I spent the last 3 and 1/2 days away from home. Spent a substantial wad to go between hotel, meals, and paying for the convention itself.

First night was Thursday with Kash Patel as a speaker. He was very down to earth. And his speech was awesome. His Q and A was great too. He stayed around with convention people to converse and had a beer. I did not stay long, but did get a picture with him. I was tired from traveling and needed to get settled into my room

My Friday morning session was attending a break out group on Election Integrity. There were 4 speakers there. Two lawyers, one in charge of National Elections for Trump who said he’s still dealing with the repercussions of the 2020 election. One was a woman who is on the Board of Elections In Wake county who will be raised up to the State BOE come this Fall. She was introduced as knowing the insides and out of election law. The last guy (I didn’t catch his name) but he seemed to be involved in bringing the NC model of election integrity to other states. This will be in place for this Fall’s election. He mentioned that NC’s handling of the 2020 election is now the model for many other states. We had 34% of the election integrity resources enacted here in 2020 and it prevented the state from being stolen for Trump.

For those that don’t know the Republican Party was shut down from contesting any elections for 40 years due to something the GOP did in NJ. So finally a judge lifted that agreement and it’s only been since 2020 that something could be done about the Dems cheating. So now the GOP is more actively engaged in election integrity.

Friday afternoon was the first meeting of delegates from 2-5. The opening started with a count of delegates who had already checked in based on every county so they would know quorum. They did this the opening of every session.

Then business began reviewing changes a prior state committee had already made on the NC GOP State platform. Red and blue highlights showed new info and changes. Individual delegates spoke to changes and it was asked if the final copy we voted on could be submitted to all GOP elected officials in our state house and senate, US congressman and Senators and all our Council of State Elected officials. It was voted in and two members volunteered to pay for the completed hard copies and for them to be delivered.

Next we worked through changes made to the Plan of Organization. Sections. They were discussed and voted on. All reports will be placed on the NCGOP website.

We finished all but three sections of the report and recessed at 5 pm.

5:30 pm was a VIP event I attended (paid extra for). Alcoholic drinks and appetizers were provided. I met my state assembly man there who happened to be in attendance and also Eric and Lara Trump came in and spoke with us from a stage.
They also spoke at the dinner I attended and Eric dialed his dad for him to speak with us by phone. Trump spoke at least 10 minutes.

That evening I ended up hanging out with a different NC assemblyman (not from my county) and several others I met in his group while at dinner and the VIP meeting. We met with Hal Weatherman (GOP Lt Governor candidate) at his reception. Then we cruised the 12th floor and found open houses for the following: College Republicans, Republican Women’s group, and even went to see Mark Robinson (unfortunately he was in another room meeting with another group so we left without getting pictures with him).

Saturday there were two working sessions for delegates. The am we finished the three remaining sections of the Plan of Organization rewrites. And began to take up the resolutions.

Resolutions are taken up from delegates who want these presented to the state GOP to be voted upon. These are near and dear to delegates hearts. It is their way of being heard. Unfortunately, not all the resolutions are heard bc of time limitations. I attended this event just so I could vote on the Medical Freedom Resolution. It was taken from a number of districts. 9 districts out of 14 were represented in this resolution who had wanted this but all had different versions. along with multiple county Republican parties.

They put this resolution dead last to be discussed for a reason. The woman I know who spent time putting this together to merge all the districts medical freedom resolutions with someone else was told from someone in the know that our state GOP did not want to vote on this resolution and the powers that be in charge were to slow walk it so it wouldn’t be voted on by the delegates at the convention.

This resolution and several resolutions that were to be presented from the floor were left after someone said to vote on a group of resolutions and to separate this one out from the group along with two others. After we voted on the less controversial resolutions. Someone brought up that we should move on to voting in our State committee man and woman. And asked what happened if we ran out of time and didn’t have these voted in before our session ended. The chair said the incumbents would just return again. BC delegates had a fiasco with a machine they wanted paper ballots this year.

But even before this was accomplished the state committee presented their list of National Delegates. Each district already voted on three to represent them at our district conventions. (There were also three alternated and two alternates to the alternates). This state committee list included politicians (Ted Budd, Mark Robinson etc. and no Tom Tillis was not asked), big donors from the state and other muckety mucks who they placed on the list. Another list of names were selected for the electoral college and their alternates. As delegates we could not vote on this list. Only the chair could vote on this list. But the time taken to discuss these took too long IMHO bc we couldn’t even vote on them.

Then the committeemen and women were introduced. It took the remaining time to vote on them individually (when they could have done these on one ballot) with each county standing up and reporting their counts . This all happens after these were nominated by another member and each person got to speak. Two men and two women were vying for the spot. In spite of all the hoopla the incumbents were voted back in. (And to think if we hadn’t have even voted on them they still could have gone). In the meantime the remaining resolutions bit the dust. All part of the plan

Since I am old and have some health issues I won’t be returning. The majority of delegates were over 55. Some have been attending for years. Was this because of the cost? The time involved? Who knows? But we definitely need more young people to get involved in this party

The best part was hearing all the speeches from elected officials and those running for office during the meals. I got to meet many of them personally.

Also lots of tables set up in the registration area with Right to Life groups, Blacks for Trump, Fredrick Douglas groups, all kinds of MAGA apparel etc. Faith and Freedom Coalition, political candidate booths and county groups selling products.

Yesterday lunch got introduced to our Justice candidates

This am we had the Faith and Freedom Coalition at breakfast.

Their last meeting today after breakfast was for those delegates who will be attending the National Convention. So I left.