Despite public rift, GOP Chair says party is united

After a public display of a fracture at last week’s City Council meeting, many people are questioning just how healthy the Bannock County Republican party is.

If it’s any indication, party members’ opinions are split over whether or not the party is unified.

The rift has been going on for a while, according to some, but it flared up publicly at last week’s City Council meeting.

Members of the Republican party stood up to confront council member and Bannock GOP member Steve Brown about allegedly spying on a meeting they held back in May.

The group, made up of libertarian-leaning republicans, had met to talk about the GOP’s upcoming reorganization meeting, and they accused Brown of taking “clandestine” pictures of them. Scott Kearl, who gave the speech, said they spoke out at the council meeting because brown is a public official.

“It seemed like a conflict of interest, No. 1, and just to question why he was there in the first place,” Kearl said.

Brown said he never took any pictures and he wasn’t spying. He just stopped by because someone had told him about the meeting.

“Like I said, there’s a lot of emotion involved in politics, and sometimes when you don’t win what you’ve been working for, it can kind of take a negative turn sometimes,” Brown said.

He was talking about attempts by the more libertarian-leaning, Ron Paul supporters to take over the delegation with precinct committee members. Bannock County Republican Chairman Jordan Cheirrett helped to gauge the party’s health.

“As with any organization, there’s conflict that goes on inside of it, but as a whole as the party we’re in a good shape,” Cheirrett said.

In-fighting aside, Cheirrett said he is just glad people are getting involved. He’s a delegate headed to Twin Falls next week to vote in the convention and said, the party is united.

“There’s just some outliers that are making a lot of noise,” he said.

Some would tend to disagree.

“It is not united,” Kearl said.

There were some people who were asked to stand up at the city council meeting who apologized to Brown, because they weren’t told beforehand what they were standing up for, Brown said.

Bannock County will be proposing a resolution promoting smaller government at next week’s convention.