SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — A long, contentious day led to what grassroots activists are calling a victory, at the Missouri Republican State Convention on Saturday, May 4.
The day began at 9 a.m., but the election of a chair — required before official business can be conducted — didn't happen until 1 p.m. The delegate credentialing process at the state convention took approximately four hours. “I feel this was due to the ineptness of current leadership,” Camden County Republican Club President Les Larson said.
When the vote for the election of the chair finally came to the floor, GOP leadership attempted to propose voting via secret ballot, but that proposal was met by resounding shouts of anger and pushback from the majority of delegates in attendance.
A standing vote was taken, and Camden County Delegate Sophie Shore was overwhelmingly elected state convention chair.
Shore is a graduate of the Camdenton High School and the daughter of Lake area residents Jeff and Stacy Shore. She also works on Senator Bill Eigel's gubernatorial campaign team.
“Sophie Shore ran the convention strong and fair, and kept things moving,” Liberty Link Missouri President Bev Ehlen said. “Sophie gives me hope for the future because she is an example of a young person who loves God and who loves our country. She took on this thankless battle because she wanted the grassroots conservatives to have a voice.”
Grassroots delegates from across the state had attended the convention with a plan to elect Shore and take leadership of the convention. “Our biggest concern has been with the lack of Republican leadership in Jefferson City,” Larson said. “Even though we have a majority in the House and Senate, they continue to not pass conservative legislation. This was exemplified on Saturday by the lack of state GOP leadership when they ignored amendments to the party platform that were submitted by conservative committees from across the state.”
Other grassroots conservative delegate victories at the convention included electing grassroots conservative candidates for all Republican National Convention committee positions, as well as the approval of the Truly Grassroots for Trump slate of delegates. The slate will attend the Republican National Convention in July in Milwaukee, Wi., where they will vote on the 2024 party platform and for Donald J. Trump as the Republican candidate for president.
However, not everything went the grassroots' way.
Shore moved the convention quickly through the party's business within approximately 5 hours, around the same amount of time it took the state party chair to credential the delegates for the first half of the day, she later noted in an interview with Lake Expo.
However, the meeting came to an abrupt end after the call for quorum was brought forth by Rep. Dan Stacy (R-District 31), and it was found a quorum was no longer present. This left the amendments to the party platform, submitted by the various county committees, unadopted.
More than half of the delegates had left the convention due to the lateness of the day. The convention was abruptly concluded without approving the new amendments.
“There were suggestions [that] the delay in voting for chair and the call to quorum was planned by the former leadership so their platform draft would not be amended,” Larson said.
When asked about his call for quorum, Rep. Stacy responded, “The business of the convention should always be done in a proper order. We had no business conducting further business without a quorum present.”
Rep. Stacy and Rep. Ben Baker (R-District 160) both addressed the chair repeatedly throughout the convention to speak on convention protocol and amendments. This caused some to speculate the pair had stalled for time in an attempt to get delegates to leave and therefore creating a loss of quorum.
“Many of the amendments were not well-crafted, although I might agree in principle with them,” Rep. Stacy said. “Therefore, in my opinion they were not ready to be incorporated into the main body of the Republican party platform. In my experience, and to my knowledge, there has never been a state convention that has rejected the draft platform.”
Congressional District Convention
Shore had also been elected chairman at the Republican Congressional District Convention Saturday, April 6 in Sedalia, Mo. She says she was moved to campaign to be elected chair for the purpose of advocating on behalf of Vernon County delegates. Vernon County was told by GOP leadership that they were not going to be able to vote at the congressional district convention due to a technicality.
“I just wanted every delegate to have a voice and to be treated fairly,” Shore said.
Rep. Ben Baker did not respond to a request for comment, in time for this publishing.
