UPDATE: Ms. Candice Dawkins of the Tennessee Republican Party asked to explain a few things for the changes approved Saturday to my post last evening.
– We have always had an Issues Subcommittee. The change at the SEC meeting approved Chairman Golden’s proposed change to the subcommittees “Issues” and “Candidate Recruitment” to “Communications” and “Political” respectively. This change was to provide guidance to the mission and goals of that subcommittee.
– For the biannual to biennial change, this reflected a typo in the proposed amendment which referred to the biennial reorganization as biannual. The only reason for this being mentioned was so to ensure the correct word was used in the approved change.
– The change regarding timeframes for meeting minutes addressed the newly created roles of subcommittee secretaries to include the responsibility to submit subcommittee meeting minutes to the state party, appropriate staff member and subcommittee members within seven business days.
– The term “Actively involved in” was updated to be defined as, “a quantifiable contribution including, but not limited to, time or money to the Tennessee Republican Party, his County Republican Party, or any recognized auxiliary organization of either during the time period since the most recent County Republican Party reorganization.”
– The timeline of events surrounding the change in requirements for bona fide Republican status went as follows:
Julia Hurley was recognized and motioned to amend a previously approved amendment that changed the requirements for bona fide status to include only Statewide primary elections. There was some discussion on if the committee could reconsider an amendment that had already passes. During that discussion, it was mentioned that if not able to be reconsidered, the motion be made at the next SEC meeting in December. After parliamentary clarification stating that reconsideration was allowed, the committee overwhelmingly voted to reconsider the motion. At that point, Julia Hurley motioned to amend the requirements for bona fide Republican status to be 3 of 4, which also passed overwhelmingly.
We have seen that there has been some confusion regarding the changes to our bylaws last weekend and so we’re trying to make clear what changes were approved and why. Please feel free to view our newly approved bylaws which have been uploaded to our website here.
Original Post Sunday Night:
The Tennessee Republican State Executive Committee (SEC) met yesterday and voted on changing the rules that govern all Republicans and creates some rules for being a Republican candidate.
They added an Issues Committee to the list of committees of the State Executive Committee.
They Changed the wording from bi-annual to bi-enial.
All SEC proxy votes now must be a fellow SEC member and not a member of the public member.
Also, mandates that all minutes of the SEC meetings are to be available within 7 days.
The biggest change was bonafide, in the past in order to be a bonafide you had to have voted Republican in 2 of 4 LOCAL primaries. Effective yesterday, it is now required that you have voted Republican in 3 of 4 STATEWIDE Primaries unless you are too young to have voted in that many primaries and you have to be actively involved in the Tennessee Republican Party and County Republican Party and reside in said county (involvement is defined as financial contribution and proof of involvement) and/either vouched for to the State Party Chair by two approved and bonafied Republicans.
The bon-i-fide item was the hottest debate yesterday. There were three attempts to table the item until December. The Hurley/Hughes amendment was the name given the debate for Julia Hurley that proposed the amendment and Chris Hughes who seconded it. Hughes made a motion to reconsider, Rebecca Burke seconded the reconsider. Hurley re-proposed the amendment. It passed with two no votes. I understand that Scott Smith of Knox County abstained from the voting.
I understand the new bylaws will be posted on the TN Republican Party website by tomorrow afternoon Monday August 28, 2017.
Hurley has asked that the Knox County Republican Party send out a request to the County Executive Committee to call for a meeting of all candidates the first week of October to explain the rules for the 2018 election.
