by Claire Kennedy from OKC area
Pam Pollard has held multiple offices in the Republican Party of Oklahoma, Republican Women of Oklahoma, and has a work history with Americans for Prosperity. Among the OKGOP, she is known for her involvement through the years with credentialing, spreadsheets, and proxies.
Proxies were in effect until our last state convention when a rule change overwhelming banned them from our party operations. Proxies were a mechanism whereby people could be given another person’s ‘proxy’ to vote at a state committee meeting. So if a person gathered proxies from legislators who rarely attend the meetings, they could multiply their vote significantly. – Editor
In the summer of 2021, after the liberals stole Donald Trump’s election, I started volunteering for my local precinct. Like many of us, I was disgusted that my very own party not only did not prevent this from happening but also acquiesced as the new President-in-Chief took office.
During the summer of 2022, the state party asked me to volunteer to credential for the upcoming state committee meeting convened to elect a new chair, as John Bennett had resigned to run for office. Miles Rahimi trained us on using a system he created to do the credentialing, which included verifying proxies that could be used to vote in the new state party chair.
During credentialing, we started having funny-looking documents that were copies of proxies. They were obvious fakes because the proxies were smaller on the paper than the regular proxies. All of us in credentialing asked why these proxies were passed to us. Shane Jemison, the then-state Vice-Chair, came over and said they were legitimate. Another volunteer and I kept asking Vice-Chair Jamison for initial approval of all these strange proxies. Eventually, they stopped giving us the strange proxies, and the other volunteers were getting most of the strange proxies.
What also made these proxies different is that they were all elected officials from the state capital. I wondered why they sent their proxy in when they could quickly drive a few miles to the meeting and vote in person. Most of the more legitimate looking proxies were from faraway countries, which made sense because these people needed more time to take off from work. Another critical condition for a legal proxy was the person carrying the proxy had to reside in the same area as the person’s proxy.
All these strange proxies were from elected officials all over the state, carried by one person, Pam Pollard. Another rule of the proxies was that no one could carry more than seven proxies per person. Ms. Pollard was bringing and carrying multiple proxies from legislators across the state.
The volunteer corps was allowed to stand in the back of the church during the voting. A. J. Ferate, got up and spoke about how he would raise money for the party, which the party desperately needed. When asked by one of the state committee members if Mr. Ferate would work with another administration to help raise money if he wasn’t a chair, Mr. Ferate answered that no, he wouldn’t – if the party wanted money, they would have to make him a chair.
While the campaigning was taking place, I went outside to clean up the credentialing area and pick up the tea I had left outside. As I began to go back into the sanctuary, a couple of guys in dark suits busted through the doors, and then Governor Stitt and Pam Pollard came through. I passed by them to go back into the sanctuary and overheard Pam Pollard tell Governor Stitt, “Don’t worry, we’ve got this now.” I knew instantly that Mr. Ferate was going to be made (not elected) chair.
The following year, at the May 2023 State Convention, proxies were banned. This year, a resolution will be presented to eliminate elected officials as ex-officio state committee members. If they can’t even travel a couple of miles to attend a meeting, it is obvious they don’t consider this worth their time, so their removal from an automatic position makes sense.
Pam Pollard is not to be trusted. In fact, everything she says is suspect.Haven’t we dealt with this enough with our elected representatives? Why would we tolerate this in a National Committeewoman? That’s the whole idea behind proper representation – they actually vote the way they campaigned on. They stand up for what they said they would do. They represent the voter – what a concept!
Next week in Oklahoma City, we have the opportunity to vote for true representation in our party! We can return the state committee to representing the will of the counties by removing 125+ members who do not participate and are there by virtue of their state elected office only.
Let’s change this party and return the power to the people!
Source:OKGrassroots.com