THE SWAMP JUST GOT DEEPER:
Shocked Shirlene Ostrov Supporters Abandon Hawaii GOP's Sinking Ship After Team Ostrov Circles the Wagons Around Disgraced Fritz Rohlfing
Aloha, Republicans:
HIRA has some painful breaking news to share -- eye popping news that you deserve to hear because you ought to know why our state party isn't more successful in Hawaii unseating crooked and incompetent Democrats. Sadly, this breaking news clearly reveals that the swamp is NOT being drained by our party's new leaders. Instead, the swamp has gotten deeper.
Below are two shocking reasons we've learned which explain why supporters of state chair Shirlene Ostrov have begunabandoning the ship in recent weeks. In fact, volunteers and donors have reached out to HIRA in recent weeks, including members of Ostrov's liberal organization the Oahu League of RINO Women: "You guys at HIRA were exactly right. Nothing has changed. In fact, it's gotten worse under Ostrov. She's controlled by Hellreich and Saiki, just like HIRA warned us. Now I'm outa here!"
Yep, there are some reallystrange happenings atHawaii GOP headquarters. Without further ado, HIRA is obligated to share with you what we've learned -- the TWO GIANT REASONS Ostrov supporters are abandoning ship and causing Republicans to openly wish they hadn'taccepted free airfare and free convention registration from Ostrov campaign honcho Mark Blackburn to attend last Spring's Kauai state convention at no cost . . . with Ostrov supporters openly wishing they could take back their votes.
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Reason #1 - Despite Ostrov telling gullible delegates that the failed leadership of Fritz Rohlfing would be history if she got elected at the state convention, Ostrov has decided to keep Fritz Rohlfing on the party's powerful Executive Committee as an executive officer of the Hawaii GOP for at least 2 more years, maybe longer.
Try to imagine how disgusted you'd feel if Donald Trump's election and inauguration were followed by an announcement that President Trump would be pardoning Hillary Clinton and appointing Barack Obama to the Supreme Court. You'd be justified in feeling prettyterrible. With that in mind, sit down right now for this news because the most shocking leak from GOP headquarters makes it abundantly clear that Shirlene Ostrov will stab her most loyal supporters in the back:
In a shocking decision by Team Ostrov which epitomizes 'two steps backward',Republicans will now have to endure TWO MORE YEARS of Fritz Rohlfing running things at the HawaiiGOP. You read that right. Instead of Rohlfing being 'shown the door' after two of the worst years of party 'leadership' in recent memory, Team Ostrov decided it wants to keep Fritz Rohlfing around through at least May 2019 if not longer. Yes, we're referring to the same Fritz Rohlfing who ran the party's 2015-2016 campaign into the ground and lost multiple elected Republicans at the ballot box and due to defections. Yes, the same Fritz Rohlfing who left the party in even worse financial shape than he found it. Yes, the same Fritz Rohlfing whose mismanagement and violations of rules and deficit spending and misuse of funds and phony accounting and fiscal irresponsibility and violations of party budgetare now legendary. That Fritz Rohlfing.
Wait, WHAT?!? Shirlene Ostrov's 'rise from obscurity' candidacy was supposed to be a total reaction against the corrupt, do-nothing tenure of state chair Fritz Rohlfing and his corrupt, do-nothing buddies. Remember how Ostrov's campaign told us that Rohlfing had screwed the party and that the election of party officers at the Kauai State Convention two months ago was going to be a referendum on Rohlfing's failures and malfeasance? Remember all that? And do you remember how Rohlfing dropped out of the race for state chair after realizing he had no chance of getting re-elected; throwing his support instead behind fellow churchmember and surprise candidate Andria "Where are you now?" Tupola as his chosen successor? Remember all that?
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Well, despite what Ostrov told gullible convention delegates throughout her campaign, it turns out that the political neophyte is just finewith Fritz Rohlfing after all -- especially as demonstrated by the sneaky way she chose to keep Rohlfing around. Here are a few details.
