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Ridiculous
By Greg L | 13 June 2007 | 51st HOD District, PWCRC | 25 Comments
The war within the PWCRC has apparently expanded into a fight between PWCRC Chairman Tom Kopko and 11th Congressional District Chairman Becky Stoeckel according to a post that appeared yesterday on Skeptical Observer. Kopko’s tirade against Stoeckel, prompted by what is reported to be a call for a meeting to consider Julie Lucas’ appeal of the 51st District convention, seems to have been provided to recently elected Magisterial District Chairman James Young who then decided to blog on the issue. With this recent explosion of open warfare within the Republican party in Northern Virginia, coupled with a leadership shakeup in the Republican Party of Virginia, there might be a few with energy to spare to take the fight to the Democrats this November, but not likely very many.
Kopko’s tirade regards Becky Stoeckel’s paid work for Julie Lucas for direct mail support with her company Executive Press, in Fairfax. Executive Press is listed on VPAP as performing work for Senator Jay O’Brien, Delegate Scott Lingamfelter, Senate candidate Bob Fitzsimmonds, and numerous other Republican candidates in Virginia. Kopko probably could have made a legitimate argument that Stoeckel should recuse herself from any decision regarding the 51st District convention — a call also made, and refused, in reference to Tom Kopko’s own paid work for Julie Lucas’ opponent Faisal Gill. Instead of narrowly seeking a reasonable remedy to a potential for a conflict of interest, Kopko begins frothing at the mouth as if he went to the Eugene Delgaudio school of political communications. From James Young:
You helped Julie Lucas produce attack mailers against Faisal Gill (attached).
You attended at least one of the convention’s credentials meetings prior to the convention.
At the 51st convention you inserted yourself as a secret, self-appointed observer on the grounds that you are the 11th CD Chairman. Someone portrayed you as a “RPV Observer” but you told me you attended on your own accord.
You did not notify the LD Chairman nor the Convention Chairman of your presence, let alone your asserted role and activities:
You inserted yourself into sequestered activities of the Credentials Committee. That chairman complained that you were interfering with the committee while not understanding why you were there in the first place.
You inserted yourself into the sequestered activities of the elections committee both during voting (for delegates only) and during the long and sequestered vote counting.
You gave advice to credentials and elections committee members in your self-appointed role.
Now you are calling a clearly illegal meeting of the 11th CD to consider overturning a convention in your endorsed client’s favor. It violates the party plan, is protested by committee members, and goes against your own request “without objection” to reschedule. All this while you claim today that your “hope is to get thru this process as expeditiously and fairly as possible.”
Let’s take a look at some of these issues. I’m not really much of a fan of Stoeckel doing business with candidates seeking the Republican nomination within the 11th Congressional District, but as long as she is not directly in control of the nomination process for those races, it’s really hard to find fault with her business practices. The only time this potentially gets thorny is when something goes wrong in the nomination process at the party unit level and has to get escalated to the 11th Congressional District, which is thankfully a rare thing, and when it occurs, recusal from voting is available as a means of preventing problems and should be sufficient. We’re not at that point, though. No voting has taken place, only a meeting has been called for. Really, there isn’t anything to really complain about yet, but that doesn’t hold back the tirade. No, siree.
Kopko is seemingly demanding Stoeckel do things that Kopko himself refuses to do in regards to his own conflicts of interest, but because James Young has only chosen to share the whiny part of Kopko’s email, it’s not clear what Kopko’s demands really are. I would imagine it sums up pretty much as “don’t do anything about the 51st Convention”. Under the rug, my friends, sweep it under the rug.
As far as Stoeckel’s presence at the convention, it’s noteworthy that there’s no apparent evidence that she influenced any decisions made at the 51st District Convention. She certainly isn’t responsible for the deeply troubling things that happened there. She didn’t have a vote, nor was she a member of any of the committees. I’m actually pleased she was there to personally witness the utter confusion and questionable goings-on at the convention and don’t at all understand the basis for such hysterically-worded complaints from Kopko. For someone so worthy of oversight, it’s a little humorous to see this “stop watching me” refrain that sounds somewhat like what you’d expect to hear from the back seat of a car while departing on a family vacation.
