7th District Convention Declines to Elect Trump Supporter Debbie Dooley as Delegate to National Convention.
The Seventh District Republican Convention got a little testy this afternoon after initially rejecting a slate proposed by the nominating committee and then voting to send all but Debbie Dooley to the Republican convention in Cleveland. Instead of Dooley, convention delegates chose David Hancock, the head of the United Tea Party of Georgia.
Roughly 70% of the seventh district is in Gwinnett, which voted in the March 1st primary for Donald Trump with 32% of the vote, Marco Rubio with 30% and Ted Cruz with 26%. The remaining 30% is in Forsyth County, which voted 37% for Trump, 29% for Rubio and 24% for Cruz. For the district, this meant there were two delegates pledged to vote for Trump in the first round, and one delegate pledged for Rubio. The Nominating Committee, led by former Gwinnett Republican vice-chair Brandon Doty, and including former chair Scott Haggard and longtime member Ben Satterfield had to consider 19 people who said they wanted to run for one of the three delegate and three alternate spots to the national convention in Cleveland.
Preparing to announce the nominating committee’s choices, Doty told the 179 convention delegates that the committee did not consider which presidential candidate a potential delegate supported when deciding their slate, only that the person they picked both would support the candidate they were bound to in the first round, and that they would support the eventual GOP nominee in November.
The nominating committee recommended former Georgia GOP vice-chair BJ VanGundy as the delegate bound to Rubio, and Atlanta Tea Party founder Debbie Dooley and Forsyth County GOP first Vice Chairman and longtime GOP volunteer Carolyn Fisher as Trump delegates. For the alternate slots, State Rep. and former Gwinnett GOP chair Buzz Brockway was bound to Rubio, while former Gwinnett GOP vice-chair Mary Adamski and longtime Gwinnett volunteer Kathy Statham were bound to Trump.
The convention failed to vote for the slate in a standing vote. This meant that nominations from the floor would be taken, with the floor nominee(s) running as an alternative to one of the Nominating Committee’s choices. After a short recess, convention chair BJ Van Gundy opened up nominations, and former 7th District congressional candidate David Hancock was nominated to replace Dooley as the only floor nomination.
After voting to accept the other five nominees, Dooley and Hancock each had the opportunity to make nomination speeches. Debbie told the delegates that it was extremely unfair that she was the only one of the proposed slate that was a Trump supporter, and she threatened the convention if she was ultimately not elected as a delegate. “If you exclude Trump supporters from the slate,” Dooley warned, “It’s going to be challenged. I’m already in touch with the national Trump campaign. and they’re going to challenge [the 7th district delegates].”
Hancock got a passionate nominating speech from Andre Adamski, who pointed out Dooley’s recent lack of participation in party activities. Prominent Ted Cruz supporter Kathy Hildebrand also recommended Hancock. It should be noted that of the six nominees, the two committed to Rubio supported him in the primary, there was one John Kasich supporter and I believe the remaining three support Cruz. Dooley told me that she felt the nominating committee’s slate was a reasonable compromise, given that Trump did have the largest number of votes in the district. Convention delegates didn’t agree, and voted to send Hancock to Cleveland.
Following the vote Dooley and around half a dozen supporters grabbed the American flag they had brought to the convention and walked out.
In a Facebook post Dooley described what happened from her point of view:
The Gwinnett Cruz Campaign at the 7th District had overwhelming numbers at the 7th District Convention. They voted to exclude Trump supporters from being delgates and alternates representing Trump.
…
Kathy Hildebrand (President of Conservative Republican Women of North Atlanta) and Andre Adamski basically said the real vote was today and at the national convention.
Of course, as Nominating Committee chairman Doty clearly explained, Donald Trump will receive the votes of two of the Seventh District Delegates in the first round of voting. Whether that will be enough to make Trump the nominee is still unknown, of course. What will happens in later rounds of voting is unknown. While Dooley may claim that what happened was a theft of delegates by the Cruz campaign, for at least two of the delegates, Cruz was not their first choice.
H/T to Michael Chase Strollo for the video.
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Jon Richards
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It always amazes me how losers at a convention claim they really had the largest number of people there. I doubt it, but let’s just say they did.
This was a low level exercise to decide how to send three people to likely the most contentious, and definitely most complicated GOP convention in my lifetime.
Debbie and her supporters couldn’t even handle a district level convention – where she claims to have had the majority.
So I can conclude that there are two possibilities:
1) Debbie may not be telling the truth
2) Debbie is telling the truth, and believes that incompetence should be rewarded, so that people that couldn’t get elected with a majority could be sent on to a much more complicated, much higher stakes convention, where this level of incompetence would cause even larger problems.