Several weeks ago, a concerned, longtime party member and past GOP state senate candidate on Kauai named Dave Hamman filed a powerful and thoughtful complaint against Rohlfing -- an official complaint which documented some of Rohlfing's years of inexcusable and "blatant malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance" -- a strong case that should have led to his immediate ouster as a party officer. In response, Team Ostrov decided to ignore all the evidence and circle the wagons around Rohlfing instead; allowing Rohlfing to exploit a little-known provision in party rules which allows him to serve for at least two years on the extremely powerful Executive Committee of the Hawaii GOP as "immediate past chairman". [And if Ostrov gets re-elected in 2019, Rohfing would be able to stay in party leadership for an additional two years through 2021.]
How did this happen, you might ask? Well, one of Ostrov's first decisions as the new state chair was to quietlyreappoint one of Fritz Rohlfing's corrupt and loyal sycophants,Andrew Walden, to continuefor another two years as chairman of the state GOP's Rules Committee. You might remember HIRA's stunning report about Walden andRohlfing plotting and scheming together last summer to extend Rohlfing's term as state chair through May 2018 (an entire extra year in office) through a sneaky change to party rules** -- asleazy maneuver soundly defeated by delegates at the 2016 state convention by an overwhelming margin of 4 to 1. [**Ostrov was reportedly very impressed with Walden's sleazy RINO power tactics.]
Well, this same Andrew Walden has been known for doing the bidding of party RINO's like Miriam Hellreich and Pat Saiki for years, as their stooge on various party committees. And with Ostrov's hush-hush reappointment of Rohlfing's puppet, one of Walden's first decisions a few weeks ago was to protect Fritz Rohlfing from any official complaints which could have led to Rohlfing's ouster from the state party's Executive Committee. Ostrov's appointee Walden refused to even schedule a hearing on the complaint,refused to afford the complainant due process, refused to let the complainant testify or argue case or even answer questions before either the state committee or the rules committee, and refused to even allow Hamman to be there. Ostrov simply let Walden quietly dismiss the case against Rohlfing. No wonder the complaint and the 'ruling' have been kept secret from party members. This is an absolute outrage! Ostrov and her supporters previously blamed for every problem now facing the Hawaii GOP on her immediate predecessor. Now she's protecting him and giving him more time and power to destroy our party.
Never mind that the complaint was addressed to Ostrov. She kicked the whole matter to her new RINO stooge Walden to make the irrefutable complaint quietly go away. Yes, Ostrov could have gotten rid of Rohlfing --she was given TONS of justification. Fritz Rohlfing, the proven party destroyer, broke party rules left and right. But new chair Ostrov's first decision reappointing Rohlfing's own crony to rule on this solid case sealed the deal. The foregone outcome came as no surprise to the very few people inside the party who know about this. And now you know.
As word spreads with each passing day, Ostrov's backstabbing of her supporters appears to be too much to take for many of them. As news gets out about Team Ostrov's embrace of Fritz Rohlfing, donations to the party continue to decline. Stay tuned for a shocking report from HIRA later this week showing that Ostrov has dug an even deeper hole in the past two months than Rohlfing did in two years. Maybe that's why the backstabbing of Ostrov's supporters doesn't end there . . . which brings us to Reason No. 2 why folks are abandoning the ship: Ostrov appears to be protecting Rohlfing by refusing to release the results of an emergency audit of party finances undertaken two months ago.
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Reason #2 - Ostrov appears to be HIDING something BIG, as she and her team still refuse to release the results of an internal financial audit -- AND Ostrov is now MORE than a month LATE issuing her annual state party budget for approval.
Call it a coverup to protect fellow RINO Fritz Rohlfing. Call it stonewalling. Or call it incompetence. Either way, Ostrov refuses to release the results of an emergency financial audit which has beenmore than two months in the works. Look, it's not some giant audit of the federal government or a forensic audit of some massive company or mammoth organization or even an audit of an agency like HART. It's just the minor matter of looking under the hood of our teeny little Hawaii Republican Party. C'mon, how long does itreally take to review a few checking account statements and the huge stack of unpaid bills on Ostrov's desk? This audit should only take two weeks tops, not two-plus months with no end in sight. Something's really fishy.