For just that extra dose of the surreal, James Young takes BVBL to task for ignoring this email from Tom Kopko, which I haven’t received. Yesterday was my wedding anniversary, in addition to being primary day, and also a membership drive for Help Save Manassas, so I haven’t quite had the time to visit James’ fine website, which I try to do at least once a month. Sometimes I forget. His mention of me popped up on a Google Alert, which is how I found this post, which I probably wouldn’t have otherwise seen. For failing to be adequately omniscient, I am apparently a fraud. How utterly bizarre.
If Kopko decided to broadcast this email as he has other intemperate tirades to the PWCRC membership, that would be another phenomenally dumb move on his part. If James Young decided to publish the contents of what was intended to be a private discussion among the PWCRC leadership on his blog, and thoroughly embarrass them in the process with this intramural skirmish, that’s just hilarious. This non-stop self-infliction of severe head wounds by the PWCRC leadership and those playing damage control for them is an abundance of fodder in the cause of calling for concrete steps to institute much-needed reforms within this increasingly troubled unit.
There are some things that definitely need changing within the PWCRC leadership. They should stop failing false police reports against non-favored candidates on the day before a convention. It would be a good idea to refrain from fraudulently recording votes at these conventions. It would be a good idea not to arbitrarily extend filing deadlines in order to benefit favored candidates, to provide equal notice to all candidates of procedural changes and deadlines, to refrain from providing delegate forms to favored candidates prior to the delegate form being approved by the committee, and prohibit enrolling as convention delegates people who don’t even live in Virginia. I’m not even talking about the 51st District Convention here. These things all happened in other conventions.
What a complete mess. Tom Kopko is a total disaster as a chairman. Somebody, please make this stop.
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What is hilarious about all this, and I do mean hilarious in a pathetic, not humorous way, is when Tom shows his ignorance with, “You helped Julie Lucas produce attack mailers against Faisal Gill (attached).”
Tom, PLEASE show how Becky was involved in this and define the “attack” mailer as I believe you will find that what YOU consider an “attack” mailer was NOT “produced” by Becky at all.
Oh yeah, one more thing, Tom, at what point did you realize that when you reported $1000 given to you by Faisal that it was, in fact, $2000? And, was this given to you before or AFTER you spoke with Julie when you asked her if she wanted a convention or a primary???
You know what, Greg, if they TRULY won, fair and square, they would NOT be in such defensive mode. They KNOW they lost and are so afraid that the light of truth will shine on Faisal as it has done so well in the past, that they will attack ANYONE who dares utter that which is not in “their” party line.
What I see is IF Faisal ends up being the nominee and WHEN he ends up losing in November, they will come out and blame us (”guilt by association”, smear attacks,RINOs, etc) and the Democrats (”it’s traditionally a Democratic seat anyways”) without accepting ANY of the blame (bad candidate who NEVER should have entered the race in the first place).
This is insane.
Being a partner in a business that has a press that churns out the printing is not even close to being in charge of the nominating contest while taking direct payment from a candidate for campaign services.
The irony is, if the 51st hadn’t been a complete disaster with all these irregularities, it wouldn’t be in the hands of the 11th District Congressional committee now anyway.
The PWCRC paid Executive Press for printing campaign literature last fall for the Stewart election. Check it out at the state board of elections site. Their report for the period Oct 1st to Dec 31st 2006 schedule “D” has numerous entries of payments to Execitive press. Plus in excess of $12K for postage. You will also note in the scedule “A” that Stewart donated in excess of $9K to the committee. Why would he have fund raisers then donate money to the committee? Where did he get that $9K? This may be a MayTag moment.
