ANOTHER OPINION: City GOP Convention Holds The Answer

BY NATHAN SHRADER/ Last week, one faction within the Philadelphia Republican City Committee – including many ward leaders and individuals whom I consider to be personal friends – held an election and claimed the winner is the rightful chairman of the RCC. The current leaders of City Committee will reject this claim as illegitimate, since only 32 of the party’s ward leaders were invited to participate. The result will undoubtedly lead to a brutal public skirmish and a bruising court battle that will prove costly to both sides.

Fortunately, there is another way forward. The only fair and responsible solution to the question of who should be recognized as party chair is to hold an open convention in which all duly elected committeepersons chosen in the May 2010 primary and those appointed to fill vacancies as of last November’s general election are permitted to vote via secret ballot for the candidate of their choice.

Much like the method utilized in most of Pennsylvania’s 67 Counties, this process will be open to the press, affords all duly elected and appointed committeepersons an equally weighted voted, permits any possible candidate to be nominated from the floor, and gives all candidates an opportunity to speak before the rank and file they are seeking to lead.

Above all else, the open-convention option must feature a proper 30-day call by which all of the eligible committeepersons are notified via US Mail to prevent any one faction from claiming they were excluded from the process. An open convention with a proper public call by which committeepersons who directly represent the Republican voters in this city choose their leader via secret ballot is the only way to restore legitimacy to the RCC among the public, the press, and the rank and file themselves. Any other attempt to choose a chairman without the direct input of the rank and file will not restore confidence in the party or legitimacy to the organization.

I hereby call on all factions competing for control of the Philadelphia RCC to embrace an open convention, allowing our committeepersons who are the heart and soul of this party to choose a leader in a fair and inclusive public process.

(Shrader is a PhD political-science candidate at Temple University. He is former vice chairman of the 5th Ward Republican Committee, former political director of the Westmoreland Co. Republican Committee. He is a member of the NRA as well as Republicans for Environmental Protection.)

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