<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">And the hits jus' keep on comin' . . .</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Courtesy of today's (July 29, 2014) Spokesman-Review.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">-------------------------------------</div><div><br><h1 style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-size: 28px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; clear: both; line-height: 1.2; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Embattled Idaho GOP chairman contends he’s facing ‘hostile takeover’ by ‘rogue members’</h1><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">BOISE – Embattled Idaho GOP Chairman Barry Peterson says the Idaho Republican Party is faced with “two rogue members engaged in a hostile takeover,” who want to “usurp” his authority as party chairman.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Attorneys for the two party officers he’s sued say Peterson, elected to a two-year term as state party chairman in 2012, is no longer chairman, and contend the fight over control of the party doesn’t belong in court at all. “This court should not interfere in a political party’s internal decision,” they wrote in court documents. “The Republican Party, whether on the state or national level, is perfectly capable and prepared to handle the issue, and in fact already has.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The party has set a state Central Committee meeting for Aug. 2 to elect new leaders; Peterson has called a competing meeting for Aug. 9, and sued to try to stop party Vice Chairman Mike Mathews and National Committeewoman Cindy Siddoway from convening the Aug. 2 meeting. The Republican National Committee’s legal counsel has advised the state party that the RNC considers the Aug. 2 meeting the proper one.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The two sides will face off in court Tuesday in Twin Falls. In advance of that hearing, their arguments are detailed in hundreds of pages of legal documents filed with the court.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Christ Troupis, attorney for Peterson and six of his supporters, wrote that the “image of the Idaho Republican Party is at stake.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“How the Idaho Republican Party is perceived by the public as governing itself is vitally important to the public’s faith in government itself,” Troupis wrote.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Timothy Hopkins, attorney for Mathews and Siddoway, wrote, “The plaintiffs have no basis for their contentions that Barry Peterson should continue as chairman of the Idaho Republican Party. Their complaint should be dismissed.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Peterson contends that when the tumultuous state party convention in Moscow in June ended without any elections for party leaders, that meant the previous leaders stayed on for another two years. Convention Chairman Raul Labrador said as much before the adjournment, after conferring with parliamentarian Cornel Rasor.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But Rasor later told the Lewiston Tribune he “inadvertently misread the rules.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It was my fault, not Raul’s,” Rasor told Tribune reporter Bill Spence in a June 25 article that’s among the documents filed with the court. “It’s really that simple.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">State party rules specifically say there “shall be no automatic succession to the office of state chairman.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Troupis contends it doesn’t matter – the 527 delegates at the convention thought that was the result of adjourning. Any other interpretation, he wrote, “threaten(s) to nullify the votes of 527 convention delegates.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hopkins points out that there wasn’t actually even a vote to adjourn. Instead, a delegate moved to adjourn as the scheduled 3 p.m. end of the convention approached; Labrador ruled the motion out of order. Later he called for adjournment, and a motion was made to suspend the rules to allow the convention to continue past its scheduled ending point. A voice vote was taken and Labrador declared that the motion had failed, and therefore the convention was adjourned.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As part of their legal filings, Mathews and Siddoway submitted a YouTube link to video of those final moments of the convention, along with a transcript.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“No vote for chairman was held. No vote for any officer was held,” Hopkins wrote. “The entirety of plaintiff’s claim for relief is based on a significant mistake and misreading of the rules at the end of the convention.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He wrote, “No constitution or statute permits a group of individuals to conjure a right to use mistaken information in order to lay claim to party leadership positions.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Peterson, in an affidavit filed with the court, said, “I believe the convention delegates voted to adjourn the convention with the understanding that the effect of that vote would be to retain the current state officers until the next convention.”</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Fifth District Judge Randy Stoker is scheduled to hear arguments in the case starting at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday in Twin Falls.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><img src="cid:0CB8AE7E-ECE4-43ED-869A-0758C19C6AB5" alt="image.jpeg" id="0CB8AE7E-ECE4-43ED-869A-0758C19C6AB5" width="640" height="359"></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--------------------</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Watch the video of the final four minutes of Idaho’s GOP state convention in Moscow, which embattled Chairman Barry Peterson contends decided he’s entitled to another two-year term.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;"><a href="http://youtu.be/4gubHcKZy-k">http://youtu.be/4gubHcKZy-k</a></p><p style="margin-bottom: 21px; overflow: visible !important;">-------------------------------------</p></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div> </div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>