A. I’m not the Magisterial District Chairman. I was elected as Vice Chairman in Dumfries, when no one else was interested in the job, at the last Committee meeting.
B. The e-mail from Kopko was not marked as “confidential.” If he had wanted me to delete it, or not comment on it, I presume he would have made this clear, or not sent it to me at all.
C. The people commenting here have attempted to set a standard. I have said all along that it is a ridiculous standard. Now that it is biting you/them on the a**, suddenly you’re/they’re doing things that, if said by Kopko’s defenders, would be called “making excuses.”
D. There’s nothing to sweep “under to rug.” Were there flaws in the Convention? Certainly; there are flaws in every convention. Did they make a difference in the outcome? No, if the same standard is applied to all districts with overvotes. If they’re all counted, Faisal won; if all overvotes are treated as Faisal votes and thrown out, Faisal won; if all overvoted precincts are thrown out altogether (the worst alternative by far, in my mind, as it disenfranchises whole precincts), Faisal won. So the only real complaint here is that “Faisal won.” Tough.
D. Happy anniversary. I didn’t call you a “fraud.” I said that you have a double standard, one that you amply demonstrate here. I also don’t begrudge you not visiting, contrary to your implication. However, I do imagine that you, like most of us, regularly visit aggregators.
E. I understand your complaints about “self-inflicted head wounds.” It really sucks when someone demonstrates your hypocrisy by pointing out your omissions.
F. Lars is wrong, but it’s a nice effort at evading the issue. The issue isn’t between “Being a partner in a business that has a press that churns out the printing is not even close to being in charge of the nominating contest while taking direct payment from a candidate for campaign services”; the issue (potentially) is “Being a partner in a business that has a press that churns out the printing” while serving as a party official in a position to decide a contested nominating contest while taking payment from the campaign that is contesting the unfavorable outcome of the process,, which sounds a lot like complaints about an official who is “in charge of the nominating contest while taking direct payment from a candidate for campaign services.”
James, everyone stopped reading your last bit of diatribe after “D” (the first one, not the second “D” you added when you created a second “D” in the English alphabet) where you make numerous incorrect statements, one being taking out all the over voted precincts renders Faisal the winner- IF YOU TAKE OUT ALL THE OVER VOTED PRECINCTS LIKE RPV (our governing body) SAID, JULIE WINS, NOT FAISAL. At this point it’s just pathetic. The documents are out, the numbers are now clear and you’re still grasping at straws to keep Faisal in the position he stole (I should say bought) to begin with! Get over yourself and get out of politics… you’re obviously not very adept in that field, though, I suppose math wasn’t your strong suit in school either…
I’m willing to give Jim the benefit of the doubt on this, simply because the fact that there were only two overvoted precincts and not three (as stated at the Convention) has been held very close to the vest. I didn’t learn about it until yesterday and I expect that most people weren’t aware of it until this afternoon. However, now that it is understood that the decision to keep all of the overvoted precincts (against RPV’s recommendation) because throwing them out would not effect the results of the race was based on erroneous information, I expect that he will acknowledge the inherent problem with the results as they currently stand. What was once a meaningless ruling now clearly determines the outcome. RPV’s recommendation should be followed to, if nothing else, eliminate concerns regarding Kopko’s impartiality.
Does Tom Kopko have a political consulting or web design business?
Is his business called “Tom Kopko” or “Thomas A. Kopko”? If not, what is the name?
I can’t find any payments to it, save for Faisal Gill’s.
anon, you hit the nail on the head. Stoeckel has a printing business and any candidate can give her work. This is her regular line of work. Kopko apparently has NEVER received money from a candidate for nebulous “consulting” work prior to his role as PWCRC and 51st District Chair. This is what so utterly smells in this.
Kopko needs to go immediately. Unfortunately the void at the top of RPV may delay the inevitable.
Greg,
What is the false police report thing? This is the first time I’ve heard of it.
