Yes, you heard it. We spend a lot of time setting up in shopping centers trying to convince new voters to register and join the republicans. If we get 10 new voters, we are happy.
Faisal Gill, while collecting a remarkable number of delegates for the 51st district, managed to find 68 previously non-registered voters who not only decided to join the political process, but signed up to come to a convention and to pledged to vote Republican.
Faisal should be applauded, but instead he is being attacked. In the blog entry deceptively titled 51st District Delegate Form Issues, BVBL says:
So much for the idea of Faisal Gill appealing to Republicans. He has to sign up as delegates a substantial number of people who haven’t even bothered to vote before, and aren’t even registered to vote? If Faisal Gill has to go to these lengths to sign up delegates, I can only imagine what else close inspection of his delegate forms would reveal
So BVBL is upset that, while polling the 51st district to get delegates for the Republican convention, Faisal Gill found and signed up new Republicans. Rather than recognizing that this speaks to the appeal of Faisal (his ability to get people involved and to pledge adherance to Republican principles), BVBL attacks him for it.
Given this, why would anybody believe any other subjective charges BVBL makes about Faisal Gill? In the past month, BVBL has falsely claimed that Gill has failed his navy physical (he passed), took pictures in uniform for his campaign(they were family photos), and gave $750 to the committee for NO REASON (it was payment for a table at the Lincoln/Reagan dinner), among other things.
BVBL also claimed the PWCGOP chair was applying a false 3-meeting rule that "wasn't in the Republican Plan for Virginia" (it was in the RPV plan). BVBL claimed the 51st convention chair added a "new clause" to allow convention delegates who weren't registered (the statement was directly from the RPV plan). BVBL apologized for those last two false statements, but has not apologized or retracted his other baseless accusations.
So let ME say thanks, Faisal Gill, for performing outreach to our community, for finding new voters, and signing them up to participate in the Republican Party process. That is exactly what we need, and I call on Julie Lucas to denounce BVBL's rediculous attacks on voter outreach.
Update 5/26/2007 2pm: I was reading Citizen Tom's blog, and found an older reference he had to a humorous (aren't they all humorous) thread at Too Conservatives. That led me to a comment at TC that applies to this subject from May 19th, 2007 at 12:57 am :
I’ll be interested to see how many actual GOP voters show up for Gill at the convention… my guess is very few- word is he’s getting a bunch of “voter registration ballots,” which doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand those aren’t active Republicans supporting him
This brings up a few points. First, before may 21st, but after the may 13th freeze, Gill was getting registrations forms. That means he was working to get his delegates registered even before the may 21st delegate cutoff. Second, it shows that Faisal was working hard to register new voters who would sign the pledge. Good things. They won't be 'active republicans', they will be 'new republicans', people who are willing to sign a form stating they are republicans and will support republicans. Just the kind of people we want to get registered.
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