Why We Need New Leadership

By now many people in our county in particular District 2 of San Bernardino County are getting mailers saying that the Chairman’s faction is doing a respectable job, and we should vote for him and his six compatriots.

However, it can be shown that San Bernardino County Republican Party is poorly managed.

SBGOP HEADQUARTERS
  • We are in debt for over 24 thousand dollars and no active plan as of writing of how to repay our chairman back.
  • Questionable endorsements of local officials who have endorsed Democrats for state legislature when we have a Republican in Assembly District 53 running in the March 2024 election.
  • Chairman actively supports Democrats in his personal PAC against Republicans running for these offices.
  • County Party uses its own money to attack fellow Republicans in Republican v Republican general election races.
  • After paying for these attack ads, we ran out of money to get out the vote programs for the rest of our ticket.
  • Fired key staff weeks before General Election 2022 ended.

To conclude, Special Interests are buying out the party to get their way while the party suffers. They buy their way with attack mailers while our treasury runs dry. Imagine what the almost 40 thousand dollars used to defend the chairman’s fifedom could have done for our party with voter registration, get out the vote and other operations.

If you are fed up of this dog and pony show, please vote for these candidates for District 2:

Mary Heil, Robert Fekay, Agnes Gibboney, Mark Gibboney, Luis Cetina, Catherine Lara, Malene Lee

District 4: Please vote for Carol Houghton, Jeff Holle, Toni Holle, Matthew Munson and Robert Tormey.

Selling the Argument

What does the county party do?

We are the organizational body that raises money to get out the vote, educate voters about legislation and candidates, recruit candidates to run for office when we do not have potential candidates running for office on their own, we endorse candidates and ballot measures.

We have favorable campaign finance treatment which makes this organization a vital group for fundraising and that is why developers are looking to buy off the committee so our seal of approval can rubber stamp their choices.

What have we failed to do in the last two years?

We failed to meet regularly in 2023 when in the summertime we took two months off. We had a very divisive county supervisor race which divided the party where the grassroots are not going to open their wallets. We went broke in the November 2022 election where we had to lay off two staffers before the election ended because we sold the store just to get the chairman’s pick for county supervisor.

The chairman says he can raise the money, but where is the money? He has a nexus of political action committees even several where he is not a direct principal officer of. It is even embarrassing when Los Angeles County Republican Party which has been more dysfunctional than the San Bernardino County Party ending up hosting fundraisers now to pay for the costly election related activities. When I saw that Los Angeles County had a fundraiser with James O’Keefe, it enraged me to write a long article in the San Bernardino Sentinel about the disappointing state of our county party.

We need to grow the party by asking NPP voters who used to be Republican to come back home as what Orange County is doing right now. We need to return to having social mixers bi-monthly in various parts of the county. We need to have an action segment at each major county party meeting where each supervisorial district would work towards its own programming and other efforts to accomplish as what the previous chair did during our meetings.

We gave the incumbent chairman an opportunity to change from the issues that are making our party fall behind on such as the money we owe him. It is our concern and our business that we owe you this money. We want you to be paid off as soon as possible so we do not have to worry about that fiscal obligation. If you want to carry 20k loans in your personal political action committee, you be you.

People right now are being subletted as staffers by the chairman where they work part time on party activities, but we need party staffers that work full time on party business. We will get numerous phone calls in the general election from confused voters who need guidance as what happened in 2020 and 2022.

I desire for the next generation of leadership to be more responsive to the electorate and the activists of our county. We must work together as a team no matter what happens after March 5th of 2024. After this election we should not be focusing on purges or grudges and try to have some sort of unity. We should be fighting the ideas of people like Eloise Reyes instead.

Dare to Compare Federal Committee Edition

County parties have two committees, one for state and local races and one for federal political advocacy. I previously mentioned the state campaign committee results for the San Bernardino County Republican Party and now we are looking at the federal committee filings.

Here are the comparisons: County to the Cash on Hand at the end of 2023.

San Bernardino-$186.66
Riverside$15,347
Ventura$8,212.28
San Diego$21,440
Federal Report at the end of 2023 year end numbers.

Truth hurts.

We Should Be Supporting Republicans

Our current chairman’s personal political action committee made this contribution recently and it is frustrating when our local leader would rather give up than fight the good fight to run an actual Republican in Assembly District 50. We are not Joe Baca Sr. Democratic Party Club, we are the San Bernardino County Republican Party.

