The 2017 California College Republicans Convention

This is a follow-up to my original article detailing the background of my three years of experience in California College Republicans (CCR), and all of the various factors that contributed to the divide in the race for the CCR statewide board in 2017, which was to culminate in the statewide convention the last weekend of April. I am now going to write this sequel, detailing the overall proceedings of the actual convention itself, April 28 through April 30, 2017, at the Doubletree Hilton Hotel in San Jose.

For just the briefest bit of summary for those who don’t want to read through the original article again: For years, the CCR statewide board has always been decided by each incumbent board member handpicking their successors, and the chosen ones running on a single, unopposed slate ceremoniously “elected” by a voice vote at each convention. The 2017 race for the CCR statewide board saw the first contested election since 2009, with two different slates of candidates running: The usual incumbent slate was Thrive CCR, while the opposition slate was Rebuild CCR. Thrive, in the same vein as most moderate California Republicans, emphasizes electioneering and serving as a campaign apparatus for the California GOP as its main goal. Conversely, Rebuild is a more conservative and outsider slate, echoing President Donald Trump in some ways, as it places emphasis on grassroots activism on individual college campuses, so as to fight the greater culture war against the left.

Friday: The First Day

Almost immediately upon arriving for the first gathering on Friday night, I noticed right away that there was a large presence of stickers for the Thrive CCR campaign, mostly adorned by their candidates and a handful of their most loyal acolytes. The stickers read “I want CCR to Thrive!” on the top, and “I’ll be voting for Leesa and Team Thrive” on the bottom, with the Thrive logo in the center.

I had developed quite a reputation as a perceived mouthpiece for Rebuild via my extensive coverage of the race for The Millennial Review — even though I maintained an unbiased perspective in my actual articles, I was no stranger to controversy in my own time as I supported Rebuild in an individual capacity. Even so, I managed to carry on a few somewhat civil conversations with some Thrive candidates. The average observer would see no evidence of the vitriol that candidates and supporters of both slates had been exchanging relentlessly on social media over the last few months.

Saturday: The Second Day

However, come the dawn of the next day — Saturday, the one full day of the convention — the signs quickly appeared: Literally. Outside the main convention hall where all the speakers would speak, and where the vote would occur, I noticed two things in particular: The first was a cardboard cutout of the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. On the chest of the cutout was a Thrive sticker. The other feature was a seemingly innocuous whiteboard, with the phrase written across the top: “Who Be #Thriving?” There were markers at the base of the whiteboard, for anyone who wished to write on the board to add their name, their chapter’s name, or some other slogan. It reeked of the kind of cheese of an adult trying to be “hip” with their “fellow kids,” and as to be expected, was subject to numerous occurrences of trolling as people wrote pro-Rebuild messages on it.

Rather petty, thought I, and nothing else.

As the day started, two things were clear from the first couple of speakers. First, this year’s convention would feature absolutely nobody of merit or fame — a sad decline from just three years prior, when the keynote speaker was Congressman Darrell Issa. And second, as was the usual pattern, all of their speeches were just full of cliche buzzwords and catchy phrases that, as one friend of mine so simply and effectively put it, amounted to “a bunch of talking, without actually saying anything.” Thus, as was the case last year, my chapter (UC Santa Barbara) and a handful of other chapters largely ditched the speaking events to go back to our rooms and mingle with other CR’s in a more casual environment.

I was not present at the time, as I spent a majority of my weekend hanging out with my new friends from the Sacramento State chapter. However, one of my fellow Gaucho CR’s later told me about what occurred at the room where the UCSB chapter, and some others, had gathered. Apparently, the hotel security had been called on their room, with the caller reporting that there was marijuana in the room. Of course, there was none, and a quick search of the room confirmed this. But what especially set off some alarms was the fact that the security had asked for one person’s name in particular — a person who was also a candidate for Rebuild. This only seemed to confirm that this was nothing less than a targeted attack on a Rebuild candidate, on top of being an outright lie to the security team. My friends in question were definitely furious, and the mood immediately changed once it became obvious what Thrive was willing to do.

