Home subscribe manage Las Vegas Review-Journal
  Jobs Cars Homes Shopping Travel Weddings Golf Best of Las Vegas Photo   Search:

RECENT EDITIONS
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

News
Apr. 29, 2008
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

STATE CONVENTION: Official: GOP probably continuing in Reno

Beers rebuts conspiracy theorists

By MOLLY BALL
REVIEW-JOURNAL
More Info

Nevada Republican Party Executive Director Zac Moyle said Monday that the resumption of the weekend's incomplete state convention probably will be in Reno.

"We are meeting with everyone we can and getting all our ducks in a row," he said of plans to finish the convention that was abruptly halted Saturday night without electing delegates to the Republican National Convention.

Newsvine Digg Fark Technorati reddit StumbleUpon del.icio.us Slashdot Propeller Mixx Furl Twitter MySpace Facebook Google Bookmarks Yahoo! Bookmarks Windows Live Favorites Ask MyStuff myAOL Favorites

Most Popular Stories
  • NORM: Penthouse wants piece of the Strip
  • RAMPAGE ENDS IN SUICIDE: Man runs amok in Las Vegas
  • ROBBERY-HOMICIDE CASE: Juror sent flirtatious messages
  • Father mourns his daughter
  • NORM: 'Joe the Plumber' too booked for LV
  • Judge asks court to release son arrested after crash that killed girl
  • NORM: Strip club owners, 'Vinny' part ways
  • Police ask: Are there others?
  • Anger over cuts reaches fever pitch
  • Working beneath Lake Las Vegas



    • Party rules require the convention to conclude in Reno, Moyle said, and a new plan might be announced by the end of the week. It could be several weeks before the continuance of the convention.

    Hundreds of enthusiastic supporters of presidential candidate Ron Paul attended the convention and succeeded in changing the ground rules to allow any state delegate to run for national delegate, rather than limiting delegate choices to a pre-selected slate.

    Angry recriminations continued to fly. Many delegates suspected the party establishment shut down the convention not because time ran out for the newly lengthy delegate election process, as party leaders claimed, but because they feared a takeover of the state's national delegation by Paul forces.

    State Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, the convention chairman, said he hoped those fears could be allayed by a show of good faith.

    "People were expecting us to secretly reconvene at 3 in the morning on Sunday, and that's simply ludicrous," he said of some of the conspiratorial rumors that flew after the convention's sudden recess. "You have a committed group of volunteer Republican Party members who are trying to create the best mechanism to express the will of Nevada Republicans. Nothing underhanded or duplicitous is going to occur. We just need to let the nominations committee get the lists together, figure out how and where and when we're going to do this, and notify all of the delegates."

    Beers said delegates should rest assured they will be given ample time and notification to prepare for the new date.

    Nevada sends 34 delegates to the national convention, including three automatic delegates: two Republican National Committee members and state Chairwoman Sue Lowden. Twenty-two delegates are elected from the ranks of all the state delegates, while nine more are elected from their congressional districts.

    On Saturday, the convention broke into congressional districts and held delegate elections for the latter nine positions. The elections for the 1st and 3rd Districts, which are in Clark County, were completed, while counting for the 2nd District was halted halfway through and the ballots stored under seal in the safe of the Peppermill.

    Party officials declined to release the results of the two completed counts on Monday, saying they had to be certified by the convention to become official. However, Moyle said, those votes would count, and would not be thrown out and replaced by new elections.

    As for the remaining 22 delegates, he said there were 187 nominations from the convention floor and about 200 names previously submitted to the nominations committee. Those two lists will be merged, with a lot of overlap likely, and each would-be delegate will get two minutes to speak at the re-convention.

    Jeff Greenspan, regional coordinator for the Ron Paul campaign, said Paul supporters will "do the same thing we always do, which is show up and stay in the game."

    He said Paul supporters at the convention weren't the only ones who objected to the idea that only delegates handpicked by a small party committee would have a chance to go to the convention. There were 600 Paul delegates at the convention, he said, but 752 of the 1,347 delegates in attendance voted for the rules change.

    Paul backers, he said, "want to be a part of the Republican Party," not take it over.

    University of Nevada, Reno political scientist Eric Herzik said the failure of the convention was an embarrassment for Republicans, who should have anticipated the situation.

    "The Ron Paul people are fanatical in their attachment to Ron Paul and their belief that the Republican Party has gone astray," he said. "There was no effort by the mainstream Republican Party to get delegates there, so they were ambushed by something they should have seen coming."

    The convention revealed a lack of organization in the party in Nevada and a possible softness of support for presumptive nominee John McCain, he said.

    Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@ reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.