Assembly District 50 is not the old district 47 of old, it has potential. But the chairman would rather take the easy way out.

This is one of the reasons why I am running for County Party Committee.

If you live in District 2, there are better choices to vote for.

If you live in District 4, you can vote for me and my four team members.

Expenditure of 2796 dollars for Adam Perez (D).

Time to Promote Republicans NOT Democrats

We need to start promoting Republicans and stop supporting local elected officials who support Democrats for partisan office. This is the reason we have no pull for major political races in our county.

As what was reported in the San Bernardino County Sentinel back in September is happening again where Phil Cothran Sr’s Political Action Committee also ran with his political assistant Danielle Holley. There is a 2700-dollar expenditure for signs for James Ramos styled Democrat Adam Perez and there is a 2700-dollar mailer for Rudy Zuniga, who endorsed Democrat Michelle Rodriguez instead of being neutral or supporting Republican Nick Wilson.

Compared to Phil, the previous chair gave a care about running Republicans in all the districts of our county where we have influence. We are running to challenge the status quo because we want to be an actual organization fighting to elect Republicans instead of local leaders who kneecap our state and federal candidates such as Curt Hagman, Alan Wapner, Rudy Zuniga and Jesse Armendarez. There should be no need to fight for the least toxic Democrat and start running Republicans.

If you live in the 2nd Supervisorial District please vote for Mark and Agnes Gibboney, Mary Heil, Robert Fekay, Luis Cetina, Malene Lee and Catherine Sage-Lara. We need a party that stands up for electing Republicans instead of just being a chamber of commerce proxy organization where the chairman has a deep influence in the Fontana Chamber of Commerce.

If you live in the 4th Supervisoral District then vote for Matthew Munson, Toni Holle, Jeff Holle, Carol Houghton, Robert Tormey.

Bylaws are NOT Suggestions

When the county party is re-organized in 2025, new bylaws are proposed, or the previous bylaws are kept. Right now, we have a structural problem in the San Bernardino County Republican Party since Curt Hagman took it over back in 2013. We need to follow our bylaws, or we need to scrap the language so we can be consistent.

Our mission is to do things properly if we want to be an organization with integrity and stability. If we have rules about attendance, then the rules need to be followed. If we have rules against endorsing Democrats in contested elections, then that should be followed as well. If we have rules about paying our dues before voting on endorsements and policies, then that should be followed too.

Members even back in 2015 knew stuff was fishy no matter if Curt, Jan, or Phil Sr. led our party. Policies should not be selectively enforced where individuals from the minority faction get targeted when the majority faction may have violated rules as well. The rules need to be followed or they are just toilet paper.

I would like to see issues about our bylaws addressed before our organizational meeting in public where all alternates, members and ex-officio members would have an opportunity to have their say. The carpet indeed must match the drapes. We want an organization that we can be proud of. We should run with higher standards so we can avoid legal issues and people can have confidence in what we stand for.

I don’t want to return to the days when law enforcement wanted to investigate our county party.

The Campaign Is a Team

This campaign is not just about getting myself on the county party committee, it is also about getting other likeminded people on the county party. There are party nominees who also earn a seat on the committee in all districts that have San Bernardino County in it and the supervisorial district candidates as well. We all may have different opinions, but we are for bringing integrity back to our county party. There will be a listing of all allied ballot qualified candidates that will be advertised on our slate.

Campaign for County Party Committee

Hello voters of San Bernardino County who reside in the 4th Supervisorial District. You have an opportunity to select six people who reside in the area to represent our party on its regional governing board. I have been an active participant in the activities of our county party since 2014 and would like the opportunity to be elected by the party voters of our community.

I have run two major campaigns to offer voters a Republican choice, not a watered down not as toxic Democrat for State Senate in 2014 and 2018. I have helped pass some transparency in the California Republican Party in 2021.

I am here to be a regular attendee of the meetings of the organization, make sure that we recruit and encourage our candidates who run for office as proud registered Republicans.

I would like to request those we endorse to answer a simple questionnaire that we used to do in the past and ask basic questions about their campaign, political philosophy and whether they are willing to be team players for our ticket.

Our bylaws should mean something, bylaws should not just be only suggestions. If we have policies, we should enforce those policies. If people are supposed to pay dues, they need to be paying those dues or be current on a payment plan.