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Monday, April 9, 2007
Fulco GOP to hash things out Friday night
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Recently, you’ll recall, we asked for a report from anyone who attended last months Fulton County GOP Convention, which we had heard was a highly contentious affair.
We heard from Mark Irle, the outgoing first vice chair of the county party, who described a tumultuous affair in which the voting for chairman was marked by a number of irregularities including a shortage of ballots and considerable confusion over the final vote count in the chairman’s race, in which incumbent Mike Dvorscak was declared the winner over challenger Shawn Hanley.
Irle was a Hanley supporter, but he passed along a letter from John Fredricks, a self-described Dvorscak supporter, who also deplored what he described as “Machiavellian floor tactics” and “miscalculated ballots.”
Anyone who has ever been involved in a local convention fight like this will deduce we’re considerably shortening the description to get to the point.
There was enough protest over the election that the party has scheduled a special executive committee meeting for 7 p.m. Friday at the Roswell City Hall to go over what happened.
Irle questioned the timing of the meeting, which he said was designed to suppress turnout for what he describes as more of a fiasco than a convention.
We called Dvorscak, and he said Friday night was the only time when there wasn’t a conflict with local city council meetings. He said there was also a concern the legislature could be meeting into the evening on other nights of the week, which would keep those executive committee members who are legislators from attending.
Dvorscak declined to comment on the charges made about the handling of the convention.
“These types of intra-party things are normally settled in-house without bringing in the press, and in that spirit, there’s not a lot I want to say about it,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean others can’t get in touch.