I’m not sure I want to reward her or her delegates (nor or in the future) regardless which of those are true.
Thanks for the report and video. The exiting promenade with colors flying was great low comedy.
Cruz is a dangerous self-promoter but his people know the nuts and bolts of campaign organization. Trump’s, pretty much just the nuts.
https://youtu.be/MFv4cJJkvb8
Well that is absolutely hilarious. The Trump campaign is likely to lose the nomination due to the fact they either couldn’t understand what needed to be done to win the nomination or took the party for which he is seeking the nomination for granted. Either way, the process will play out and Ted Cruz will get slaughtered in November. Bob Corker 2020.
As a delegate to the 7th District Convention I’ll refute the claim that the allegiance to any particular candidate factored into today’s election of David Hancock (or rejection of his opponent). My personal decision to vote for Mr. Hancock was mirrored in many of the conversations I had with fellow delegates during our brief recess. We desired to have a rational and honorable individual represent us at the National Convention, and we don’t appreciate being threatened. The opponent circulated amongst the crowd during the break more or less repeating the same nonsense that was invoked during the five minute allotment featured in the video. It was very clear to most of us there (through the vindictive nature of the comments) that the candidate did not posses the content of character to adequately represent anyone but herself.
All she has ever represented is herself. She wrote posts supporting Trump to Breitbart signed as a board member of the Tea Party Patriots while their site is promoting Cruz. I personally don’t have an iron in the fire since the 7th District Republicans only wanted my money and not my viewpoint. I still would be embarrassed for my district and for Georgia to think that this media hustler was in any way representing us on the national stage.
“Kathy Hildebrand (President of Conservative Republican Women of North Atlanta) and Andre Adamski basically said the real vote was today and at the national convention.”
This is a outright lie by DD. Check the video on Breitbart …
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/04/16/trump-13/
Unfortunately the Breitbart article fails show the the video of Dooley’s speech where she threatens the entire Delegation if she did not receive their vote.. (Funny that the Trump folks won’t put her entire speech on YouTube).
i haven’t been to a gop convention since 2011…but i still kinda try to follow what’s going on…and i understand that the cruz people worked these district conventions to get sympathetic folks elected as delegates, and i understand how this may annoy trump folks…but is it also possible in this case that this person was rejected because she tends to be bombastic and unpleasant and people just don’t like her very much?
Ironic that Dooley is now facing what many of us faced when socons like her were in charge. I haven’t been part of the convention circus for a few years but remember vividly fighting w/establishment types like Dooley to get regular folks on the delegate list (regular folks being those who don’t feel the need to regulate a woman’s body, sex preferences or hate Mexicans). Looks like she got a big ol taste of her own medicine.
**Note – I still remain a Trump supporter thus loathe the idea of how delegates were chosen to favor Cruz in Georgia and elsewhere. Basically the same insiders get selected every cycle so nothing really changes thus the reason for a candidate like Trump becoming popular. If the GOP manages to prevent a Trump nomination it would be as bad as a boxer beating an opponent viciously for 12 rounds then the judges awarding the belt to the bloodied loser barely standing after getting whipped. My bet is this will happen and Cleveland will become a cable news dreamland with old white folks fighting in the streets (at least as much as old white people can muster a fighting stance). Should be fun!
OF COURSE the same insiders get selected. It sounds like it’s similar to the Dem side. It’s that way on purpose, exactly to prevent what is happening- someone who is not really a Republican getting the Party nomination.
No Bene, it’s to make sure social concerns remain at the top of the red herring list of critical issues. Otherwise the party would become the big tent those in charge pretend it to be. This is now provable by the number of new voters flocking to Trump from outside the normal GOP circle. ‘Tent getting too big, must deflate….’
As usual the GOP will find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I disagree. It wasn’t the party leaders that bounced Rubio and Bush, and keep Kasich down. You’ve got Limbaugh and Hannity and Erickson to thank for this, and I guess the leadership is complicit by not denouncing some of this sooner/more strongly, but they saw the writing on the wall and just went with it.
As you say, the alleged new voters are flocking to Trump, not necessarily the GOP. It is a cult of personality. In a way I hope he does get the nomination because I am really curious about what kinds of things he will say then.
Ayyy-yup: “…she tends to be bombastic and unpleasant and people just don’t like her very much?…”
Did the hotel in Gwinnett ever catch up to Ms. Dooley and the judgement against her for the five-figure unpaid bill?