Qs & As on party disloyalty
Party disloyalty is a topic that’s drawing quite a lot of interest these days. (Can’t imagine WHY.)
We managed to get our hands on an official ruling by the NCGOP Plan of Organization committee. The opinion / ruling got handed down in response to three very specific questions posed by party leaders:
[…] Question from: Jack Simms, on behalf of the 5th District Republican Party
Questions presented:
1. Can a Republican Public Office Holder be charged with Party Disloyalty only by the County or District executive committee where the Office Holder resides?
2. Can any 50 State Executive Committee members petition to charge a NC State Senator with Party Disloyalty under the State Plan of Organization?
3. When is an automatically resigned committee member eligible for reinstatement according to the State Plan of Organization?
Answered by: The full NCGOP Plan of Organization Committee […]
Answer:
1. No. Any registered Republican, including a Republican office holder, can be charged with Party Disloyalty under Article IX.E.2 by resolution of any County or District Executive Committee.
2. Yes. In addition to charges of Party disloyalty brought by resolution of a County or District Executive Committee, both Article IX.A.6.a.i and Article IX.E.2 permit charges of disloyalty to be brought also by a notice or petition signed by at least 50 members of the State Executive Committee. The Plan does not place any restrictions on who those 50 members must be. Accordingly, any 50 members of the State Executive Committee can institute proceedings based on alleged Party Disloyalty.
3. The NCGOP Plan of Organization does not provide a timeline for an individual’s eligibility for reinstatement following automatic resignation.
Date issued: October 3, 2025 […]
Anyone reading the PoO should have already comprehended all of that. It is the way it is written and the way it has functioned for decades. It does not take a lot of analysis to figure it out. The reason for the song and dance on it was that NCGOP leadership has been stalling on multiple charges brought against Phil Berger for party disloyalty and was pretending they could not read plain English, or that they should be like an Obama judge and read words into the PoO that are not there and never have been. This was all part of a cover up for Berger’s actions.
The fact that they are finally admitting what the PoO has always plainly said, has to mean that the coverup for Berger is over, and those charges of party disloyalty will finally proceed to hearing before the state Executive Committee at its upcoming November meeting in Greensboro.
When party disloyalty charges were successfully brought against former House Co-Speaker Richard Morgan under the same PoO provisions, nobody in NCGOP leadership tried to play silly games to stop it. Morgan was punished by disqualification from holding party office for five years.
Same song, second verse. The NCGOPe has buried these charges against Berger just like they fought to keep Tillis from being censured.
There are rumblings of another “hail Mary” play by the party leadership to try to save Berger’s bacon. The gambit would involve another question or questions to the PoO Committee that would essentially ask them to make up new rules out of whole cloth. Hopefully that committee will display the same integrity in response to that move, if it is made, that they have up to this point.
The game plan that is being contemplated is to ask the PoO committee if the leadership can put off the vote on these charges until after the primary, on the completely bogus theory that it would be “interfering in the primary” to allow a vote any time before that. There is nothing in the PoO that justifies such a move. Indeed, that move would itself be interfering in a primary, because it would be arbitrarily delaying an action that would normally be held earlier for the sole purpose of protecting someone in a primary.
The first formal complaint against Berger, from Duplin County GOP, came at the first of the year. It should have been brought on for hearing long before now. If there is any interference in a primary, it is from state party leadership in deliberately stalling this process for many months to try to protect Berger from his own misdeeds. These stalling tactics should not be tolerated by the party activists.
Deviating from the normal timetable under which this action would proceed is what, if anything, would involve interfering in a primary. It is state party leadership trying to deviate from that schedule, NOT those who are seeking adjudication on the merits.
My experience with the state GOP leadership in 2022 was that they would sooner sweep things under the rug and stonewall any issues that might embarrass local or state VIPs. When the Rockingham County Chair summarily banned three dedicated and longstanding Republicans in February 2022 (one a local member of the Board of Commissioners, the other a major state leader in another organization) from setting foot at the party headquarters — without any hearing — over some ill-advised and intemperate, insulting posts she held them responsible for on Facebook, my inquiries to the NCGOP over the legality of the Chair’s actions went unanswered. In fact, they notified her of my inquiries, to which information the Chair reacted by dialing me an enraged and hysterical phone call, the details of which were so nutty I cannot repeat them. Despite repeated appeals that said Chair come to reason, the ban remains in effect today and has been compounded by several additional punitive acts towards any critics. Those actions, including a declaration that the Chair and the Chair alone can determine who may enter the doors of the County HQ, have caused a few, to say the least, serious rifts in the local party. When one is a darling of the NCGOP, one becomes untouchable, I guess. Quite arrogant, too, as is the case with the Senator, once from Rockingham.
The NCGOP and several local GOP organizations are operating more like the mafia than legitimate GOP organizations operating under a Republican Party PoO.