After two months of drama, the election for a new Fulton County Republican Party (FCRP) chair remains on hold, but a resolution is pending.
The outcome will likely determine whether the FCRP sticks to its establishment roots or veers in a direction more friendly to former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Georgia Republican Party Executive Director Stewart Bragg told The Georgia Star News Thursday that his staff members have obtained the original registration list from the Fulton County Republican Convention.
“We have submitted that list to both candidates,” Bragg said in an email.
“Once both candidates have agreed to the list, Chairman David Shafer will call the election in accordance with [the] decision of the State Committee.”
FCRP members convened in April to elect a new chair. They had to pick between Trey Kelly — the incumbent who is an establishment Republican — or Susan Opraseuth. Opraseuth strongly supports Trump. But Fulton County Republicans tussled over who ultimately prevailed because of voting methods that many people questioned. Kelly won that first vote. Several party members demanded a second and more transparent vote — which Opraseuth won. Kelly challenged the second vote.
An Opraseuth supporter said this month that the candidate does not have a database of 330 delegates she needs as she campaigns to replace Kelly — even though she’s entitled to have it. The database contains the phone numbers and email addresses for delegates who will vote to elect a new chair.
Opraseuth told The Star News Thursday that she and her supporters are on hold waiting for Kelly to submit his final delegate list.
“And that’s ironic, considering he was the county chairman who credentialed these delegates on April 17. That is a problem. My team has done the best to reconstruct the delegation database, although we have been locked out of it since I was elected in April,” Opraseuth said.
“Our database is obviously not accurate because we are doing the best we can with it. Trey Kelly is the only one that was responsible for credentialing these delegates to determine who was to vote on April 17, although they have tried to have me share in that responsibility as a new candidate or new officer. I was not involved at all. I never had the list and that’s my story. We are still waiting on it. We submitted what we had. We did find errors and omissions, which is troubling. We sent it to David Shafer and now we are waiting for him.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Georgia Capitol” by DXR. CC BY-SA 4.0.