This was repeated later the same day, when Rebuild’s candidate for Chairwoman, president of the UC Irvine CR’s Ariana Rowlands, had the actual police department of San Jose called on her by Thrive people as well. Allegedly, the Thrive informant had told the police that Ariana was planning to disrupt the next day’s proceedings by bringing controversial speakers to the convention, such as Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter, in order to bring protestors and cause a possible riot. Ariana then received a call from the police, in which she easily denied these allegations. If I thought the initial lie about my friends having drugs in their hotel room was bad, this one was outright outlandish.

Lastly, towards the end of the day, a piece of propaganda against Ariana was being mass-texted to delegates at the convention. It was an image featuring a rather unflattering picture of Ariana, and a rather sensational phrase along the lines of “Want to know about the real Ariana Rowlands?” It then gave a bulleted list of accusations against her, including the fact that, in 2015, Ariana expressed support for Planned Parenthood on Facebook. Never mind the fact that it was two years ago, and people’s opinions can change. And never mind the fact that, even more recently, Thrive’s candidate for Chairwoman, Leesa Danzek, had openly described herself as a feminist and ridiculed then-candidate Donald Trump as “a race-baiter” and “not a Republican.” It reeked of extraordinarily childish campaign tactics based on easily-debunked lies, and of sheer desperation.

On a note somewhat unrelated to the campaign, but still reeking of political cronyism and setting the tone for what was to happen later, I must talk about the awards ceremony that happened at the Saturday night banquet. As with every CCR convention, six awards are given out: Five individual awards — Rookie of the Year, Activist of the Year, College Republican of the Year, Chapter Chair of the Year, and the Lifetime Achievement Award — and a more collective award, Chapter of the Year. The recipients weren’t very shocking, and the winner of Chapter of the Year — UC Berkeley — was a foregone conclusion from the start.

However, Chapter Chair of the Year made many of us nearly jump out of our chairs.

To put it extraordinarily bluntly, the individual in question was impeached earlier this same year by his chapter, for a plethora of offenses such as incompetence, lack of record keeping that resulted in losing a $100 donation to the club, and unilateral removal and appointment of executive board members without the consent of the rest of the board. In the impeachment vote, it was a nearly 50–50 split among the voting members, well short of the 66% required for removal from office by the chapter’s constitution. Nevertheless, this same chairman then doubled down on his political opponents — particularly the board members who had opposed him — by removing them from “admin” status on the club’s Facebook group page.

Some time later, this same chairman then inexplicably cancelled the last pre-convention meeting of the club, where they were going to discuss convention logistics such as delegate allocations. It was widely expected that, at this meeting, the subject of the chapter’s endorsement in the CCR race would come up, since this chairman — a Thrive candidate — had unilaterally endorsed Thrive on behalf of his chapter, even though the members supported Rebuild and several members were Rebuild candidates as well. When questions arose on the Facebook group page about why the meeting was cancelled, he updated the group’s security settings; instead of being free to post whatever and whenever, as was the usual way, all posts afterward had to be approved by him and him alone in order to be displayed. He effectively silenced his opposition going into the convention.

This man won Chapter Chair of the Year.

But, no matter. We finished the banquet, and proceeded to what was usually the most fun part of every CCR convention: The Saturday night festivities, in a variety of rooms around the hotel. However, we could not have possibly imagined that we’d be in for multiple repeats of the earlier incident where security was called on my friend’s room. I remember when the first such gathering in a room on the fourth floor was forced out due to a “noise complaint,” and thus, we migrated from that room to a higher room on the ninth floor — and when we rounded the corner to the elevators, there was a security guard standing there, watching us…almost as if he anticipated us. I was extremely nervous, and told others how odd I found it that a guard was just standing there, although they mostly brushed it off. But sure enough, less than a minute after we arrived at the ninth floor room, there was yet another knock at our door: Security, once again, informing us of a “noise complaint.” We had been in that room for less than 60 seconds and hadn’t even made any noise yet.

