The online publication The Iowa Republican (TIR) has diligently followed and invested considerable commentary regarding recent proposed bylaw changes for the Republican Party of Iowa (RPI), including one approved this past weekend purporting to regulate conflicts of interest within RPI State Central Committee membership. From the TIR column on Sunday, Kevin’s Korner, authored by Kevin Hall:
The Iowa GOP State Central Committee passed a good bylaw during Saturday’s marathon meeting: “No officer of the Republican Party of Iowa (including the Finance Chair * and Legal Counsel) or member of the State Central Committee (including Iowa’s National Committeeman and National Committeewoman) shall receive direct or indirect compensation from a campaign.” …
The motion passed 14-3 … The rule is good and will prevent some of the conflicts of interest we’ve seen in the past. But it’s far from perfect. I think it goes too far by banning members from working on general election campaigns …
In other ways, the bylaw does not go far enough in ending the conflicts of interest on the SCC, . . .
We appreciate that the RPI wants to make an effort to appear as innocent as Caesars wife. Upon consideration our preference would be instead of denying membership per se, to be blessed with leadership with the character and sense of fair play to not appoint such potentially conflicted individuals to internal positions of compromised influence or for individuals to recuse themselves, as long as a chronic recusal is not necessary, or to adequately balance any conflicts of interest so as to demonstrate even handed treatment.
Would that Scott County Republican leadership exhibited such blessed qualities.
It bears asking 1) what difference does it make if someone is paid directly or indirectly . . . cannot unpaid bias be just as potent? and 2) if the concept of appearances is beneficial (and we agree it is) providing a sense of unity and fair play, why would those qualities not apply to the county level? Any alleged corruption can be organized and shifted in fact to the county level.
In Scott County we had the State Chairman of the Romney campaign, Brian Kennedy, chairing sitting on ** the Nominating Committee which also designed the delegate selection criteria. He was a prominent participant as he was selected to deliver the exclusionary mishmash, in our humble opinion not quit exhibiting a straight face in the transparent debasement of the integrity of the caucuses. No representative as such of other campaigns were even on the Nominating Committee to safeguard appearances, insure unity and provide a sense of fair play. Caucus attendees were not informed that the nominating process would be so loaded or indifferent to the results of the caucus.
In Scott County, under rules open to manipulation by a willful or go-along cadre, any number of people not in attendance at the caucuses could still be delegates to the district and state, not because of a shortage of delegates, but because that cadre decides to ignore the integrity and meaning of the precinct caucuses and favor others. The Ron Paul supporters were shafted royally in Scott County, presaging later troubles at the state level. Reform needs to be implemented downstream with proportional rules or at least the integrity and sense of fair play to do so . . . qualities lacking in Scott County Republican leadership.
R Mall
* Item in bold our emphasis. Brian Kennedy is a member of the Executive Committee and also Finance Chairman of the Scott County Republican Party.
** Our thanks to the person responsible for inducing the busy Chairwoman of the Scott County Republican Party to call and correct our imprecision with regards to any implication that Brian Kennedy chaired the full Nominating Committee in all its inclusive unity building grandeur. While in no way exculpatory of Kennedy’s involvement we made the correction and further tweaked clarified the matter. For the record the lengthy list of hand picked delegates and alternates was read in dilatorious fashion by one or two others. The person ultimately responsible for the phone call might note that it would help un-busy the Chairwoman if you would have simply replied to the post yourself online.
