State Committee Reorg Meeting April 5, 2016

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With little dissent, the term of Kirsten Hughes as Chair was extended through 2016.

Ron Kaufman was re-elected by unanimous proclamation as National Committeeman.

Keiko Orall defeated Chanel Prunier to become the new National Committeewoman by a vote of 41 to 37, with one blank.

Angela Davis was re-appointed as Secretary.  Brendan O’Connell lost to incumbent Treasurer Brent Anderson by a vote of 45 to 34.

Rich Berrena won re-election as Region 1 Chair.  Rob Cappuci won the Region 3 Chair seat.  Mark Townsend won Region 5.  The results of Region 2 are not known at this time.  Region 4 is undecided as of now.

 

Editor/Aylward

 

Thank You for Electing Dennis Galvin

The Lowell Sun

UPDATED:   03/08/2016 09:21:26 AM EST

 

On March 1, the voters of Massachusetts rendered their verdict in a number of very important political races. The turnout was heavy, reflecting the widespread concern held by the people related to their prosperity, their security and their freedom.

I had the great privilege of participating as a candidate in that election. In this role I had the opportunity to meet hundreds of people across the 1st Middlesex Senatorial District and to listen to the issues that they thought were important. One thing was very clear, our citizens are not happy with the direction of our nation and our state. There is a growing distrust of government and politics in general. The results of the Massachusetts primary election offer strong evidence of this fact. There is a lot of work to be done and a lot of problems to try to correct.

The voters in the Republican primary gave me the great honor of representing them on the Massachusetts Republican State Committee. I am grateful to them for this opportunity and I wish to assure them that I have heard their concerns and will fully commit myself to address them. I would like to thank all those who worked hard on my behalf and all of those who voted for me.

I would also like to acknowledge the effort and commitment made by Jordan Gys, my opponent. It takes courage for anyone to enter into elective politics. Jordan deserves credit for his participation. He represents the future of the party.

It is time for all Republicans to come together and prepare for the tough presidential election that is coming in November. Despite the differences that arose during the primary, we must all unite as November approaches. The business at hand is to focus on articulating the Republican message for the fall. Unity means victory. Ensuring a Republican victory in November and breaking the one party monopoly on Beacon Hill are the two causes to which I have dedicated my campaign.

I will be counting on the great support I received in the primary election of 2016 to help sustain these efforts throughout the next four years.

Dennis Galvin

Westford

Republic State committeeman-elect

1st Middlesex District

 

Read more: http://www.lowellsun.com/opinion/ci_29609857/thank-you-electing-me-1st-gop-middlesex-senatorial#ixzz42M2rnRT

Thank You

Dear friends,
I would like to thank all those who supported my campaign for Republican State Committee. I especially appreciate those who bravely held signs in the very cold weather yesterday as well as for every single vote.
Congratulations to Representative Sheila Harrington for becoming the First Middlesex Senatorial District’s Republican State Committeewoman. I give her my full support. She won decisively in all towns except my home town of Lowell, where I won 58% of the vote. Thank you, Lowell!
I will continue to support the Groton Republican Town Committee, the Westford Republican Town Committee, and the Lowell Republican City Committee. Let’s organize the Republican town committees in Pepperell, Dunstable, and Tyngsboro so we can give our candidates the support they need to win elections. Together let’s stand strong for core Republican principles.
Thank you for believing that freedom is always worth fighting for and that each one of us can make a difference.
Sincerely,
Jann

 

Carr: Scorecard a little light for Charlie Baker

Boston Herald

Howie Carr Thursday, March 03, 2016

Gov. Charlie Baker couldn’t wait to throw Donald Trump and 311,313 of his Super Tuesday voters under the bus yesterday morning, sniffing that he himself would never deign to cast a ballot for such a parvenu.

Charlie, was such a gratuitous snub of your own (nominal) party really necessary? Well, yes, it was — anything to take everybody’s minds off his six-, maybe even seven-figure effort to rid the state Republican Committee of actual Republicans.

What an amazing campaign it was — five district-wide mailings for each of his hack candidates, two of which mentioned their support for “lower taxes,” even though almost all of them were MIA from the most recent anti-tax ballot measure, Question 1, in 2014.

Two Republican candidates in special elections for state rep went down in flames yesterday. But who cares about them when you can take a few Trump and Ted Cruz supporters off the board, right, governor? Let’s go down the list of some of Charlie’s hacks, and see how they did in their State Committee fights.

Laura Rigas: $95,900 a year as “communications director,” Education Department, moved here from Virginia after the 2014 election with her husband. Hubby got his own $112,000-a-year state hack job from Charlie after the lovebirds gave $2,950 to Charlie and Karyn Polito. LOST.