This happened at least two more times that night. Every single one of our gatherings was “rolled up,” so to speak, almost immediately after they started. It became painfully evident that security would be waiting for us no matter where we went. It didn’t take us long to put two and two together, lining up this pattern with the previous occurrences earlier that day. Once again, Thrive was calling the security on our rooms, and most likely coordinating with them to disrupt every single one of our gatherings, regardless of whether or not we actually violated any hotel policies. Just like that, the night that was supposed to be the most fun for us was ruined, once again, purely for political reasons.

And little did I know that the worst was yet to come.

Sunday: An Unholy Day

Come the day of the actual vote for the leadership election, I was more determined than ever to see this upset victory through — enraged by what I had seen, from the corruption to the incompetence, and excited for the possibility of upsetting the establishment that, as far as I knew, had never ever seen defeat. Ever.

Upon returning to the entrance of the convention hall, the previously childish pro-Thrive display had exploded into an absurd case of “electioneering” in the sense of the federal violation: There was an overwhelming presence of pro-Thrive propaganda, from the previous whiteboard and Reagan cutout, to massive bundles of balloons in green-and-white (Thrive’s colors), as well as a TV playing a bunch of pro-Thrive videos — featuring its candidates and the politicians who endorsed Thrive — on a loop. As a friend of mine said, if this was an actual polling place for a legitimate election, this would easily qualify for the offense known as “electioneering” — trying to influence a polling place by blatantly displaying one candidate’s campaign materials at the location.

But nevertheless, we went into the convention hall. After the final few speakers, they announced that it would be time for the registration of delegates to start, and we would have to exit the hall and re-enter after receiving our delegate credentials (a green card to display with the name tags we had already received at the start of the convention).

But first, they dropped a bombshell on us at the last minute: We had to have a student ID card from our school in order to receive our credentials.

Of course, this was never stated until literally a few minutes before we started to register. Some of us had not brought our cards — not anticipating the need for them — and some came from schools that didn’t issue ID cards at all, like community colleges.

And this ridiculous requirement isn’t even in the CCR Constitution. Yes, there is a mention of needing “student identification” in order to be an accredited delegate, but nowhere does it mention, specifically, a “student ID card.” Thus, presumably, we could substitute a card with something like our student portals — displaying our class schedules, transcripts, etc., etc. — on our smartphones. But the two individuals who were checking us in refused to hear it — they said cards only, or nothing. As a result, one of the eight delegates from UCSB was denied access to the floor for the entirety of the day due to not having her card.

And the two individuals who were registering delegates, checking them against the membership list? They were both Thrive candidates.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, a second delegate from UCSB — who had his student ID card and everything — was also denied his accreditation. The excuse? “You’re not on the list.” Apparently, even though the chapter chairs had all confirmed their respective delegates and submitted their lists to the state board to be broadly accumulated into one master list, names still somehow mysteriously went missing, including this delegate from a pro-Rebuild school. And when individuals such as the SB delegate in question asked if they could see the list, they were denied; only board members were allowed to see the list…including the board members who were Thrive candidates.

And this wasn’t just a fluke. This was a pattern. After the remaining six of us were allowed onto the floor, we started asking around to see if other schools were encountering difficulties. As it turns out, UCSB got some of the better treatment of the pro-Rebuild schools.

UC Irvine, Cal Poly SLO, Cal State Fullerton, College of the Sequoias, Saddleback College, USC, and UC Berkeley — that’s right, Chapter of the Year, UC Berkeley — all faced similar problems as well. A handful of delegates from Sac State were also denied, as were the aforementioned two delegates from UCSB. A majority of CSU Fullerton — 9 out of 12, to be exact — were denied access to the floor as well. The common thread? Eight of these nine schools are pro-Rebuild — the exception was Sac State, which, as a result of the controversy I mentioned earlier, had unofficially turned from pro-Thrive to a tossup chapter shortly before the convention started, and the delegates denied from that school were all explicitly pro-Rebuild.