    Leave Your Comment 9 Reader Comments
    Terms & Conditions
    The following comments are provided by readers and are the sole responsiblity of the authors. The reviewjournal.com does not review comments before publication nor guarantee their accuracy. By publishing a comment here you agree to abide by the comment policy. If you see a comment that violates the policy, please notify the web editor.

    Some comments may not display immediately due to an automatic filter. These comments will be reviewed within 48 hours. Please do not submit a comment more than once.
    Current Word Count:

    RPinNV wrote on May 27, 2008 04:48 PM: Nevada continues to make worldwide news. Updated daily!

    Follow the historic coverage here:

    http://bob-beers-and-sue-lowden.blogspot.com/


    Gmartine wrote on May 02, 2008 07:07 AM: The Republican GOP in Nevada is committing fraud. They illegally called a recess at the convention due to the urging of McCain supporters. The McCain supporters even walked out so that we couldn't hold a quorum and continue with party business.

    You can even see now that other papers are in full GOP Fraud swing of trying to pretend that Ron Paul supporters were wrong when they played completely by the rules.


    Brian Kominsky wrote on April 30, 2008 11:04 AM: People need to hear this. Reporters report facts. Sometimes those facts are quotes.

    Zac Moyle, executive director of the party said this: "those votes would count, and would not be thrown out and replaced by new elections."

    We need to take him at his word. And we need to hold him to that word. Seems fair and reasonable to me.

    And about Senator Beers, if his inbox is anything like mine, I understand his comments. It's time to chill just a bit and expect people to keep their word. This isn't the old days, when newspapers ended up lining bird cages. Now, it ends up filling endless servers in a dark room in Slovenia, where it can always be retrieved by a google search.

    We need to make this a red state again, and the best way to do that is to bring Congressman Paul's supporters into the fold by acting in concert with what has been said.

    Brian Kominsky
    ronpaul2008


    SilentFoot wrote on April 29, 2008 03:38 PM: Boy are you guys at the Review Journal part of the problem. You're accomplices to treason. Conventions are supposed to take nominations from the floor and you people know that. What would be the point if the leadership just got to pick the winners?

    This is just another propaganda rag.


    Ghost wrote on April 29, 2008 10:23 AM: 1. Ron Paul beat McCain in the Nevada Primary

    2. The hall the convention used was rented for Saturday and Sunday

    3. The casino offered to allow them to continue past 6pm on Saturday

    4. Beers ignored party rules are improperly recessed the proceedings

    I could go on...


    Drumz wrote on April 29, 2008 10:05 AM: Blatant incompetence.

    Is Nevada the new Florida?

    You people had FOUR YEARS to prepare for this.

    Let the people's voices be heard already!!! It's clearly Ron Paul's state. McCain lost Nevada fair and square - get over it.


    Clay Season wrote on April 29, 2008 09:04 AM: The RJ should be ashamed. Their headline speaks of nutty "conspiracy theorists" according to Beers.

    BTW, I was a delegate at the Convention.

    Ask yourself who did the conspiring? Those who came to the Convention with their list of who we could vote for or those who came to the Convention and were shocked to find out we couldn't choose our own candidates?

    Did we secretly conspire to sneak into the Convention and unleash our devilish plan to nominate from the floor of the Convention the way we did at the caucus and the County Conventions? Speaking for myself, I was astounded to discover the Insiders had not only decided who would be on the ballot but also they forbid us from adding anyone to it and refused to let us even see the list! Then they said they wanted us to vote to adopt their list of who would be OUR nominees without even seeing it!

    Who did the conspiring? Those who made the list ahead of time? Or those of us who spontaneously fought to have open elections?

    The RJ should wash their mouths and printing presses out with soap.


    Gmartine wrote on April 29, 2008 07:20 AM: There was another article that called the Ron Paul supporters "Insurgents."

    It is sad that nobody is really exposing what the McCain camp and party leadership did to purposely end the convention.

    The video is even on youtube. The McCain people didn't want to be in the headcount to reconvene the quorum.


    FastTracker wrote on April 29, 2008 06:52 AM: 'BEERS REBUTS CONSPIRACY THEORISTS'' – The subhead is just too rich. If you believe something was wrong with the Nevada's Republican leadership's behavior at the state convention, you are now a 'Conspiracy Theorist'.

    Next, we'll probably be told that y'all live in 'compounds' and harbor 'enemy combatants'. What would we do without a good dose of media spin to start our day?

    Let's not overcomplicate this fiasco. Nevada's GOP elite got caught with their collective pants down, they didn't get the acquiescence of convention delegates that they were anticipating, so they turned out the lights. 'Democracy in action' in this wayward state.