To clarify, PWCRC “leadership” is Kopko and his advisor Corey Stewart. They recruited McQuigg and May. Now that Supervisor Covington is confident about his re-election, he wasted no time to publicly endorse GILL. (Wally couldn’t you have at least waited until after the appeal process?)
Here are the facts:
At minimum 75% of the PWCRC want KOPKO removed from leadership.
In November, many conservatives have already vowed not to vote for Stewart, Gill, McQuigg, or May. I suspect Covington will now be added to the list and with a bit of luck Del. Lingamfelter will join them.
Moderate Republican’s WILL vote, it just won’t be for Gill, Stewart, McQuigg or May!
Some other interesting tidbits that apparently no one knows or wishes to divulge - I’ve done some homework:
The 11th District Committee is NOT a committee of one. Of note is that MR. KOPKO is also a voting member of the 11CD, and so are 3 other known Gill supporters. Seems like the Gill team is well represented there too. Not to mention that Mr. Kopko alone is currently the sole decider of the appeal… If everyone is so sure that everything is “just fine”, Kopko should be pressured to make a prompt decision so that it can go up the 11CD for a fair hearing there.
And the “illegal meeting”… I made a few phone calls and found out the REAL deal was actually a request by the Chairman to the rest of the 11CD to postpone their 6/11 meeting until 6/14 to allow a few more days for the appeal process to move forward so that they could deal with it promptly and still allow time, before the certification deadline to the SBE, for a further appeal up to RPV if needed. While most of the 11CD members didn’t have a problem with it, a couple Gill supporters did, so they refused to allow the postponement and required the Chairman to reissue a new call for a meeting which requires 7 days notice. So much for the illegal meeting accusation…
Oh, and the whole “conflict of interest” assertions are baloney. If anyone looks, they can see that Stoeckel had a long-term business relationship with Lucas (3 or 4 yrs.) and had nothing to do with the 51st HOD convention at all, except that Kopko didn’t like the fact she was watching. In reality, the 11CD Chair has no control in the appeal process other than to attempt to deal with it in a timely manner (which was thwarted) and only has one vote out of 12. Anyone see the difference here?
And Mr. Young, as an attorney, i am surprised you would post such slanderous accusations without at least attempting to verify their accuracy. So far, it’s been proven that the “hit pieces” didn’t come from this woman and the “illegal meeting” is bogus… the rest is simply whining… nothing unusual, improper, or unwarranted.
As a party stalwart i find this unwarranted attack infuriating and embarrassing to the party. Mr. Kopko should be ashamed of himself.
Another funny thing about all this is how much the LCRC leadership went on and on about how great conventions are and how unifying they would be for the party. One great big pep rally! We now see how well that worked out.
Ah, Conventions …
There is nothing “unifying” about having opponents come face to face and square off. It is a relatively politely waged war. And those willing to employ guerilla tactics always win out.
James, why don’t you have Kopko,Lucas, Gill, Stokel, RPV counsel, an elections official with a current voter list, an elections lawyer, and a member of the press meet and lay out all the information on the 51st Convention (filing forms, ballots, all the credentialing information) and end this silliness.
Either you guys are telling the truth or you botched the nomination — case closed. Otherwise this poorly run convention will rip the party apart until well after November (like we all didn’t see that coming long before this convention even took place).
Why would anyone be afraid of the truth if they’ve done nothing wrong? Remember, the cover-up is always worse than the offense as far as consequences.
The unfortunate thing, anon 10:29, is that a convention CAN be a unifying event, and those with which I was involved back in the 70’s and 80’s were precisely that. A well-run convention can indeed build and not tear down.
OK, here’s the facts.
The Elections committee REPORTED 3 precincts overvoted…
- Civic Center
- Penn
- Lake Ridge
Civic Center was reported to be overvoted by 2. This is because the Elections Committee counted 1 person in the W - Z section of the alphabet. The tally sheet clearly shows, by name, 3 people credentialed in Civic Center in the W-Z category, not 1.
