Never mind what Republican voters wanted. The state party has decided to remove a person duly elected to the Republican Executive Committee of Duval County for the past 20 years.
To top it off, the complainant is the chairman of the GOP in Duval.
This is but the latest twist in a simmering dispute between former city councilman Robin Lumb, who is a former local party chair, and the current party chair, Dean Black, who also is a member of the Florida House.
But there are a couple of fairly serious policy disputes involved as well.
Lumb was accused by Black of violating his loyalty oath to the party and of using the word “Republican” in a new group Lumb heads, first called the Republican Assembly. After a “cease and desist” letter from the state party, the name was changed to Duval County Assembly of Republican Voters.
The main difference is that the Assembly believes Republicans in primaries should be endorsed and the races kept free of scorched earth tactics that benefit Democrats.
The background is that Lumb and Black were allies. Lumb supported Black when Black ran for chairman of the Duval chapter.
But then Black ran in a primary election. Lumb took an intense dislike to the rough tactics used by a political consultant on behalf of Black’s campaign.
Lumb and Black also had differences over the REC’s finances.
It has been downhill since, culminating in the complaint to the Grievance Committee of the Republican Party of Florida.
Lumb was not allowed to face his accuser.
“I was not given a hearing,” Lumb told Eye on Jacksonville. The committee simply issued its finding — Lumb was not guilty of violating his loyalty oath but was guilty of using the word “Republican” in vain.
“The RPOF thinks it literally owns the word Republican,” Lumb said. It also claims to own any depiction of an elephant, the party symbol.
“A word that has been in common use for 170 years to describe a particular type of
partisan voter is not and can never be the property of the Republican Party of Florida or any other entity,” Lumb said in his response to the complaint.
Lumb alleges that Black supported and worked in concert with the Assembly for five years before filing his complaint, in which he called the Assembly a “renegade organization.””
He also asserts that the RPOF violated its own rules to sanction him by acting within 90 days of an election.
Maleana Gay, who recently ran for state committeewoman after being endorsed by Lumb’s organization, said of the ruckus, “In a time we are supposed to be unified as a party, this is pretty divisive and petty.”
It seems strange, at a time when the Florida GOP has swollen in size and surpassed the liberal Democrat Party in registrations, that it would allow itself to be fractured by what indeed sounds like a urinating contest, more over personalities than policy.
