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Independent Party in fight over Protack
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Race
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| Contributor | RBH |
| Last Edited | RBH Jul 11, 2008 03:02am |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Wilmington (DE) News Journal |
| News Date | Friday, June 27, 2008 09:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | No law says political parties must hold their nominating conventions in hotel ballrooms or convention centers. But some members of the Independent Party of Delaware say the pizza-parlor meeting that produced their party’s gubernatorial nomination last week was much too cozy.
Three of the party’s four executive-committee members met at a Grotto Pizza Restaurant in Millsboro and voted to make Republican Mike Protack, 50, of Hockessin, their nominee. The fourth member, Robert Brown, who chairs the party’s New Castle County committee, did not attend but said he voted for Protack “in absentia.”
The move sparked an immediate and angry response from several members of the party, which has 619 voters on its rolls and has had its share of internal skirmishes in its brief eight-year history.
At issue is whether the party’s bylaws, adopted in 2004, stipulate that the executive committee makes the nomination for statewide offices – as party officials claim – or convenes a party-wide nominating convention. Several lawyers say the bylaws appear unclear on that point.
In a bit of irony, the man who wrote those bylaws – Frank Sims – was deposed as state chairman last fall in another nomination dispute. Sims submitted nomination papers for a candidate running for lieutenant governor, but the forms were rejected because Secretary Wolfgang von Baumgart had not signed off on them. State law requires both signatures.
Sims, who is no longer a party member, said the bylaws require an open nominating convention, with notice to party members of the time, date and location so that they can attend and vote. |
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