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This past weekend, our long-time friends in Missouri, (names withheld) sent me a brief email mentioning their participation in state GOP activities. I asked them to flesh out a report for me which I would edit for posting as a report and encouragement for our readers to likewise become involved in taking a stand for righteous (godly) government. Kudos to them!
Here is our report from the Missouri GOP State Convention, held May 4, 2024, in Springfield, Missouri. The day began at 5:30 a.m. with a wake-up call from the front desk of the hotel. By 7:00 a.m. we (my husband and I) were at the front door of the Expo Convention Center across the street from the hotel where we were staying.
After being instructed to go into a particular door, a man behind a long table asked to see my tag designating who I was and what state congressional district I was from along with a photo ID. (I had already registered on the previous night hoping to expedite the process.)
So again I presented my ID. I was admitted into the great convention hall. Along with my briefcase of papers and Robert’s Rules of Order, newly revised edition, I also had a small cooler with our lunch and a grocery bag of snacks just in case the schedule to adjourn for lunch didn’t go as planned. (As it turned out, we were glad we planned ahead.)
For the next two hours we worked the floor to whip up votes for Sophie Shore as Convention Chairperson, David Lightner for Missouri RNC Chairman and Dr. Maryam Mohammadkhani as RNC Chairwoman to the National Convention to be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The time seemed to tick by quickly as it was now 8:45 a.m. and we knew we had to find our seats and be seated by 9 a.m. sharp. So, we wrapped things up and got to our respective seats for our Congressional District.
Each seat had a sign on the back to designate your District and County. There were, many counties in our section of the Congressional District.
As time ticked by we noticed it was 9:45 and still delegates were being processed into the convention hall. One should understand that this GOP Convention was to start 9:00 a.m. sharp so that everything that needed to be accomplished would be finished before 8 p.m.
The chairman, Nick Myers, said we need to hold things up until all delegates get seated on the convention floor. As we waited, we reviewed the contents of the white bags which had been placed on all our chairs.
They contained the 2024 final draft of the Republican Platform along with the proposed amendments—32 in all—along with a host of fliers with other candidates running for Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, etc.
By this time 11:00 o’clock had rolled around, and being new to this gig I was wondering why it hadn’t started yet. A little more time passed before MO RNC Chairman Nick Myers stood up and said we have a problem with getting people vetted.
Now according to the schedule we were supposed to adjourn for a lunch period from noon-2:00 p.m. These kind of delay tactics persisted throughout the whole day, orchestrated by Nick Myers and his allies. But it was anything but boring.
The grassroots activists in our state GOP ended up beating the established RINOs. Sophie Shore became Chairperson of the Convention, Jodi Wildham became secretary, Sophie had hired her own parliamentarian, Eric from Oklahoma, and appointed a time keeper for when the debates began on the amendments to the platform.
Once Sophie took charge, the meeting moved along at a steady pace. She ran things tight and by the book, in spite of every delay and the sneaky tactics Nick Myers and his allies tried to use.
The Missouri Platform of 2024 was not revised at all, even though the grassroots conservative GOP party base slogged through on reviewing and voting on as many amendments as they could before time elapsed when the convention had to come to a close. Rumors are swirling that a subsequent convention may yet be called to revise the Platform.
All of these were just some of many shenanigans the establishment GOP pulled one after another. They may have high-five’d each other, but who did it really hurt? One message was made clear, if enough of us work together we can make our voices heard, we can (and did) make a difference!
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