However, since taking over the top leadership spots at the HawaiiGOP in mid-May, Team Ostrov (really Team Hellreich/Saiki) has been unwilling to tell fellow party leaders, let alone party members,how deep the financial hole got dug by Ostrov's fellow party officer Fritz Rohlfing . . . or how much deeper Team Ostrov has made that same hole. Ostrov keeps putting off sharing the revelations. In fact, her team appears to be so determined to keep this financial scandal and the corruption a secret that they are nowbreaking the rules themselves by refusing to present a budget for approval, now more than a month overdue. So much for Ostrov's empty promises of being 'different' and promising not to "be above the rules" as expressed on her campaign website.
Ostrov's circling of the wagons around Fritz Rohlfing make her actions even more suspect. The audit of Rohlfing's many violations of the last two annual budgets, his unauthorized spending and many other irregularities are not being revealed or even being pursued for recovery. Instead, in the very sleazy turn of events revealed above, Ostrov is keeping fellow RINO Fritz Rohlfing on the executive committee for another two years where he can provide the controlling RINO's with one more vote in favor of silence and inaction. Shocking right? Ostrov actually wants Rohlfing to help her lead the party for two more years. That's not the draining of the swamp you were promised, is it?
Instead, in another blow to the promise of following rules, Ostrov's unelected finance chair and self-proclaimed bigshot Mark Blackburn (some guy who nobody has ever heard of before in political circles) just declared in anewsletter to party members that a small cabal will make all the decisions about how money will be spent, how much, and on what candidates they decide to target. Never mind that such a decision requires formal review and official approval of the entire statewide party organ known as the 'State Committee' which hasseveral dozen voting members. Ostrov's appointee says that RINO party officers Pat Saiki and Lorraine Shin will "target our financial goals". So, before anyone has even seen a draft budget, Blackburn has unilaterally announced that two or three people will decide how money gets spent, which candidates get targeted or "chosen", and which "pressing issues" are the most important to spend money on.
This Obama-like power grab suggests that neither Ostrov, Blackburn, Saiki, or Shin have read the party's rules (state and/or county) nor even care about rules in the way Ostrov pretended to during her misleading campaign for state chair. Factor in the reality that this handful of committed liberals and RINO's have usurped the authority of the state committee to make decisions about money, candidates and issues to the exclusion of others reveals that Ostrov is really Rohlfing 2.0.
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Integrity matters. Ostrov promised transparency. We're not getting it. Ostrov promised to bring in big money. We're not seeing it. She promised to follow the rules. Nope, she's not. Shepromised to lead a party which stands for something and fight the Democrats. But she's gone a completely different direction. That's why her supporters are abandoning ship.
There's also a steep price to be paid for doing nothing to fight Democrats and the liberal agenda. That price will be a drop indonations, a drop in volunteers, a drop in candidates, and a drop in votes.
Nope, the swamp isn't being drained at all. It's getting deeperand dirtier. And the revelations above are just early signs of more RINO shenanigans to come should Saiki and Hellreich continue to control the Hawaii GOP through their puppet state chair Shirlene Ostrov and her left-leaning leadership team.
Now, if you think that folks have begun abandoning the GOP under Ostrov for the powerful reasons above, wait until you read the forthcoming, earthshattering report from HIRA's national director (and former GOP state chairman) Willes Lee about the dismal state of party finances. These RINO's really lied to put Ostrov in power. Auwe!!
Mahalo,
Member, Hawaii Republican Party (HRP)
President, Hawaii Republican Assembly (HIRA)
Chairman, HIRA Action SuperPAC
P.S. HIRA continues to speak for conservatives and Republicans in Hawaii while the RINO's at the state party remain silent and neutral. Mahalo to Hawaii Public Radio for turning to HIRA to provide conservative counterpoint in its recent story about the anti-Trump progressives and Democrats marching and protesting inHawaii. Click HERE for the story.
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HAWAII REPUBLICAN ASSEMBLY (HIRA)
The Hawaii Republican Assembly (HIRA), an affiliated chapter of
the National Federation of Republican Assemblies
is the conservative standard-bearer of the Republican Party of Hawaii
and the leading advocate for conservative solutions in the islands.
We are not an official arm of the Republican Party of Hawaii (RPH).
We are the conservative base of the Republican Party.
Hawaii Republican Assembly | P.O. Box 2567 | Ewa Beach, HI 96706
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