this woman was directly working for the noxious liberal Dee Stewart in supporting Collins or whether her role signifies a deeper engagement by the lobbyist / consultant / PR cartel, either one is very, very bad for our party.
ANYBODY BUT COLLINS.
Thanks for digging out the info on this mysterious Valerie, Brant. It is eye opening.
Valerie sure covered up her current connections by identifying herself only by her past affiliations, and that was certainly by design. She totally failed to mention either of her current occupations as 1) a lobbyist, and 2) a board member of a counterfeit conservative group that is financed by a $350,000 grant from a far left foundation to push left wing policy on renewable energy that goes against the NCGOP Platform.
Even though she serves on this board dedicated to promoting left wing green energy policy, Valerie cleverly ducked answering a question on that subject. One wonders what her salary is for serving on that board out of the $350,000 grant. I imagine she receives some compensation for selling her soul to the far left.
NC is a big state, and I have certainly seen NCGOP candidates use surrogates, but they have in the past been party leaders – county chairmen, district chairmen, or legislators. This is a brand new one from Craig Collins, using a lobbyist, but I think it tells us exactly where Collins is coming from and it dovetails with the recent robocalls Collins sent out from lobbyist Tom Fetzer.
There is an old saying about birds of a feather, and we get a clear picture when we add Stewart to Valerie to Fetzer to Collins.
We have to keep the circle of friends tight so we can extract as much money from private GOP donors, this helps us get our people in office and into these worthless leadership title roles. We can in turn laundry more public dollars out of the public’s cash register and spread those dollars to our friends in the bigger circle who will in turn give some of those same dollars back to us in the form of campaign contributions. What do you think we could just write ourselves checks from the public treasury directly, no way we’ve got to take those bills to the cleaners first and run them through the laundry then we get them back when they are all squeaky clean. Those first tier private GOP donors fund the racket, even cheer for us for the great job we’re doing. It works out great! Don’t you feel better knowing we’re in charge. Make sure you pay those taxes on time. We’re counting on you! Goooo Team GOP!!!
Thank goodness we can get this all this wonderful info out to as many people as possible. Continue to get the word out!
It’s sad that Dee and Craig Collins are so ashamed of being Progressive Republicans that they have to slink around and call themselves “Conservatives”.
Progressives support corporate welfare and they support Collins.
All of these connections with lobbyists would explain something that had always puzzled me about Collins running for state chairman when he runs a one man law office. Unlike someone in a law partnership who could step away, let other partners pick up the slack, and then later step back, someone in a one man office has to close the office to have the time to serve as chairman, and to reopen it later would mean a period of rebuilding with significantly reduced income. That is why the lawyers who have served as state chairman in modern times have been from multi-partner law firms, not one man practices. It is not just about income while serving as chairman, but also afterward.
One thought I had was that McCrory would give him a job afterward, but this administration, unlike Martin or Holshouser, has been downright frigid (with a handful of exceptions) about hiring people with party leadership roles in their background. Besides, if Collins were elected and served two terms, he would only have another two years left in the McCrory administration and then be right back with having to rebuild a law priactice from scratch.
The answer is lobbying. Collins would appear to want to follow the Fetzer path of using the state chairman’s gig as a stepping stone into lobbying.. State Bar income surveys have found lawyers in lobbying are the highest paid in the legal profession, on average.
When Woody White suddenly withdrew as the establishment’s candidate for state chairman in 2009. Fetzer was a failed political consultant whose spectacularly blowing the Elizabeth Dole campaign in 2008 ended his consulting career, and he was hard at work trying to get a gig on K Street in DC as a lobbyist. When the opening to run for chairman came up, he shifted gears to go for that as a stepping stone into lobbying. K Street still would not have him, so he went to the Junion Varsity lobbying bench in Raleigh.
No wonder Fetzer did the robocall for Collins. Fetzer is Collins role model. And if you go back to his early days, even Stewart did lobbying as well as consutling. It all fits, and it explains why someone with a one man law office would want to run for state chairman.
The first way to solve this problem is to make clear that the Chairmanship is a non paid highest volunteer position in the party. And sorry for the repeat below for the ones that have already read this
Below is a excerpt of the Plan of Organization and I propose that the delegates to the 2015 NCGOP convention add the word Volunteer in front the of word Chairman and in front of the Vice Chairman. This would make it clear to all in the party that these positions should be unpaid positions and it would help remove the loophole that is currently being used to pay the chairman. The plan gives the central committee power to hire a executive director but at no place in the plan does it talk about a paid chairman. The Chairmanship needs to be made clear that it is a non salary highest volunteer position in the party.
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ARTICLE VI – STATE ORGANIZATION
A. ANNUAL CONVENTIONS
2. Election of Officers
In every odd-numbered year, the State Convention shall elect a —VOLUNTEER— State Chairman and a —VOLUNTEER— Vice-Chairman who shall serve for a term of 2 years or until their successors are elected.