Monday, April 13, 2009

Bramble Ambush

Curt Bramble and his wife, Susan, came to the open-to-all-candidates open house (Lynn Taylor & Lisa Shepherd were the only two that came) . Susan is the current Utah County Republican Party Secretary and Curt is the current State Senate Majority Leader.

I felt really bad. My precinct's vice chair resigned. As precinct chair it is my responsibility to appoint a new vice chair. I had just over a month to find someone. I had no idea it was going to be so hard. The biggest problem was finding someone who was available the Saturday of Convention. There are plenty of people who would have agreed if their schedule would have allowed. I went back on my notes from the caucus meeting and found someone who had attended, ran for a position, and would be able to come to convention. So I appointed Olivia Shepherd, who happens to be an adult daughter of Lisa Shepherd.

However, I had no idea that this would be a cause of contention with Curt. He asked a very pointed question to Lisa referring to this matter. I couldn't even believe it! He and Susie both said that he doesn't look over the lists until she makes them public. These lists were not public at the time of this open house (24 hours after the deadline of getting the changes in), so he should not have even known about this. I apologize in anyway for making this process any harder for Lisa.

*** Just after 10:a.m. this morning, Curt Bramble called to clarify a few things. I had a pleasant conversation with him. He informed me that his wife, Susie, had not given him the new list and he had no idea, at the time of the open house, that Olivia had been appointed. He said that Susie had only made a comment to him that Lisa had sent over a list of 10+ people that had been appointed in her district, he did not know who they were exactly. I apologize for assuming that he had access to something he did not, though it does seem like he had a heads up by the comment his wife made.

He said that since there were so few people there (which is true) that it wasn't a public meeting and he did have a few things that he was going to ask Lisa in private, but decided to do it openly. They were really aggressive questions that seemed like it would have been more appropriate had he stuck to his originally plan and asked them privately.

He made mention of myself and another lady being in favor of Lisa, who were in attendance. For myself, I can say that is true, but should clarify that Lisa did not know I was coming to the meeting and I did not know that the other mentioned lady was coming either. I had come to hear from Lynn and any other candidates who might show up (originally there had been at least one other who said he was going to be there).

*** A second phone call was made by Curt, but that was only to remove some sensitive security information to a future event. With completely understanding, I immediately removed the information.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That was an interesting meeting! I do support Lisa in her bid for Party Secretary, but I attended the meeting solely to meet Lynn Taylor; I didn't attend as a candidate cheerleader. I still have a few more candidates to get out and meet.

As for delegate replacements, we have had several delegates within our district move and resign, and one passed away. There were several appointments to be made, and our precinct chairs did a great job appointing replacements. If anyone is surprised about the number of replacements, it is probably because others don't run as tight a ship as Lisa -- she makes sure our district is running properly and therefore makes sure our delegate slots are full. Our district wants its allocated representation! That's a good thing! Some others simply don't put the time and effort into the job that Lisa does.

Anonymous said...

PS -- I should probably also mention that the majority of these appointments were not "last minute"; rather, appointments have been ongoing. Some were re-submissions of changes that had been submitted earlier but had not been changed on the official Party delegate records.