URGENT Call To Action For All Illinois Republicans

By DOUG IBENDAHL • May 18, 2016

Please take a minute and email all members of the Platform and Resolutions Committee of the 2016 Illinois Republican State Convention and urge them to pass the Resolution (copied below) out of their committee. The Resolution concerns a long past due reform which would restore your right to vote for the senior leadership of our Illinois Republican Party.

The email addresses for all of the committee members are published below, at the bottom of the committee directory. By all means feel free to make phone calls too if you wish. Or you can simply copy all of the addresses and send a single email message urging passage of the Resolution.

All Republicans deserve to have this Resolution heard and voted-upon this Saturday when all all delegates meet on the convention floor in Peoria.

In order for the Resolution to get to the floor of the convention for voting upon by all delegates, a majority of the members of the Platform and Resolutions Committee must first vote to send it to the floor. That committee’s final meeting will likely be this Friday in Peoria, so email and/or call the members TODAY.

Contact the committee members even if you aren’t a delegate or alternate to this weekend’s State GOP Convention. All Republicans in the state deserve to have this Resolution voted upon by the full convention. If you are an Illinois Republican you deserve the respect that a real vote for your leadership represents.

Platform and Resolutions Committee

[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Finally, if you are unfamiliar with direct elections which the Resolution would restore, below is additional background.

Here’s how Direct Elections will revive a lifeless Illinois GOP

June 3, 2012 [Published prior to the 2012 Republican State Convention in Tinley Park.]

http://republicannewswatch.com/wp/?p=12222

Reawaken our Illinois Republican Party – Vote for a Return to Direct Elections

June 4, 2008 [Published prior to the 2008 Republican State Convention in Decatur.]

http://republicannewswatch.com/wp/?p=1282

[Specifically counters, one by one, the dishonest talking points the failed bosses parrot whenever they seek to squelch real elections and accountability. Those phony talking points are as blatantly dishonest today as they were 8 years ago.]

2009 Letter from former U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald endorsing passage of SB600

http://republicannewswatch.com/wp/?p=632

[SB600 was an alternative method of restoring direct elections. The same bill was renumbered as SB35 in a later session of the General Assembly. The bill was PASSED by the State Senate THREE times beginning in 2005, only to be killed each time in the Illinois House by entrenched career politicians. The good news is a State Convention like the one this weekend is actually a cleaner and more efficient method of adopting the direct election reform. A State Convention means the law need not be changed since existing law provides this one opportunity and mechanism to go back to real elections pursuant to the statute as currently written. When Governor Jim Thompson and his friends changed the law three decades ago and took our vote away in order to consolidate their power, they left in the statute one opportunity for Republicans to choose on their own to go back to real elections.]

Note that four years ago at the last State GOP Convention there were 7 votes in the Platform and Resolutions Committee to send the nearly identical resolution to the full convention floor - and 11 “no” votes. There were still 19 SCC members then, but the 4th District was vacant (still working under the old map then and 19 congressional districts). I named the Heroes and the Zeroes post-convention. Basically 11 people were so opposed to the idea of Republicans having a vote again that they refused to even allow the delegates to vote on whether ALL Republicans should have a vote again for their top party leaders.

Mike Madigan’s 11 favorite Republicans

June 10, 2012

http://republicannewswatch.com/wp/?p=12262

Doug Ibendahl is a Chicago Attorney and a former General Counsel of the Illinois Republican Party.

Tags: 2016 Illinois Republican State Convention, Ibendahl on Politics, Illinois GOP, State Central Committee

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