Therefore, a math error has shown that in fact, Civic Center had one person who was credentialed to vote, but chose not to vote (i.e. an undervote of 1), which is OK.
Therefore, as it stands now, the following precincts are overvoted…
- Penn
- Lake Ridge
Now, what to do? RPV recommends that overvoted precincts be thrown out.
If you throw out Penn and Lake Ridge - Julie Wins
That’s the deal.
GOP Stalwart - you will have to forgive Jim Young, he is and always has been intimitated by strong, Conservative women. Even Rodney Dangerfield got, and deserved, more respect than Jim and Tom Kopko.
NJG demonstrates his ignorance with his notion that Kopko and Stewart recruited McQuigg and May. May ran for Occoquan District Supervisor in 2003, against Stewart; McQuigg ran for Clerk in 1983, before even my time.
The notion that either had to be “recruited” is obviously ridiculous.
As for those “many conservatives [who] have already vowed not to vote for Stewart, Gill, McQuigg, or May,” it is indeed fascinating that so few have the courage to affiliate their names with their reported intentions.
And John Light is simply despicable, a living [purportedly] Republican embodiment of the vitality of the Freudian practice of politics.
And BTW, isn’t it interesting that Julie’s supporters choose a remedy — throwing out the precincts (assuming it is 2, not three) — that would disenfranchise whole precinct of voters. Obviously, the less radical solution — and one which, not coincidentally, would still result in a Lucas loss — is to presume that all overvotes were Gill votes, and disallow them. The problem with that solution (for the Lucas people) is that it means that Gill still wins.
For all we know, those are people who simply voted in the wrong precincts. That is a possibility that no one here seems to have considered, probably because it doesn’t jibe with the meme that the nomination was “stolen from” Lucas.
The problem is that Lucas lost, fair and square. She decided at the last minute, probably at the urging of a bunch of tax advocates, to jump in the race. She made a good run at it, one that ultimately fell short.
What makes you people think she can win? The virulence of your attacks on Faisal Gill and his supporters virtually guarantee that a large number of them would never support Lucas if she were to somehow reverse the results of the convention. But you would rather see no Republican win than have a Conservative like Gill carry the GOP nomination. Not ONE of you people has ever attacked Gill on policy. That speaks volumes about your commitment to Republican principles, as well as the commitment implied by the pledge to support all of the GOP’s nominees in the ensuing election.
Jim, gay marriage is still legal in Massachusetts, so you may want to run up there to formalize your man-crush on Faisal Gill while there’s still time.
“”"And BTW, isn’t it interesting that Julie’s supporters choose a remedy — throwing out the precincts (assuming it is 2, not three) — that would disenfranchise whole precinct of voters. “”"
It is not what we choose, it is what the RPV chooses. When there are overvotes in a precinct that means the people running the voting are not restricting access to ballots and ballot boxes. Because the access to ballots and ballot boxes is not restricted the whole count in that precinct is corrupted.
“”"Obviously, the less radical solution — and one which, not coincidentally, would still result in a Lucas loss — is to presume that all overvotes were Gill votes, and disallow them. The problem with that solution (for the Lucas people) is that it means that Gill still wins.”"”
All overvotes are invalid votes, but not all invalid votes are overvotes. An overvote only occurs when the number of invalid votes is larger than the number of people who go home without voting.
No one knows how many invalid votes there were due to lack of control of access to ballots and ballot boxes. Merely deducting the number of overvotes doesn’t solve the problem.
The problem is the lack of control of access to ballots and the ballot boxes in those two precincts. This lack of control led to overvotes and made the counts in those precincts unreliable.
“”"For all we know, those are people who simply voted in the wrong precincts.”"”
And how, pray tell, could people have voted in the wrong precinct if the people running the convention had been controlling access to ballots and ballot boxes? What else were delegate wannabes doing besides voting in the wrong precincts?
“”"That is a possibility that no one here seems to have considered, probably because it doesn’t jibe with the meme that the nomination was “stolen from” Lucas.”"”