All of these schools were denied significant portions of their delegates, even though every single one of those delegates had paid the required $10 registration fee in order to be officially accredited as delegates, on top of the regular registration fees, and other expenses such as gas and food. All totaled, there were roughly 50 such individuals who were denied their accreditation, even though it was their right as delegates, and were forced to wait outside with the gallery rather than join their fellow delegates on the floor.

And, big surprise — we did not hear of a single pro-Thrive chapter facing such difficulty.

I was fuming by the time we took our seats, finding an open table front and center. But I’ll never forget the incredible feeling, the electricity, the high-energy, that emerged when, through all of the clamor and scores of side conversations, one conversation stood out. Ariana Rowlands, obviously in an argument with a pro-Thrive individual in the middle of the floor — she was standing while he was seated — and her voice was rising with frustration. Thus, we all started to go silent, and the entire room was still as we caught the end of her argument, when she said something along the lines of: “This is bullsh**. Let the delegates in. Let them vote!”

It was so loud that the floor went silent for just a few seconds. She seemed to be the only person standing in the whole room, for everyone to see. Then, almost instantly and spontaneously, thunderous applause and cheers erupted throughout the floor, before a chant started up that I eagerly took part in:

“LET THEM VOTE. LET THEM VOTE. LET THEM VOTE. LET THEM VOTE.”

And the size, the volume, the scale of the chants was incredible. It seemed as if a majority of the floor — anywhere from 60% to 70% — were participating in this chant. I noticed several Thrive candidates rushing back and forth to reconvene with one another, clearly taken aback by this uprising as the chant went on for at least two minutes straight.

After a delay of one hour — supposed to start at 11 AM, but instead starting at noon — the session was called to order by incumbent Chairwoman, and Thrive supporter, Ivy Allen of Pepperdine. This marked the beginning of another major red flag: The originally-scheduled parliamentarian, set to oversee all of the ultra-technical details that come with such a session of motions, debates, and votes, was not able to attend the convention. Allen assured us that she had found a replacement who was with the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) and had previously been in CCR himself…except this replacement also couldn’t be bothered to be at the convention in person. So instead, the new parliamentarian called in on Allen’s phone. Initially, only Allen got to listen to him through her headphones, and repeat what he said to us; it didn’t take long for her to take criticism over the clear lack of transparency, and she eventually began putting the phone on speaker and placing it to the microphone. Even then, she occasionally switched back to the headphones, only to remove them whenever she was faced with shouts from the floor of “Transparency!”

It wasn’t easy to adjust to this extremely awkward procedure, but we were forced to move on to the urgent matters at hand. It wasn’t long before Ariana made a motion, addressing the elephant in the room. Citing the massive number of delegates who were denied due to an extremely archaic requirement of student ID cards only — some of which were not brought by students, while others simply didn’t have any — she motioned that we expand the inclusion criteria to include such proof as a student portal, displaying schedules, transcripts, and the like. This was met with general support from the floor — more than once there were many cheers whenever she made one of her points in passionate support of letting those barred delegates vote. I’ll never forget the best moment from Ariana on the floor: As there was general murmuring after Allen tried to disagree with a point Ariana was making, Ariana said something along the lines of this: “You really care so much about asking for student ID cards, ask Leesa!”

Leesa, the aforementioned Thrive candidate for chair, is not a student. She graduated from USC last year.

Nevertheless, as to be expected, a handful of Thrive supporters clearly opposed the motion. Their reasons were obvious, but they tried to argue that it was because it was trying to change the constitution, or something like that…even though the constitution doesn’t say anything about student ID cards.

