- Saturday afternoon the Illinois Republican state central committee meet in Tinley Park to decide that fate of embattled GOP chairman Pat Brady. Following the inability of the IL GOP to gain the Governors mansion in 2010 and the absolute shellacking Republicans in Illinois got in the 2012 election(losing 5 congressional seats and Democrats gaining super majorities in the state House and Senate) there was a groundswell from grassroots activist and others to oust Pat Brady as IL GOP chairman due to his poor performance. Then in January of this year Pat Brady announced his support of same sex marriage, which is in direct contradiction to the Illinois and national Republican party platform which support the traditional definition of marriage as being that of one man and one woman. Since Pat Brady give his support to “gay marriage” the groundswell to have him removed as party chairman grew.
The Illinois Center Right Coalition, conservative activist William J. Kelly, former congressman Joe Walsh, state Senator and central committee member Jim Oberweis, and countless others all openly called on Pat Brady to either step down or be fired as Illinois Republican party chairman.
- photo courtesy Illinois Review
Walsh Freedom-The time has come for Pat Brady to step down as Illinois GOP party chair
After some internal rangeling Sen. Oberweis, who has spearheaded the effort to remove Pat Brady from within the state central committee, was able to get everyone together to decide Pat Brady’s fate. approximately 100 people showed up in Tinley Park yesterday to demand Pat Brady’s ouster. After conducting some normal business the committee went into executive session to discuss Brady’s future. Those in attendance were told that this session would last 20-30 minutes. It turned into a three hour executive session, where in the end the IL GOP opted to keep Pat Brady as chairman despite his obvious failures and total disregard for the party platform.
- IL GOP chair Pat Brady photo from Illinois Review
Illinois Review did extensive live tweeting from Tinley Park and has a full report of what went down, here.
While conservative grassroots activist were kept out of the executive session Tinley Park police were called on them due to supposed noise complaints.
- Tinley Park police being called on Pat Brady protestors photo courtesy Robertt Johnsonn
- One of the people most upset with the leadership, or lack thereof, of Pat Brady was Paul McKinley who spoke out against him during the meeting for not giving him one bit of help during his unsuccessful bid to replace Jesse Jackson Jr. in Congress during April 9th’s special election. Paul McKinley isn’t the only Republican candidate for Congress or the state House or Senate that Pat Brady and the Illinois GOP failed to lend any support to. Candidates all across the state have tails of how Pat Brady and the rest of the party failed to deliver any money or get out the vote support in their campaigns. There are even a few candidates these last two election cycles on the Republican side whom Pat Brady tried to defeat and/or sabotage according to the candidates themselves.
It would have been very interesting to have been a fly on the wall during that three hour closed session, because according to Jon Zahm, the former statewide campaign director for Rick Santorum’s presidential bid, a deal was worked out where Brady would get to keep his job temporarily and resign on his own in a month or two. According to Zahm’s Facebook postings he has four sources from inside the executive session confirming this.
It is very clear that there is a civil war going on within the Illinois Republican party where conservatives and the grassroots(i.e the Tea Party) are trying to make the IL GOP a force for the 2014 elections so as to take the Governorship and regain congressional seats as well as state House and Senate ones and moderate-liberal establishment supporters trying to keep the IL GOP as weak and ineffective as possible or worse(Democrats-lite). Rumor has it that a prior attempt to hold a meeting to oust Pat Brady was called off because US Senator Mark Kirk helped twist the arm of one central committee member to deny those in Oberweis’s camp the needed numbers to pull off the change in leadership.
Needless to say after what took place Saturday the Illinois GOP is a #EpicFail.
Below are videos taken at the central committee meeting Saturday.
