Category: Issues

On Thursday, Cobb School Superintendent Chris Ragsdale announced 13 books that will no longer be available in Cobb government school libraries, due to the content being inappropriate for children. Concerned parents have been sounding the alarm in Cobb County and this decision is doubtless the fruit of their efforts.

“We are declining to provide access to materials with sexually explicit content in the same way we decline to provide access to rated-R movies and—in compliance with federal law—use internet filters to prevent students from accessing websites with adult content on school district computers,” said Ragsdale.

 Ragsdale pulled the first set of inappropriate books last September and received tremendous opposition from all of the Democrat School Board members and intense protest from left-wing activists. Twice during the School Board meeting public commenters attempted to read from the books in question and were stopped because the content they were quoting was too graphic to be broadcast on the meeting recording. The speaker was allowed to continue only after the recording was muted. This begs the question, if the content is too graphic to be featured on the school system website, why should minor children have unrestricted access to this content in their school library? 

If you have to mute the speaker to protect the citizens, maybe children shouldn’t be allowed to read it?

One Cobb RA Member described the books as “pure porn.” One of the many concerns with exposing children to lewd content is that it is likely to make them more susceptible to groomers who would more easily exploit them, and that the child may develop a life-long addiction to pornography that would wreck their future marriage and relationships.

The titles removed by Superintendent Ragsdale were these:

Marietta, GA — The Cobb County GOP Committee met at the Switzer Library Tuesday evening primarily to fill vacancies and to vote on new rules revisions. Most of the business was not controversial, except for the rules changes related to the procedures for adopting resolutions. The meeting was well attended with 116 of the members present at the start of the meeting, although some left before the meeting adjourned.

As we have reported a few times before, after the backlash the Cobb GOP received for passing a resolution reprimanding Governor Brian Kemp in September of 2021, Establishment influences in the organization led by Parliamentarian Donna Rowe pressured the committee to pendulum swing and adopt unprecedented cumbersome restrictions on how the body can introduce and pass resolutions. The Governor’s office reacted to the Kemp resolution by ostracizing the Cobb GOP, which made things particularly difficult during the 2022 election cycle.

For the last few years, the Cobb GOP Resolutions Committee has not been able to propose resolutions directly to the county committee without first getting approval from the Cobb GOP Executive Committee. Several members of the Resolutions Committee have resigned due to these new egregious limitations that hand-cuffed the committee. On Tuesday the Rules Committee proposed a change to take away that restriction so that the Resolutions Committee could once again propose resolutions directly to the county committee. That proposal was adopted with little controversy, and it’s a correction that has been long over-due. Resolutions Committee Chairman & GRA member Leroy Emkin praised the change and thanked the committee for supporting it.

But other efforts to scale back the restrictions on resolutions were met with resistance by a minority within the committee. Since the rules changes require a two-thirds majority vote to adopt a change to the existing rules, that minority was able to block some of these additional revisions to the rules — albeit narrowly at times.

Another unusual restriction on resolutions is a requirement that all resolutions must receive a two-thirds vote to be adopted. Cobb RA President Chris Deeb pointed out that the customary vote needed for passage is a mere 50% +1.

Deeb made a motion to amend the rules to reduce the added requirement of a two-thirds majority to pass resolutions to a simple majority. Most bodies, including the GA GOP State Committee, pass resolutions by a simple majority. Catherine Floam argued against this motion, saying that the body needed to ensure there was a greater consensus from the body when dealing with potentially controversial resolutions.

Some of the committee members might have pointed out that the Kemp resolution that inspired many of these hyper-cautious reactionary restrictions passed with greater than two-thirds majority support, so this restriction would not have changed that outcome.

After that motion failed, Cobb RA Chairman Nathaniel Darnell proposed another motion to amend the proposed rules by removing the limitation of the county committee only being allowed to vote on two resolutions per committee meeting. Darnell pointed out that in the recent 14th District GOP Convention, the body passed 13 resolutions, and only two of those received any discussion. He also pointed out that the GA GOP State Committee took up seven resolutions in February, and passed five of them. For those who argued that resolutions don’t matter, Darnell pointed out that the State Committee passed a resolution against registered lobbyists serving on the state Board of Elections, which helped to effectively pressure registered lobbyist Ed Lindsey to recently resign from the board.

Some argued that resolutions don’t help the GOP accomplish what they see as the GOP’s mission: “to elect Republicans.” Darnell responded to this by saying that actually the real mission of the GOP is not to “elect people with an R next to their name, but to ensure that Republican policy is passed into law! We are against socialism, for example, because we are for capitalism! … People are drawn to the GOP because the party supports the issues they care about, and so the GOP must empower their volunteers to speak to their elected officials about those issues.”

Cobb Board of Elections member & GRA member Debbie Fisher said that the real problem people usually have with resolutions is not the quantity but how long the debate over them can often go. She suggested a compromise to Darnell’s amendment which would add language limiting the debate on individual resolutions to ten minutes per resolution and an hour for all resolutions proposed. Darnell agreed to this compromise and the amendment to remove the quantity limitation on resolutions at county committee meetings passed with the time limitations added.

Darnell also proposed another amendment that would have removed the quantity restriction for resolutions at county GOP conventions. The rules currently put that restriction at four. Supporters of the amendment pointed out that leaving the restriction would induce the Resolutions Committee to look for creative work-arounds, like creating longer “omnibus” resolutions that deal with numerous subjects that may not be directly related.