Norman Orrall, husband of Rep. Keiko Orrall, $110,000 a year at the DCR. His wife bragged on her Facebook page when Stormin’ Norman won a prize at an agricultural exhibit for Best Pickle. WON.

David D’Arcangelo, Malden, ran for secretary of state in 2014, hired recently at the Mass. Office on Disability, $90,000 a year. LOST.

Scott Brinch, recent $84,480-a-year hack hire as “acting director” at the DCR. LOST.

Peter Lorenz, “communications director,” DCR, $81,600 a year. LOST.

Reed Hillman, state pension of $108,651 plus $69,950 at a state community college. WON.

Matt Sisk, “deputy commissioner of operations” at DCR (which you will be shocked to learn is run by a hack former GOP state rep making $156,363 
a year). WON.

Jon Golnik, “regional director Central” in Department of Business Development, $76,500 a year, two-time loser as congressional candidate. LOST.

Ryan Chamberland, former aide to the GOP rep in Peabody whose seat was just lost to the Democrats Tuesday, $65,000 on Gov. Baker’s staff. WON.

Angela Davis, newly hired at the Department of Public Safety, $95,500 a year. WON.

Test question: What do all of Charlie’s friends listed above who simultaneously decided to run for State Committee have in common?

Answer: They and their phony-baloney hack jobs would all be adversely affected by the “lower taxes” their employer claimed (at least twice) that they support.

Meet the new hackerama, same as the old hackerama.

 

Baker claims victory in state committee races

Governor Charlie Baker.

ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Governor Charlie Baker.

Governor Charlie Baker is claiming victory in a tough fight with Tea Party-leaning conservatives for control of the Massachusetts Republican Party, a battle that threatens to create deep divisions between him and the GOP’s right-leaning bloc.

A source within Baker’s political team who is familiar with the results from Tuesday’s balloting for the Republican State Committee said 51 of 74 candidates endorsed by the governor won or retained seats on the 80-member governing body of the state party.

As the results trickled in Wednesday, conservative leaders seemed resigned to the fact that Baker had successfully put the full force of his political popularity and fund-raising skills behind his campaign to gain tighter control of what has been a committee evenly divided between moderates and conservatives.

If his numbers are correct, those results would be a huge political victory for Baker, who put his political prestige on the line when he waded into an ugly intra-party fight.

“The governor is pleased with last night’s results and grateful to everyone who ran, for their sacrifice and commitment to strengthening the party,’’ Baker’s chief political adviser, Jim Conroy, said Wednesday. “He looks forward to working with the new committee to help elect Republicans up and down the ticket.”

Chanel Prunier, the state’s Republican national committeewoman, noted that while the results indicate the state committee remains divided, “the most important task now is to put the contests behind us and look to the 2016 elections against the Democrats.”

Still, Baker’s gains appear to have come with a price. Some of the conservative activists had gone out on a political limb to back Baker in 2014, providing him with significant inroads into the grass-roots activist wing of the party.

But just a year after Baker took office, many of those same people found themselves targeted by him in the races for state committee.

One candidate who won his race despite Baker’s support for his opponent, expressed frustration with the governor’s team and warned of the backlash the governor may face.

“They started an unnecessary war within their own party, and I fear that that anger will never subside,” said Steven Aylward, who went against some of his colleagues to support Baker’s 2014 candidacy.

“And while they were waging that battle, we were losing two more special elections to the Democrats — the real enemy,’’ he said, noting the GOP losses in contested races for vacant House seats in Fitchburg and Peabody in Tuesday’s elections.

“I think what we have seen here is that while the Baker people might have deep pockets, they have no coattails for the party,” said Aylward.

The last Republican governor to face a revolt from the hard right was Francis W. Sargent, a liberal Republican who fought back a conservative primary challenge in 1974, only to lose the general election to Democrat Michael S. Dukakis.

Baker’s move to bolster his control of the party is key to his continued use of its staff and resources — as well its aggressive fund-raising — for his own political operations. His political advisers, aware that the governor’s moderate image has helped to give him huge standings in the polls, also want to prevent the state GOP from being tagged as a hard-right conservative party.

To finance his campaign on behalf of his candidates for the state committee, Baker raised more than $300,000, the Globe reported last week.

But the identities of those donors and the size of their contributions are impossible for the public to track, because Baker has refused to make that information public — and has no legal obligation to do so, according to state campaign finance regulators, because the money supported candidates who were not running for public office.

His aides say a public disclosure of his donations — which the Globe has reported are as high as $10,000 apiece — would have put them at a disadvantage with the conservatives who also did not disclose their own fund-raising numbers.

