Factions battle for Republican committee seats

Among the approximately 5000 Republicans that switched their registrations to Democratic in “bucolic” Chester County some had other reasons in addition to national politics.

Some Republicans that are familiar with the structure of the local Republican Committees here may have switched partly because of local politics.

The article below refers to “groups” in Chester County Republican Committee Area 9.

I guess that you could say that there might also be “groups” in the region that CCRC Area 14 covers. In my opinion one way to tell members of one “group” from another in Area 14 might be to look to see if the committeepersons have “rap” sheets.

Some Republicans here that know the inner machinery of the CCRC and left for the Democratic Party tell me that they will never look back.


Jim Pitcherella
Coatesville


DAILY LOCAL NEWS
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Factions battle for Republican committee seats


‘PARTY UNITY’ GROUP LOSES THREE OUT OF SIX SEATS, ‘SOCIALLY MODERATES’ WIN NINE IN WILLISTOWN, MALVERN
By DAN KRISTIE, Staff Writer
MALVERN — Two slates of candidates battled during Tuesday’s primary for control of the division of Chester County’s Republican Committee that contains Willistown and Malvern.
One slate, some of whose members said their goal was to keep religious conservatives from co-opting the Republican Party, won the majority of the contested committee seats. The other slate, whose members said their goal was to unite Republicans of differing ideologies, lost a few seats to members of the first slate.
Twelve of the 20 committee seats in the local Republican Party’s Area 9, which contains Willistown and Malvern, were contested, and members of the first, “socially moderate” slate won nine of them. The “party unity” slate, which controlled six committee seats prior to the primary, held onto only three seats.
Labeling these two slates is difficult because some of their candidates are reluctant to identify themselves as members of a particular group.
But, over the last several weeks, the battle between these two groups has intensified, and candidates have begun to be more forthcoming about their alliances.
Part of the reason the battle came out into the open was a newspaper column written by Henry Briggs, who retired from Malvern’s Borough Council in January and who just stepped down as Malvern’s Republican committeeman.
Briggs, who calls himself a “pro-choice moderate,” wrote that religious conservatives who want to co-opt the local Republican Party were running for committee seats. He argued that these committee candidates were reluctant to tell voters about their agenda — an agenda, he said, that included opposition to legalized abortion.
In this column, Briggs refers to these candidates as “Weeds in the American lawn.”

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.dailylocal.com/WebApp/appmanager/JRC/Daily;jsessionid=vzhnLJ3GpJKkdQKVQBrGD3CJP7fcsQG2FhgyjsjTrdRQzvy3ZHGK!-806706688?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pg_article&r21.pgpath=%2FDLN%2FHome&r21.content=%2FDLN%2FHome%2FTopStoryList_Story_1960245

"As nightfall does not come at once," "neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become victims of the darkness."

Justice William O. Douglas