Past Cobb GOP Chairwoman Rose Wing, who the Cobb RA helped to successfully defeat in her re-election bid in 2017 due to her heavy-handed Establishment-oriented leadership, argued in favor of both the two resolution limitation at county committee meetings as well as the four resolution limit at county conventions.

After much debate, Darnell’s second motion to amend passed by a vote of 64 to 45. But the vote to pass the provision as amended came up a little short of the necessary two-third majority to pass. That four-resolution restriction at county conventions will remain in force for the time being.

While we applaud the progress made Tuesday evening to restore the process for the Cobb GOP to pass resolutions, much more needs to be done to simplify this process and bring it back to the free, straight-forward process it has been for decades in our county. Resolutions are an important part of how the grassroots provides feedback to the elected Republican officials at the county, state, and federal level on timely issues facing our civil government, and they should not be muzzled by a minority under the influence of the Establishment.

Marietta, GA—The Cobb GOP County Committee met at the Central Cobb County Library “Switzer” branch Wednesday evening to set the dates for the up-coming 2024 Precinct Caucus Meeting and the County Convention, to appoint committees to run these events, and to amend county party rules. Although the meeting was largely non-controversial, the meeting did get a bit testy when new rule amendments were presented governing how the Cobb GOP’s resolutions could be presented and passed.

Ever since September 2021 when the Cobb GOP County Committee overwhelmingly passed a resolution publicly “censuring” or reprimanding Governor Brian Kemp for failing to deal with illegal immigration as he promised (and, as some contend, for failing to fully investigate the allegations of election fraud before certifying the 2020 presidential election in Georgia) the Cobb GOP has reined in the power of the county GOP’s Resolutions Committee. The Cobb GOP was targeted for issuing that resolution even though other GOP organizations such as the 14th Congressional District GA GOP, the 3rd District GA GOP, the Whitfield County GOP and other official GOP organizations around the state have also issued public resolutions reprimanding Republican-elected officials at the state capitol for failing to promote Republican principles or policies, and for generally failing to advance the Republican agenda.

The public backlash against that Cobb resolution involved so much pressure immediately after it happened in 2021, that the county committee over-corrected a procedural mishap by approving rules proposed by Establishment influences within the Cobb GOP (which some say were led by then Rules Committee Chairwoman Donna Rowe, who now serves as the Parliamentarian). These rules stifled the Resolutions Committee’s ability to present proposed resolutions directly to the county committee without first going through the Cobb GOP Executive Committee.

Under those current rules, the Resolutions Committee is prohibited from presenting more than two resolutions at a time. The Cobb GOP Executive Committee also has to first vet any resolutions the Resolutions Committee wants to propose to the full county committee before they are allowed to do so.

One of the proposed rule amendments on Wednesday which passed enabled the county GOP Executive Committee to possibly allow for more than two resolutions, at its discretion. The more contentious proposal would have required the Executive Committee to give the Resolutions Committee 45-day notice of a forthcoming county committee meeting so that the Resolutions Committee could prepare timely resolutions in preparation for that meeting.

Cobb GOP Resolutions Committee Chairman Leroy Emkin from East Cobb used the discussion to argue against the two-resolution restriction on the Resolutions Committee. John McLean from West Cobb, who is also a member of the Resolutions Committee, said that the committee needed more time to produce timely resolutions before meetings, given the new restrictions that the Resolutions Committee has in order to have resolutions vetted by the Executive Committee 15 days in advance of the county committee meeting.

Former Cobb GOP Executive Committee officer Catherine Floam argued that the 45-day requirement would be too cumbersome for the Executive Committee, particularly when sometimes the Cobb GOP cannot schedule meetings related to things such as conventions until the state GA GOP completes preliminary business, and this may not allow for 45 days advance notice. Failure to follow the proposed 45-day requirement might invalidate the call of a committee meeting, Cobb RA President Chris Deeb expressed.

Cobb GOP Secretary Lily Deeb agreed that the proposed 45-day requirement would be too cumbersome for their team of volunteers, and argued that the 15-day requirement for the resolutions to be submitted for vetting to the Executive Committee was what was creating the problem.

All of the main participants in this debate, including Emkin, McLean, Floam, and Deeb are Cobb RA members serving on the Cobb GOP County Committee. In the course of the discussion, a motion was made to call the question and end debate, but that motion failed, and the debate continued until the 45-day proposal was eventually tabled.

“The problem stems from the Cobb GOP putting these additional restrictions on the Resolutions Committee since 2021,” said Nathaniel Darnell, the Cobb RA Chairman. “They should not require the Resolutions Committee to have all resolutions vetted by the Executive Committee prior to a county committee meeting, nor should they have a two-resolution restriction on the Resolutions Committee. We’ve never done it that way before during the last ten years I’ve been involved. The proposed resolutions should simply be shared with the Chairwoman and Secretary in advance to be included as attachments in the Call for a full Cobb GOP County Committee meeting, just like they do for proposed rule-changes from the Rules Committee.”

“The way they’re doing it now,” said John McLean, “I don’t understand what the point is of even having a Resolutions Committee! It really doesn’t motivate me to want to continue to serve on the committee.” McLean expressed interest in the Cobb GOP Rules Committee potentially adopting Darnell’s suggested solution. He just did not want Cobb GOP Chairwoman Salleigh Grubbs to be blind-sighted by a proposed resolution prior to a county committee meeting.

McLean added that he believed the Resolutions Committee needs to be able to issue timely resolutions as our elected officials face pending bills and deadlines in order to provide feedback and accountability.