Virgin Island Republican Party members of St. Croix who would like to be a delegate or alternate to the 2016 Republican National Convention and help choose the nominee of the party for U.S. president need to attend an important upcoming meeting of the St. Croix Branch of the V.I. Republican Party. It will take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 16, at the Re-Max conference room, 2nd floor, No. 5 Company Street.
There will be a panel of expert convention veterans led by attorney Warren "Bruce" Cole to explain the rules for the V.I. delegate selection process as well as the process adopted and properly certified in 2012 by the Territorial Committee. These are the same rules that the RNC mandated to be used by the V.I. on March 10, 2016, in their official Convention Call in Nov. 30, 2015
According to the re-inaction of the 2012 rules for the 2016 GOP Convention delegates, candidates may run either "committed" or "uncommitted" to a particular presidential nominee hopeful. This process insures a better chance for a broad and diverse selection of persons from our V.I. community to participate. The pros and cons of running uncommitted versus commuted will be discussed. Hopefully, Holland Redfield, the party national committeeman and convention veteran since 1984, will attend the branch meeting and weigh in on this issue.
Commission member Anne Golden was in charge of running the 2012 convention/caucus with territory-wide teleconference hookup with attorney Leigh Goldman in charge on St. Thomas-St. John. Both have agreed not to be candidates for delegate.
There will be a broad range of issues that may come up as new delegates and alternate prospects come on board. A team of past convention veterans will provide guidance.
The delegates, once selected, will elect a delegation chairman who is then completely in charge. These same delegates select from their delegation representatives on the various important committees. These delegate members of various committees decide the rules and platform, which runs until the next convention.
The meeting will include discussion of the many issues concerning the delegation.
E-mail or call Herbert Schoenbohm, president, at 690-1049 if there are any questions or criticism of the attempts to do this right again as it was done before in 2012.