The nomination was stolen because Gill’s employee Kopko and Gill’s kickoff campaign speaker McQuigg refuse to follow RPV procedures. If they had followed those procedures Julie would have won.
“”"The problem is that Lucas lost, fair and square.”"”
No, Faisal lost. The problem is that Faisal’s employee Kopko and endorser McQuigg are stealing the election for Faisal by violating RPV rules.
“”"She decided at the last minute,”"”
Says who? She may have been intending to run for months. You don’t know.
“”"probably at the urging of a bunch of tax advocates,”"”
Do you mean the people who want to institute Sharia law in the USA and impose a dhimmi tax on Christians and Jews? People like Gill’s law and lobbying partner Asim Ghafoor? Those kinds of tax advocates are supporting Faisal.
“”"She made a good run at it, one that ultimately fell short.”"”
One that ultimately succeeded but was stolen from her by Kopko and McQuigg’s violation of RPV rules, and by their lack of control of access to ballots and ballot boxes in the first place.
“”"What makes you people think she can win?”"”
The question is, what makes us realize that she can do better than Faisal Gill? Three words: “Google Faisal Gill.”
“”"The virulence of your attacks on Faisal Gill and his supporters virtually guarantee that a large number of them would never support Lucas if she were to somehow reverse the results of the convention.”"”
Hold on, Jim. I thought they took a pledge to support the nominee. Well, if the nominee is Julie will they violate their pledge to support her?
“”"But you would rather see no Republican win than have a Conservative like Gill carry the GOP nomination.”"”
You have it backwards, son. Nominating Faisal Gill ensures that no Republican will win in HOD-51.
“”"Not ONE of you people has ever attacked Gill on policy.”"”
Not ONE of us gives a flying whatoosie what platitudes Gill mouths. I can train any cretin to mouth the right words. The problem is Gill’s actions, especially his having served as chief lobbyist for the imprisoned Abdurahman Alamoudi’s American Muslim Council.
“”"That speaks volumes about your commitment to Republican principles,”"”
Was Gill’s boss/client Abdurahman Alamoudi a Republican? Alamoudi gave to Hillary, Cynthia McKinney, David Bonior, Dennis Kucinich and Rep. James P. Moran, Jr. as well as to President Bush.
The question is what kind of commitment Faisal Gill had to Republican principles when he was the chief lobbyist for a terrorist’s organization, the American Muslim Council.
“”"as well as the commitment implied by the pledge to support all of the GOP’s nominees in the ensuing election.”"”
Jim, you are getting confused again. You just stated that Julie cannot win because Gill’s people will violate their pledge to support the winner of the HOD-51 nomination, Julie Lucas. That means Gill’s people intend to violate the very pledge that you speak of.
Who cares James Young. Gill in all likelyhood will be the nominee because of the cover-up underway and then he will go on to lose the General Election (and he has Kopko to thank for that).
What we all want now is to expose the truth and get some heads on platters. We’re pulling in the lawyers (smart ones with real practices…not the stuff you piddle around in) and we’re coming to get you and Kopko.
Cute, FedUp. I’m always impressed when someone attacks my professional credentials, particularly when they have no relevance to the issue at hand, and no relevance to my authority to speak in my role as a party official and as probably the only person commenting here who has actually SAT on an RPV committee considering an appeal.
Yeah, congratulations on that “party official” job that nobody wanted Jimmy. I’m really impressed.
So Jim, are you and the object of your man-crush Faisal Gill going to go up to Massachusetts and make it legal, or what?
Massachusetts is a very manly state, especially Provincetown on Cape Cod. I am sure that you and the object of your man-crush could have a wonderful celebration in Provincetown.
Having just read, Jonathan Mark, 14 Jun, 11:08
Smiling as I write….Jonathan, you eat him up sooooooo bad, you oughta be ashamed of yourself for having no mercy on the mentally handicapped!!
:)