It also didn’t help that the qualified parliamentarian did not understand what the motion was about. He attempted to clarify what the motion meant, and in doing so, gave this line: “So, just to be clear, the motion is to expand the criteria for delegate accreditation, beyond student ID cards, so that they can also use such ID forms as driver’s licenses.” At the mention of driver’s licenses, the floor overwhelmingly shouted back “No,” and Ariana clarified that this was JUST student ID such as portals, not broader, government-issued ID. We thought after he asked this, he’d get it.

He went on to repeat this same question two more times, to the exact same responses both times. Even Marco Rubio would cringe at the repetition of such a dumb question after a clear answer.

After some debate, we seemed to be inching closer to a vote…until one self-righteous Thrive supporter suddenly jumped up and motioned to table Ariana’s motion indefinitely. Allen then promptly shifted the debate to this motion instead. I learned later that this was, in and of itself, a violation of parliamentary procedure — you cannot simply drop from considering one motion and switch to another without first resolving the first motion. After some more parliamentary back-and-forth nonsense, we eventually went to the good old-fashioned voice vote. The “No’s” overwhelmingly had it, and Allen even (surprisingly) admitted as such, thus conceding defeat on this motion…until she then suddenly backtracked and claimed that the voice vote was invalid because she felt there may have been participation from the gallery (the non-delegates). Although the gallery insisted they had not participated, Allen ultimately had them — including the ones who were live-streaming — removed from the room. Because transparency, right?

We then went back to the motion to table, but for some reason, we weren’t allowed to simply redo the voice vote, and instead had to now go to a roll-call vote of each delegate. The parliamentarian snidely “congratulated” us for forcing it to a roll-call vote, declaring that it would take three hours to do so. Fortunately, they managed to mitigate this by simply asking those in favor to hold up their cards for the secretary to count, and then repeat the process for those opposed. The secretary did both counts, and without announcing the actual tally, declared that the “No’s” did indeed have it. Thus, the motion to table Ariana’s motion failed, and we were now back to considering Ariana’s motion.

They put up a good fight even as we moved to Ariana’s motion, and at one point, we were literally voting on whether or not to vote on the motion. But we finally moved to have the crucial vote on Ariana’s motion. It soon became clear that this was more than just a motion to expand the criteria to include the scores of delegates who had been denied; it was a preliminary vote, a litmus test, to determine where the delegates stood. Those who supported Rebuild would vote for Ariana’s motion, while those who supported Thrive would oppose it.

When we held up our cards in support of the motion, it seemed like an overwhelming majority was in favor. However, this was due to the fact that Rebuild delegates were spread out among the floor; while the Thrive delegates were more consolidated to a select few areas, their chapters also overwhelmingly possessed “proxy votes” — basically meaning each delegate could vote twice on one motion.

When the count was over, Allen talked privately to the parliamentarian, and, at the repetition of the “Transparency” shouts from the floor, admitted that she was trying to confirm whether or not it needed to be a two-thirds majority. This elicited another wave of groans, as the Rebuild delegates felt this was a clear effort to override what was obviously a majority…but possibly not two-thirds.

To our relief, the parliamentarian finally confirmed that it would not need to be two-thirds, but just a simple majority. With that, the Secretary announced the result:

121–118. The motion passed by three votes.

After a general gasp at the closeness of the vote, the mood quickly shifted to a realization on both sides’ ends: For Rebuild, a realization that victory was at hand. If Rebuild had a narrow majority already, it was guaranteed to increase to an even larger margin when all of those previously-denied delegates were added to the floor. For Thrive, it was a realization that they were finally going to lose — substantially too, from the looks of it.

However, Allen then dropped another bombshell: The reservation made with the hotel for the ballroom was ending at 3 PM. It was about 2:00. Another wave of groans, and one person angrily shouted, “And who’s fault is THAT?!” She tried to placate the furious crowd by encouraging everyone to remain on the floor while they opened the doors again, to allow all the previously-denied delegates a chance to register after all. Nevertheless, plenty of people were all too eager to flee the floor, whether to rush to the nearest restroom, grab a snack or drink, or tell their friends from the gallery — who had no idea what was going on — all about it.