At a press gathering last week, Baker continually resisted requests that he make the donations public, repeating several times that “We follow all the rules.”

 

Source: Early returns show wins for 26 Baker-backed state committee picks

Boston Herald
Matt Stout Wednesday, March 02, 2016

Credit: Angela Rowlings

Gov. Charlie Baker attends the Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers Annual Luncheon at the State House, Tuesday, January 26, 2016. Staff photo by Angela Rowlings.

At least half of the  Republican state committee candidates backed by Gov. Charlie Baker won their seats last night, according to a source familiar with early returns in the unusual battle that had pitched the popular governor against the conservative wing of his own party.

As of this morning, Baker’s endorsed candidates had won 26 of 52 head-to-head races and lost 17, with nine still considered too close to call, according to the source.

In a push to remold the Republican state committee, Baker endorsed 74 candidates in the intra-party contests that played out on Super Tuesday. Of those, 52 were in a contested fight for a spot on the 80-member committee, which, among other responsibilities, votes on the party’s platform and helps recruit and back candidates for public office.

There were two other contested races in which Baker did not endorse a pick; neither had final results this morning.
The developments followed weeks of an aggressive endorsement campaign by Baker, including yesterday when he sent out a pair of e-mails — plus another from Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito — urging supporters to hit the polls for his slate of candidates.

“I’ve heard it a lot: the new direction that we’ve brought to Beacon Hill in the last year is a breath of fresh air, and has shown voters what real Republican leadership looks like here in Massachusetts,” one of Baker’s e-mails read. “Today is a critical day for our ability to keep delivering on that change.”

The campaign — for which Baker also actively raised money from unnamed donors — rankled the party’s conservative wing, which ran its own candidates versus Baker’s picks in many of the races.

Baker also drew criticism from some conservatives for backing as many as 17 candidates who also are state employees.

A spokesman for the MassGOP didn’t immediately return a message today.

 

Support For Galvin And McGaha

After reading yesterday’s article “Baker and Polito Make Endorsement In Westford GOP State Committee Race” I was inspired to write a short letter to Westford CAT News.
It’s no secret I’ve been cautious over Baker after he was endorsed by Michael Bloomberg.

With that in mind, the last thing I want to do is vote for the person endorsed by Baker whose job it is, in part, to keep an eye on Baker. I want someone who is OUR representative, not Beacon Hill’s.

Our district has the opportunity to elect two of our own to represent republicans in this area on the Republican State Committee on March 1st.

For the woman’s seat I support Georjann McGaha and for the man’s seat I support Dennis Galvin.

 

Cori Ryan

Westford

McGaha and Galvin lead the Westford Republican Town Committee in opposing the Board of Selectmen’s attempt to ban guns in Westford.  Galvin, a retired state trooper, and McGaha, an NRA member, fought and successfully defeated the gun grab. Ryan refers to Bloomberg’s attempt to ban certain types of guns. 

GALVIN FOR STATE COMMITTEE – AN OPPORTUNITY

Every four years some candidates for State Committee seem to appear as a blip on our political radar only to sink out of sight – and resurface four years later. The current endorsement letter template going around reminds us that voters will select one man and one woman, in the First Middlesex district, to serve on the party’s state committee and that the Republican State committee is the governing board of the Massachusetts Republican Party etc, etc–. Sounds like inside baseball, and, if you have that impression, you would not be wrong. I share the sense of other Republicans that the State committee could be more visible and doing much more – especially in making the State Committee a resource for local grass roots efforts to build the party and recruit and elect candidates. Dennis Galvin can help turn this situation around for Dunstable, Groton, Lowell, Pepperell, Tyngsboro, and Westford Republicans. He has an outstanding record of service to his state, his town, and his party. A retired State Police Major who commanded the force’s Training and Arson Investigation units, he has also held high level security position in the public and private sectors. His town elected him to its Planning Board three times, and he now serves as Chairman. He has run competitive races against State Representative incumbents, knocked on doors for other Republican Candidates, collected signatures for Tank the Gas Tax and other ballot initiatives, and been an active member of his own Town Committee. These activities and accomplishments are a good match for what should be the Committee job description – and also say a lot about his energy, and ability to organize and motivate- in other words, his leadership. Dennis is one of those people who can get people to show up and pitch in. A big part of his leadership is his own example. No one will outwork him. Dennis will put these qualities to works as an on the job partner and resource for First District Republicans. He will not pull the Boston disappearing act. If you think your voice is not being heard by the Republican power structure, you can know that Dennis does not back down from establishment types. He will be the same fighter he was when he was Captain of the State Police Boxing Team. The Galvin campaign is more than a choice – it’s an opportunity.

 

Sincerely

Jay Gaffney

214 Third Street

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