Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor,

Recently, Hu Jintao was escorted from The Great Hall of the People during the Chinese Communist Party Congress for, apparently, speaking out against the Party. How sad for the 79-year-old to lose the support of the party he has belonged to his whole adult life for failure to toe the party line. I suspect Ogden Driskill and Liz Cheney can commiserate with Mr. Hu.

Brad McKim

Dear Editor,

Once again, the will of the Republican voters is not being upheld by the Republican GOP committee members. As a Republican voter it upsets me that certain committee members feel that it is their place to push their own agenda onto the voters of Crook County.

I feel that Ted Davis and all of the Republican committee members owe every Republican voter in Crook County an explanation as to why they think that they have the right to overturn the vote of the people, instead pushing for their personal agenda. Is it for personal monetary gains? Is it a personal vendetta against the winning candidate, which has no place in the position that they hold? 

As a Republican voter I demand answers. As a Republican voter I feel that there is no room for another Liz Cheney in the Republican party. As a Republican voter I feel that even if you do not agree with the winning candidate, your position requires you to go along with the will of the voters, not to use your position for your own personal agenda. 

As a Republican voter I feel that Ted Davis and the rest of the Republican committee members that made the decision to run the GOP on their own agenda should reverse their decision, pull the GOP backing from the write in candidate, formally apologize to the winning Republican candidate and the Republican voters and step down from their positions. 

Buck Bock

Dear Editor:

Not so long ago, the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case, gave people the ability to donate unregulated amounts of money to political campaigns without revealing their identity, which has given anonymous wealthy donors outsize power in electing people who will do their bidding.

Now we now have, right here in Crook County, the Republican County Committee using two websites to influence its decision whether or not to support the candidate who won their own party’s primary. The websites are run by person or persons who have not revealed either their identities or their methods for choosing winners and losers.

Equally concerning, at a meeting of said county committee, the chairman consulted by email with members not in attendance as to whether to support the duly elected candidate, and reported anonymously that there was no support.

I checked with the Secretary of State’s office, and they confirmed that there is no law directing a party committee to support the elected candidate. We are now in a situation where unnamed persons can give unlimited amounts of money to support a candidate, and the members of the party’s committee can anonymously support, or not, the candidate chosen by the primary voters.

I am astonished and worried. This practice gives far too much unaccountable power to a group of people that the general public pretty much ignores. Democracy depends on requiring those who make decisions that affect the public to do so with complete transparency and accountability.

Members of county committees are technically elected to their positions by the general public, and therefore it could be said the committees are democratic bodies. In practice, not so much.

Committee members are precinct committee men and precinct committee women. There are seventeen precincts in Crook County, so the county political committees have thirty-four members. In the 2010 election, there were no contested races in the Republican race, and eleven of the thirty-four positions had no candidate. In 2022, there is a better contest. There were only four vacancies, eighteen of the slots had only one candidate, but twelve of the slots did have a contest. (These data are public record on the County Clerk’s web page.)

If you are concerned about the power given to this group, your recourse is to place your name on the ballot to become a committee member and to vote for candidates who will commit to transparency. People who rely on anonymous sources to make decisions and who want their votes to be anonymous have no right to hold public office.

Ernie Reinhold