Before they started to officially re-register delegates, the parliamentarian hung up after a final, parting shot across the bow directly at us. He said that he had never, in his life, encountered such a situation with such a “disorganized” and “unprofessional” group of individuals. Right. As if we, the delegates and our fellow delegates who were denied, were the problem here, and not the incompetent and corrupt leadership responsible for this disaster. One person from the floor did in fact take to expressing this out loud, saying something along the lines of, “Yeah, insult the delegates. That’s real smart.”

As we were slowly pouring out of the ballroom, one of the two denied delegates from UCSB told me afterward that the anger on Thrive’s part wasn’t even concealed by that point. When the same two Thrive candidates who registered the delegates beforehand returned to their table to register the additional delegates, one of them stood on her chair and shouted, at the top of her lungs: “Alright everybody, line the f*** up! Let’s go!” That’s professionalism if I’ve ever heard it.

But even though they were registering new delegates, it was clear that the election would not be done within the hour. Allen eventually did order every delegate out of the ballroom so that she, Danzek, Ariana, and a handful of other top Thrive and Rebuild candidates could talk in private to negotiate a deal.

Out in the hallway, the heat from outside and the body heat from the ever-increasing crowd of people contributed to even more tensions after the contentious vote. I witnessed a fight almost break out in the hallway, between — you guessed it — a Thrive supporter and a Rebuild supporter. The Thrive individual in question was one of the most — if not THE most — vocal advocates of Thrive on social media, while the Rebuild supporter was a delegate who was denied access to the floor. The Thrive person instigated first, stepping towards the Rebuild delegate in an intimidating manner and looming over him, before a Thrive candidate came between them and lightly pushed the aggressor away. But when the Rebuild delegate realized that he was being threatened, he too tried to step up to the aggressor, with significantly more energy. It took three of his friends — a Rebuild candidate and two other Rebuild delegates, one of whom was also denied from the floor — to hold him back, and eventually convince him to leave the crowd.

Another two hours passed, and the reservation had already expired. It was pure chaos in the hallway. One of my fellow UCSB delegates was enraged, and I thought he was about to go insane — he was determined to drop everything and leave this convention, saying that this organization “is not worth saving. It deserves to burn. It deserves to die.” Several of the freshman members in attendance who had ridden up with me were asking to move their luggage out of my truck and into another car from SB so that they could leave early, anticipating that this could go well into the evening — and San Jose is roughly four hours from Santa Barbara as is. One of my friends said they overheard the possibility of the vote literally taking place in the hotel parking lot.

Finally, around 4:30 PM, Allen returned with a megaphone, and Ariana and the other Thrive and Rebuild leaders around her. Allen stood on a chair and spoke for about five minutes. She covered the obligatory “thanks for your patience” lines, and then gave the line that defined the debacle: “Both sides have agreed to agree.” On what? She couldn’t say, although she eventually admitted that they planned to continue negotiating so as to eventually have the vote at a later date, via an online method. The reaction to this was incredulous to say the least — could an online method be as reliable? Who would oversee such a process? Could it be hacked by the Russians?

But regardless, the battle ended at a complete stalemate — just as it was becoming clear who was going to win. We were on the verge of a major upset, with nationwide implications for statewide CR federations across the country, and it wasn’t even going to be close. It would indeed be the CR equivalent of Donald Trump’s election. But alas, it was never going to happen that day.

And so, the convention was officially called to “recess;” which means that it is technically still going on. Right now. A month later, when a significant number of delegates who were seniors have already graduated or — like myself — are about to graduate. And there is still no statewide board. There has been no major news on the progress of the talks, and this seems as if it could drag well into the summer, and maybe even the fall.

The fact that this is happening in one of the largest and most populous states, and is still not getting any coverage whatsoever, is the most frustrating part. This much goes beyond slate allegiance: Whatever side you’re on, people need to know about the saga of the 2017 CCR race.