Meeting erupts after charges of opaque dealings
Simmering tensions flared on a local Republican Party committee this week after allegations were raised that its leadership is resisting calls for greater transparency.
A member of the Kern County Republican Central Committee said she was angrily threatened with expulsion from a meeting Monday because she insisted on receiving a copy of a financial report and then called for allowing local party members to attend the gatherings.
The committee’s vice chairman countered that the outspoken member, Lynn Wyman, was making what he deemed unreasonable requests on behalf of party members whose disruptive behavior at previous meetings led the group to turn them away.
The kerfuffle has highlighted strained relations between some of the county’s most senior party members and Republican outsiders suspicious of their local leadership.
Elected members of the committee had just convened the 6 p.m. meeting at Continental Labor and Staffing Resources on Mohawk Street when Wyman asked for a copy of a financial report that was only delivered verbally. She was told there was no reason to provide a printed version of the summary.
Soon afterward she spoke up to challenge the committee’s recent practice of barring attendance to anyone who was not a member of the board, with the exception of presentations by Republican political candidates seeking the group’s endorsement.
Wyman said she later apologized for interrupting speakers at the meeting but not before visibly upsetting Chairman Ken Weir, a Bakersfield city councilman running to succeed Rep. Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield, in the 32nd Assembly District seat.
She said in a phone interview Friday her actions grew out of her own frustration that the committee has labeled some party members as troublemakers, including people elected to the committee whose four-year terms don’t begin until January.
“These Republicans donate to the party and they have a right to know what’s going on,” said Wyman, the former wife of the late Assemblyman Phil Wyman of Tehachapi.
“When (committee members) refuse to answer questions, people become even more suspicious,” she added.
Weir said he was unavailable to comment Friday. Delegated to speak in his place, Vice Chairman Clayton Campbell traced the confrontation to past meetings in which Republicans not on the committee have showed up, sometimes with recording equipment, alleging conspiracies and airing unfounded grievances.
Campbell, a private attorney in Bakersfield serving his second term on the committee, said the financial report Wyman requested detailed only minor transactions and that the group’s more comprehensive financial reports to state and federal government are publicly available.
He said Wyman’s allies only want copies of the committee’s “bare bones” financial reports “so they can spin it into some slanderous complaint.”
Additionally, Campbell said, the group is within its rights to deny attendance to non-members.
“The problem is there are people on the outside of the committee that wish they were running the Central Committee, and they spend all their time criticizing and attacking Republicans,” he said. “And they claim they are better Republicans than are on the Central Committee.”
He recalled an earlier meeting at a local pizzeria where party members showed up and insisted on speaking during a portion of the gathering set aside for general discussion.
Among them were Republicans who had unsuccessfully run for local political office. One of the guests brought a camera and tripod intending to record the meeting, at which point Campbell said he “shut it down.”
The committee tried to be courteous, he said, even in the face of what he called extreme hostility.
“They way that they repay us was with more hostility,” Campbell said.
Wyman said she does not condone meeting disruptions, “but I think (outside Republicans) have legitimate questions that should be answered.”