By ANTOINETTE GRAJEDA | Arkansas Advocate
A simmering rift among Arkansas Republican activists and leaders spilled into federal court on Tuesday with the filing of a civil rights lawsuit against party Chair Joseph Wood and Secretary of State John Thurston.
The plaintiffs claim Wood and Thurston have refused to enforce a new party rule to close the state’s Republican primaries.
Attorneys Luther Sutter and Lucien Gillham of Little Rock filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas on behalf of Jennifer Lancaster, chair of the Republican Party of Arkansas State Convention, and 22 other delegates to the party’s biennial convention in June.
The suit claims a violation of the First Amendment’s right to free speech and the 14th Amendment’s right to due process. It seeks a declaratory judgment and asks the court to compel the defendants to comply with state and federal law by closing the Republican Party’s primaries and accepting the rules and platform changes adopted at the June convention.
Arkansas has open primaries, which means voters can choose which party’s primary they want to vote in. At the RPA’s biennial convention in June, a majority of convention delegates approved a rule to close the party’s primaries and require those who cast a ballot in the primaries to be a registered Republican.
The state convention can consider changes to party rules recommended by the rules committee, but the closed primary proposal did not come from that committee, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Lancaster, party chairwoman for the 2nd Congressional District, defeated Wood for leadership of the party’s convention. She ran on the promise of allowing consideration of proposed rule changes, including the closed primary proposal the rules committee had rejected, the Democrat-Gazette reported.
According to the complaint filed Tuesday, the RPA violated party rules by refusing to acknowledge the convention and its proceedings, and “instead choosing to pretend as though it never happened.” The plaintiffs contend Wood also refused to acknowledge the newly adopted rules or “respond to the convention chairman’s multiple emails, texts and calls.”
At a closed meeting in July at the party’s Little Rock headquarters, the RPA’s executive committee voted to nullify the new rule because it was not put on the agenda prior to the convention. A parliamentarian at the June convention noted that party rules require 60 days’ notice of a proposed rule change, according to the Democrat-Gazette.
The plaintiffs argue the executive committee “does not have the authority to nullify or change anything done by the RPA’s State Convention body because according to the RPA rules, Article 1, Sec 1 Sub. B, ‘The final authority in all party matters shall rest in the biennial Republican State Convention.’”
Following the July executive committee meeting, Wood issued a statement in which he argued that while “the State Convention is the final authority on RPA matters,” the body adopted party rules in their entirety, “and then repeatedly violated the notice requirements” included in Article 1, Section 6, Items F-G of the rules.
Wood said violation of those rules was “predictable” because the convention chair twice tried to strip them from adoption, which he called “an admission of their necessity.”
“The will of the body was to preserve those sections of the Rules; sections which protect against the chaos of unknown and unvetted proposals,” Wood said. “…Today’s decision is not about any one proposal or group of proposals, but about applying the Rules equally to protect the will of the delegates, which was to preserve required notice.”